Cinda Webb

I picked the tree clean this week and had two large bags of fruit to preserve. I gave half to one of my classmates and I have been processing the rest. I made 4 more half-pints of marmalade. I made 4 half-pints of Spicy Candied Kumquats (thanks Terra for this site). And last, I made a Kumquat Sauce by removing the peels, cooking the pulp and seeds with some sugar, water and the rest of the sauce from the Spicy Kumquats. Cooked that mixture for 20 minutes and strained it. Then I cooked the peels in water to soften them and ran them through the food processor and strained the mixture. I combined the peel mixture with the thickened pulp mixture. I then processed the pints for 15 minutes in a water bath. I think this sauce combined with fresh ginger and soy would make a great marinade and sauce for chicken. Or I could thin it and sweeten it and make a sorbet. What fun to experiment!

And I don’t want to see a kumquat tree for another year!

The big set of letters in the title actually stand for:
University of California Cooperative Extension Master Food Preserver

And I am officially one!

Now I get to practice my skills and hopefully will be able to pass along what I learned to others. As an MFP I am required to put in at least thirty hours a year as a volunteer: answering questions and passing along my skills so that others can practice safe food preservation.

I usually can based on what I find at the farmers’ market. A couple of weeks ago I was intrigued by the beans one vendor had and I remembered that the instructor for the pressure canning class I took with the University of California Cooperative Extension Master Food Preservers said beans were his favorite thing to can. So I bought three pounds of garbanzo beans (chickpeas) to process. I had to wait though to complete the project until my new pressure gauge arrived. There are no gauge testing locations near me so I decided to buy a brand new one and then send the old one back to the manufacturer for testing. That way I will always be able to can safely.

The corn is actually a corn relish. My team for my food preservation class got the assignment to present a lesson on pickling. Of course my team got pickling as pickling is probably my least favorite canning project so I researched and found a recipe that I would probably eat. I cut up the vegetables and had things ready for the demonstration but we could not actually can during class as we only had fifteen minutes so I finished the processing here at home.

Tech Specs:
Beans: 15 pints, Pressure Canned, 75 minutes
Corn Relish: 1 pint, 4 half-pints, Pressure Canned, 15 minutes