Starting off the New Year

An array of New Year canning.

Through the years, New Year celebrations have come and gone but I have only started to develop my own traditions that have taken hold over the past few years. There is one tradition I have retained from childhood- the firm belief that all Christmas decorations must be put away before dinner on January 1st. (This year I was early and completed this task on December 28th, discovering only one piece of tinsel left behind after the fact. Certainly a record on both accounts.)

It has now also become a tradition to clear some things out of the house. My boyfriend and I have developed a one-in-one-out rule since combining households a bit over two years ago. At New Year, we have taken the time to evaluate what we have not been using and get rid of some additional items. This year we tackled the storage area where we put all the duplicate items when we moved in together and sent two backseats full of boxes on their way to Good Will.

And, for the second year in a row, I have decided to kick off the New Year with some canning. Unfortunately, do to an injury I was unable to complete this on the 1st itself but I did get everything done with my day off from work on the 2nd. Last year I canned beets. This year I picked up a few small items and preserved the rest of our New Year Day dinner.

First up was water bath canning. I began with Pickled Cranberries. I substituted half of the sugar for honey. I am looking forward to enjoying this in cocktails and with soda water. I also picked up some kumquats and after poking around on the internet I decided to make candied kumquats. I infused my simple syrup with just cardamom. This will likely end up in yogurt, oatmeal, cocktails, and/ or soda water. When shopping for our New Year Eve dinner, I picked up extra pearl onions for cocktail onions. There are a variety of recipes out there to choose from. I used white vinegar, mustard seed and bay in mine.

I also had a small cabbage, just under a pound, that I started fermenting into sauerkraut. I seem to be the only one in my family that likes it so there does not seem to be the need to make 25 pounds of cabbage worth at a time. And since I am working with such a small batch, buying a crock did not seem warranted either so I am using a half gallon glass jar. More on this one it finishes.

I love turkey, as long as it is good turkey, so when I ordered my heritage bird from one of my favorite farmer’s market vendors, I got a second bird for later and New Year seemed like a fabulous occasion to roast it. I cooked the carcass into broth, ending up with 7 pints of soup I put in the freezer to have for lunches (turkey, carrot and rutabaga) and 4 quarts of additional broth I pressure canned with some meat that I will use for dinner soups.

If you are reading at my site, you will also see I did some minor updates here for the New Year as well. The side bar now contains a simple list of items I have canned so far in the year and a link to My Pantry page where you can see the details of amounts I canned, both for the current year and in the past.

Did you preserve anything for the New Year or make any plans for the upcoming year?