Amber’s Shenanigans

04/03/2023

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRcUxQL6/

Violet wants to show the world how to make her “famous” magic muscle eggs. Please click the ❤️ button, repost & leave her a comment to show her some love🫶🏻💜🫶🏻. Shes so dang excited about her “cooking show”. We use dehydrated veggie powders in her food due to texture issues...

01/26/2023

Brine for refrigerator pickles😋

Im obsessed with this recipe i created for pickled vegetables. It takes hardly any time and will knock your socks off. The cowboy candy syrup is conpletely optional or you can just add extra sugar and cayenne pepper instead to get it to the taste you want💜 There’s tons of recipes similar to min...

01/23/2023

Now that the holidays and Violet’s birthday is finally behind us…it’s canning time. We bought tons of cranberries while they were in season so I could make juice and froze them. Well now I have around 70lbs of cranberries taking up space in my canning freezer😂. So I pulled out my 20qt pot and started working. Doing cranberry/pomegranate/cherry juice😋. Then around 40lbs of pulled pork, 40lbs of chicken, around 40-50 quarts of chicken broth and around 15 quarts of beef broth to make to get ready for the summer canning season. I need an assistant 😬

11/23/2022

Canning up 15lbs of potatoes for easy quick hash browns/skillet potatoes😁 Right now I’m in the soak and rinse phase. No telling how long this will take. You just keep soaking and rinsing until no more starch is being released from the potatoes, might be tomorrow before they are ready…then you can them. I should get 10-12 quarts of potatoes off this batch.

11/22/2022

Today was mulled cranberry cherry juice for the holidays. It’s better than any spiced drink or cider I’ve ever had! The darker bottles on top is the mulled juice and the bright red on bottom is my regular cranberry cherry juice.

Dehydrated blood orange peels
Brown sugar
Black strap molasses(just a dollop)
Nutmeg
Vietnamese cinnamon sticks
Cloves

11/20/2022

Last step of the night, making a double batch of my pickling brine😋. My cucumbers will be soaking overnight and ready to eat in the morning🥳

11/19/2022

Cowboy candy day…6lbs of jalapeños from the farm stand plus my homegrown jalapeños, chili peppers, and purple super hot peppers…my lungs and eyes will be hurting for days😬. It’s worth it though. While I’m cooking, Scott and Violet will be shut away in the bedroom with a towel under the door😂. I’m doubling the syrup because my in-laws and I love it so much. I can the extra syrup on its own to use on meats or in my pickled veggies😋.

11/18/2022

Going to be making some homemade mulled cranberry juice this weekend so it’ll be ready for Thanksgiving and can some for Christmas 😋. I’ll do my cranberry juice as normal and strain it then add in some blood orange peels that I soaked in pectin enzyme to fully remove the pith, cinnamon sticks, a few cloves and a dash of nutmeg. Instead of regular sugar I’ll be using some brown sugar too. Most people use star of anise but I absolutely hate it because of the black licorice taste🤢

11/14/2022

13.5 quarts of cranberry juice finishedlast night🥳 my goal is to get at least 100 quarts of juice put on my shelves by the end of the season. I can easily drink one pint a day (it’s delicious).

11/13/2022

Got 6 more quarts of pulled pork canned up last night and they’re all perfectly sealed (I did a happy dance) lol. Greasy or thicker items when canning can end up syphoning liquid due to the pressure variants inside the canner especially during the cool down phase if it happens too quickly and the greasy liquid syphoning out can cause the lids on the jars to not seal. So seeing boiling jars straight out of the canner is a very good sign. When the jars are boiling when they come out of the canner it shows that there’s a good vacuum inside the jar, which is exactly what you want to see every time. The contents inside of a jar will often continue to boil even once it reaches a safe temperature to handle with bare hands because liquids will boil at a much lower temperature inside of a perfectly sealed vacuum…which is what happens inside of a pressure canned jar of food😁

The USDA says to allow up to 24 hours to hear the lids ping to show that your jars are sealed. I allow one hour. I don’t take chances with food safety and I’ve never had a jar seal after one hour or a jar seal that wasn’t boiling straight out of the canner. Once I see they have sealed, I allow them to rest untouched on the counter for 24 hours to finish the process of cooling and creating a strong secure bond with the lids on the jars. After 24 hours the rings on the lids are removed and I do a lid test on each jar by picking the jar up just by the lid. A perfectly sealed jar will not pop open by lifting on the lid. Once I see they are safe, each jar gets washed, dried, then labeled and put on our shelves for storage.

(The cranberry juice is no longer boiling because it was finished 24 hours before and is now ready for lid test, cleaning, and storage)

11/04/2022

13 pints of the yummiest pulled pork I’ve ever made are now in the canner😋. Got pork shoulder for $0.88 a lb and bought 80lbs😂. This was 20lbs slow cooked in apple juice, ham base, brown sugar, bayleaf, salt, pepper, peppercorns, and Italian seasoning. Then remove the bone and fat and pressure can the pork in beef broth for 75 minutes. The fat, bone and broth made from roasting the pork shoulders will be frozen and later used to make a ham broth.
Nothing gets wasted.
Meat for pulled pork. Bones and fat with the drippings are used to make broth and the fat is rendered down in to tallow for cooking.

10/25/2022

Recipe and step by step process for the Cranberry cherry juice

Homemade delicious cranberry cherry juice. I dont even like cranberries but i LOVE this juice. Its packed full of vitamins and is so refreshing😋 ...