Turn Your Zucchini into Canned Pineapple, Plus, Pineapple Upside-down Cake Recipe

welcome back to homesteading with the zimmermans where we work hard and play hard on our little corner of land in Iowa my husband and I were born and raised old order Mennonite or of course I'm begging Mennonite as some refer to them as and although we are no longer part of that culture or community we are intentional about passing on the old-fashioned skills of our childhood to the Next Generation hello in today's video we are going to be using up some zucchini and as you can tell it is very warm here in Northern Iowa and because we're currently in the middle of an outdoor remodel project we don't have our central air hooked up because it needs to be moved so we are suffering through the Heat and it really is only really warm in the very middle of the day it's nice and cool in the morning and then again in the evening it cools off very nice so first of all getting my apron on and in case you didn't know you can buy the pattern for this apron I'll put the link in the description and I have a full length video showing how to sew it and the other big thing is I finally figured out my wireless mic so this will make editing a whole lot easier for me so zucchini doesn't matter if you have one zucchini plant you are at one time going to have too many zucchinis now my zucchinis are planted down behind the barn on my compost pile and because they were kind of an afterthought my family's not super crazy over zucchini so I don't make it a priority crop but they weren't after thought they are not ready yet but because I know that most of you are probably already drowning in zucchinis I ran to my neighbors and I bought some zucchini and the only other thing you need some pineapple juice a hundred percent pineapple juice some lemon juice and some sugar and we are going to turn these zucchinis into canned pineapples that you can use wherever you would use pineapples in a recipe and it's so simple to do I don't even know if I'll be able to get enough footage to make an entire YouTube video but if that's the case I will also make some pineapple upside down cake and share that recipe with you as well so it's that time of year where the shelves in our basement are have more empty jars on than full jars and we're supposed the kids are when they bring the jars down they're supposed to put all the quart jars on one shelf all the Pint jars on the other shelf and then the two quart jars on a different shelf but as each shelf fills up they just kind of start putting them wherever there's room so it's my job to see if I can find pint jars to can this pineapple zucchini so the first thing we're going to do is we are going to wash up all our pint jars that we want to use so the next thing we're going to do is we are going to peel our zucchinis because the peels will get they'll taste a little bitter and rubbery after they're canned [Music] so I honestly don't mind not having any AC even when our air conditioner is working we only use it maybe two weeks out of the summer and the only time we really use it is when temperatures go into the 90s and they don't cool the temperatures don't drop far enough at night to allow us to get a good night of sleep I think our average the average number of days that we have with temperatures in the 90s are between six and eight days each summer so on the other days I really enjoy having my windows open and feeling the breeze from the outdoors and if you've ever been in Iowa you know that there's almost a constant Breeze so I really don't mind having my windows open and listening to all the outdoor sounds okay so you might be thinking why does your family not like zucchini neither my husband or I grew up eating a lot of zucchini so it's not usually a priority crop however the trombone Sino squash is an heirloom variety of squash and that is the kind I've decided to plant this year and here's why the trombone trombonesino squash can be used as a summer squash when you pick it at its immature stage and reviews and people tell me that it's even sweeter than zucchini and then if you let it if you let it mature it will cure and be more like a butternut squash like a winter squash and you can actually keep it you can store it as a winter squash and you can use it as a winter squash and some people use it to feed to their pigs in the winter to help keep their feed costs down so that is why I decided not to plant the traditional zucchinis this year and go with that trombonesino squash because that way I won't feel so pressured to use all of them before they get too big and I can just leave them let them cure and then I can store them and we can use them in the winter as winter squash or I can feed them to the pigs so now that you have peeled your zucchinis you're gonna dice them and these zucchinis are perfect but if you've let yours get bigger and there's lots of seeds in them you can just scoop those seeds out and I'm sure your chickens would be happy for those seeds the bigger zucchinis definitely don't stay as firm in the jars though you can also shred your zucchinis and they'll be more like shredded pineapple then but we like ours like diced pineapple so then we spend time looking for our measuring spoons and I'm trying to think which child's chore is it this week to put away clean dishes because if I remember which child puts away clean dishes I might be able to remember where is that child may have put the measuring spoons okay so it's a known fact that zucchinis will take on the flavor of whatever you cook them with so you know if you want them to taste like sausage you cook them with sausage if you want you know you can add any spice you want and that's what your zucchini is going to taste like so that's it's exactly what we're going to do we are going to take these zucchinis and we're going to can them in pineapple juice and we don't have to pressure can them even though zucchini is a low acid food the pineapple juice and the lemon juice that we're adding have enough acid in them where you actually can water bath them and you do not have to pressure can them so that's one of the reasons this is so simple so a lot of your pineapple zucchini recipes are gonna ask you to put your zucchini and your pineapple juice and your sugar all together in a pot and boil that for 20 minutes but I don't actually do that my zucchini is turned to Mush when I do that so I only I put the zucchinis raw into my jar add all my ingredients and then I can them a bit longer than most recipes asked for but that's the way that I found that my zucchinis don't turn to Mush and you have a nice solid chunk of zucchini that identifies as pineapple when you're done so to each jar you're going to add two tablespoons of sugar the sugar will all dissolve during the water bath process you can add less sugar if you want to the pineapple juice is plenty sweet but I add two tablespoons to bring it as close to the canned pineapple recipes that we were used to after the sugar you're going to add one tablespoon of lemon juice [Music] I know that I made a big mess with that lemon juice but that's nothing new for me I am a mess in the kitchen but I always clean up my own messes so it's okay now that I'm adult an adult always clean up my own messes nobody needs to worry about it so now that you have your sugar and your lemon juice in there you're going to fill the rest of the jar up with pineapple juice foreign and you're going to fill it all the way up to the neck of the jar so now we're just going to wipe the rims of the jars and of course we're going to be using my favorite canning lids and don't forget to check the description for the link to buy your canning lids and also for a discount code oh I don't sanitize my lids they're going to be in boiling water for over 20 minutes things are going to be sanitized the only time I boil my Lids is if I'm reusing canning lids like if I have some from another year and I'm reusing them it's the only time I sanitize them so now you're just gonna cut turn them finger tight so now I'm putting my zucchini into my water bath canner and because everything in the jars is room temperature we're going to have room temperature water that we add you always want your temperature of your water to be the same as the temperature of the product in your jar so I bring the water line up to the same spot on the jars where the product line is so all the way up until about that bottom rim and then we're going to turn the burner on so no I do not cover my jars ever with water when I water bath can them it's not the way I was taught it's not the way my grandma did not the way my mom did they taught me that if you put too much water in your product is going to seep out and it will actually affect your seal rate I personally canned all my life without covering my jars with water and I didn't even know that some people do cover their jars with water until about five years ago when I started seeing canning videos on Instagram and I was like whoa why are they covering their jars with water turns out that is the way all the recommended government recommended canning recipes tell you to can but it's not the way I was taught and I've been canning for 20 some years on my own and many years before that with my mom and my grandma and I've never seen them cover their jars with water we just bring it up to the product line and that's it so now that my pineapple zucchinis are boiling we are going to set the timer for 25 minutes so now that our zucchinis have boiled for 25 minutes we are going to remove them and now we're just going to let them sit and cool so while I'm stuck in the kitchen babysitting my canner I am going to make a pineapple upside down cake just like Grandma used to and I'm actually going to use some of last year's pineapple canned zucchini to make this so that I don't have to wait till those are done and cooled so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to strain these so we're just going to let these strain for a while the next thing I've got is half a cup of butter and this butter is still frozen because I didn't have any more butter in my refrigerator so I had to use frozen butter and we're gonna put this half a cup of butter in my 350 degree oven and melt it in the pan so now that our our butter is melted we're gonna put the brown sugar in there that's one and one-third cups of brown sugar and then we're gonna put our two pints of drained pineapple zucchini so we've got two and two third cups of flour we've got two cups of sugar one tablespoon of baking powder one teaspoon of salt now we're gonna mix all our dry ingredients together add 2 3 cup of oil I'm using my 1 3 cup measuring cup because I'm not sure where my 2 3 cup one is you want one and a half cup of buttermilk and I will put in the description I will put how to make your own sour milk if you don't have cultured milk or buttermilk on hand you want two eggs you want a teaspoon of vanilla and you're just gonna mix this all together [Music] and then you're just going to put your batter right on top of your pineapple mixture put it into our oven and this time we're gonna set our timer for 55 minutes and then we're gonna come and check on it usually it bakes for close to an hour but I'm just going to set it for 55 minutes and then come check on it well I guess most of the chickens are in here in the barn where it's nice and cool you let them out so it seems that a lot of my brain space is a mother these days is used to keep the boys in work um it seems that the three little boys need at least 50 percent of the day to be made up of structure and chores and important jobs to keep them from becoming bored and irritable the other 50 of the day they usually are just fine playing and using their imagination to entertain themselves and since they don't yet work very well on their own it means that 50 of their day means that I am working right there with them you've heard it said that play is the work of children but by the time they get to this age they do need some structured work and feeling of value in order to be inspired to play for more on the value of childhood chores see the link to my ebook in the description so our timer went and we're just gonna check yep the knife comes out clean so this cake is done [Music] so that's all for this week and thank you all for watching don't forget to check for the links to your recipes and anything else I mentioned in the description and until next week we will be right here on our little corner of land taking care of our garden milking our cows making cheese and all the other happy homesteading things foreign foreign

Channel: Homesteading with the Zimmermans

Views: 89,530

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Id: tkrfKUU-Ibc

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023