Mom/Chef…notes on dehydrators.

 

This year we spent a little of our tax return money on some kitchen gadgets, some that were replacements for our badly worn out ones (like our totally broken food processor) and some that we had coveted for quite a while. Even though neither Tim nor I cook professionally any more, I guess you can’t totally shut down the inner chef. One of the most useful gadgets we got was a dehydrator. I had wanted one for years but always thought of it as more of a one-trick pony, something that I would use for a few weeks and then put on a shelf to gather dust. But in the two months that we have had it, I have it running once or twice a week. It has really helped us keep up on using all of our Bountiful Baskets produce and has started to change our snacking habits for the better.

After a lot of research including this article from Mother Earth News, Tim and I chose the Nesco 700watt Food Dehydrator. It is reasonably priced, versatile in the different tasks it can perform, and has plenty of trays and accessories for a reasonable price. First off, I recommend the higher wattage because it makes the drying time faster, most things can be dehydrated in an afternoon, instead of two or three days. This Nesco model has a temperature gage that allows you to fine tune your heat level, depending on what you are dehydrating. It stacks and stores easily, doesn’t take up too much space on the counter, and while you can hear the fan working, it isn’t an intrusive noise level, more a soft background noise. The criticisms I have of this model is that it doesn’t have an on/off switch, which means if you want to check your food you need to unplug it. Also it would be nice if it had a timer on it, we over-dried an otherwise yummy batch of venison jerky because we got busy with bath and bedtimes and forgot that we left the dehydrator running. (The jerky is still edible, just a little tougher than we had wanted.) Tim suggested an outlet timer, you can pick them up at hardware stores, you plug the timer into the outlet then plug the dehydrator into the timer, when your set time is up the timer will switch off, thereby shutting the dehydrator off as well. We haven’t gotten one yet to try, but it should solve the problem nicely.

Overall we are really happy with the choice we made. We have made two different batches of jerky: one where we just thinly sliced the meat before flavoring it, and one where we used ground meat and put it through the jerky gun. Honestly, a jerk gun is just like a cookie press, only bigger. The ground meat/jerky gun version makes a more tender jerky that dehydrates more quickly than the sliced meat version.

We have also dried bananas, strawberries, mango, apples, celery, green peppers, mushrooms, and several different herbs. We used some of my homemade marmalade that didn’t set up as firmly as I would have liked and made a fruit roll up. Very yummy. Dried vegetables are great when you are making soups and sauces, things that they will rehydrate easily in. Being able to throw herbs in the dehydrator keeps me from having that half bunch turning to mush in the back of the crisper drawer. Plus drying your own herbs makes for a fresher tasting product, much more flavorful than what you can buy in stores.

 Dried fruit of course, is great in so many applications: as a snack, in granola and trail mix, and is wonderful in oatmeal. Dehydrating also helps when you have fruit that isn’t as sweet as you would like. We have been getting lots of strawberries in our bountiful baskets, but frankly strawberries in winter aren’t that great. However, once you dehydrate them they become an addictive candy.  Last but not least, toddlers love helping to sort the dried fruits and vegetables into jars: helpful, educational, and fun!

 

Berries and Cream Steel Cut Oats

(Overnight version)

Makes 4 servings

This works well if you have two crock pots (one large and one small), but a large crock pot and a medium sized glass bowl works well too. You are essentially making a double boiler which will keep the oatmeal from scorching during the longer cooking time.

1 Cup steel cut oats

4 Cups water

¼ tsp salt

2/3 cup dried berries (I used blueberries and strawberries)

1 Tbsp brown sugar, honey or sweetener of your choice (optional)

½ Cup heavy cream (optional)

 

1) Put several inches of water into the crock of your largest crock pot.

2) Place oats, water, salt and berries in the crock of a smaller crock pot or in a glass mixing bowl that fits suspended inside the larger crock pot without touching the bottom.

3) Put the large crock pot on low heat, place the smaller crock or bowl into the larger one, cover with a lid and a towel to keep the heat in, and then leave it for at least six hours. In the morning, stir in cream and sweetener if using and serve.

Notes:

-If you can’t make a double boiler out of your crock pot or don’t want to go to the trouble then just spray the inside of the crock with cooking spray and place all ingredients in the crock pot on low. Don’t let the oatmeal cook for longer than six hours and expect some crusty corners.

 - Feel free to leave out the cream for a dairy free version.  The long cooking time makes the steel cut oats creamy without the addition of any dairy.

- Any dried fruit works great, just use your favorite. I love dried figs, but the kids aren’t as fond of them. Dried apples and a little cinnamon would be excellent. So would dried cranberries and pecans, raisins and cinnamon, pureed pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice, seriously I don't know what wouldn't be delicious.

Mom/Chef…Comforting soup for the winter doldrums

 

We are still having some cold, snowy days here in Northern Montana, but the majority of the time it is just cold and brown. Mud is everywhere since it warms up enough for the snow to start to melt, then freezes again. For the first time in my life I truly understand and appreciate having a mud room. An entrance to the house where people can take off muddy, wet boots and coats before it gets tracked all over the kitchen and living room. Our mud room also includes the laundry room and has an entrance straight into the bathroom, for those days when Tim comes home covered in hydraulic fluid or something equally messy.

It was cold when we moved here in November and it is still cold, the weather varying between snowy, windy and just cold and wet. Needless to say, I am ready for spring. When looking through the fridge last week, wondering aloud what to do with all the potatoes I had lying around, not to mention a bag of snap peas I’d bought for snacking but hadn’t finished, Tim reminisced about a soup from his childhood. When I think potato soup, I immediately think of a thick, hearty puree, smooth and white. Tim’s childhood soup involved picking new potatoes and peas fresh from the garden, lightly cooking them and creaming the soup out for a chunky, fresh tasting soup. As soon as he described it I was sold. Here is my version of Tim’s garden potato and pea soup. It is quick, easy and very delicious. Potatoes and peas add a little bit of spring to an otherwise windy, cold and muddy brown March.

Leek, potato and pea soup

 

Leek, Potato and Pea Soup.

1 ½ pounds small yellow potatoes, scrubbed clean and cut into roughly 1/2'’ dice.

1 large leek, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced into half moons.

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1-2 cups snap peas, trimmed and cut into 1” pieces. (Frozen green peas would work fine too)

1 quart chicken or vegetable stock or water

1 cup heavy cream or dairy of your choice

Butter, salt and Pepper

Your choice of fresh or dried herbs, good choices are: Thyme, dill, tarragon. (Optional)

Slice leek in half, thinly slice into half moons and place in a large bowl full of cold water. Let the Leeks sit and soak for 10 minutes, gently swishing them occasionally to get all the grit out of the layers. Scoop the leeks from the bowl and drain, leaving the gritty water in the bowl.

 

Wash and dice potatoes, if you are doing this ahead of time, you can put the potato pieces in a bowl covered with cold water until ready to use.

 

Melt 2 Tablespoons of butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add drained leeks and add a pinch of salt. Cook the leeks slowly until they get very soft and lightly browned, about 10 minutes. When leeks are soft add garlic and cook 1 minute. Then add the potatoes, herbs if you are using them, and stock. Bring to a simmer and let cook until the potatoes are cooked through but not too mushy. 15 or more minutes, depending on the size of your potato chunks. If you are using snap peas then throw them in halfway through the potato cooking time, frozen green peas can go in at the very end. Once potatoes and peas are cooked through, add the dairy and taste for salt and pepper. Potatoes tend to soak up a lot of salt, so don’t be afraid to add plenty. Let the soup warm (but don’t let it boil) for about 5 minutes and serve. Eat and think of spring.

 

Mom/Preservationist….The weekend canning project part 2.

So in the last post I wrote about how we used up the 25 pounds of tomatoes. Now it’s time for the 20 pounds of citrus.

 

Over the first week we had eaten some of it, maybe 5 pounds. We ate the pomelo and some of the oranges and mandarins. But there was still plenty left that needed to be used up. Now when I have extra citrus I think marmalade, because I love marmalade. I researched several recipes and ended up cobbling together this one from AltonBrown and this one from Food in Jars. The Alton Brown method has you boil the thinly sliced oranges for about 40 minutes until the peel is soft. The Food in Jars method calls for an overnight soak to soften the peel. I decided on a several hour soak followed by a 15 minute boil. That way the oranges could soak while the tomato sauce and ketchup took up the stove, and then go on to cook for a (hopefully) shorter cooking time while the pressure canners cooled off from the tomatoes.

Okay, here’s my process (this is not really a recipe, just the process I used).

First I separated the Seville (a.k.a. sour) oranges from the rest of the citrus. I ended up with about 3 pounds of Seville oranges and about 5 pounds of mixed Navel oranges and tangerines. There were also a good 3 pounds of mandarins and 4 small blood oranges. The mandarins were set aside and the blood oranges I put in the fridge for later snacking.

I washed all the citrus then thinly sliced it, keeping it separated into two batches, Seville and mixed citrus. The Seville oranges are super seedy and hard to work with. The best way I found is to cut the oranges into halves then cut out the center pith. That gets out a good portion of your seeds, and the rest are easier to pick out as you thinly (1/16”) slice the orange halves.

so many seeds!

 

Don’t throw away the seeds and center pith, those can go into a pile on a piece of cheesecloth along with the end slices from each orange, they’ll come in handy later.

seeds and pith trimings

 

The orange slices to into a big bowl and get covered with water. Since our well water is kind of soft and baking soda-ish tasting, I always use filtered water for cooking. Gather up the cheesecloth into a bag and tie it closed with kitchen twine. Place it on top of the submerged oranges and let sit on the counter at room temp. Cover with a plate or plastic wrap if you have dogs in the house that shed a lot.

soaking oranges

 

When you are ready to start cooking your marmalade, dump the citrus and the cheesecloth bag into a large pot and bring to a boil. Simmer, skimming off any foam, for 20 minutes or until the peel of the fruit has softened. Remove the cheesecloth bag and stir in the sugar. Seville oranges are very sour so I used probably 6-7 cups of sugar for 3 pounds of oranges. I started with 5 cups and then tasted it throughout the process until it was the sweetness level that I wanted. Stir the sugar in until it dissolves and place a candy thermometer in the pot. Let the marmalade simmer until it reaches 220 degrees. I think my marmalade didn’t quite make it past 210, but if you put a small plate in the freezer when you start cooking your marmalade you can use the plate test. If you think your marmalade is ready, pull the plate out of the freezer and put a drizzle of the marmalade on the plate. If it jells up pretty quickly then you are done. If it stays runny then you need to cook it more.

Now my naval orange/tangerine marmalade gave me a little bit of trouble. Seville oranges are chock full of natural pectin so they jell up just fine. The tangerine mix didn’t seem to have quite as much pectin in it; I used 5 cups of sugar for the 4 pounds or so of citrus. It tasted sweet enough to me but didn’t jell very firmly during the plate test. I had taken Alton Brown’s advice and added a lemon to the marmalade for the extra pectin, but it still wasn’t firming up. I ended up adding 2 packets of liquid pectin to help it along, because at that point I didn’t want it any sweeter and I had been boiling it for over half an hour and didn’t want to overcook it. It eventually set up, but it isn’t as firm a jell as the Seville orange marmalade is.  All the marmalade was processed in the water bath canner for 20 minutes. (I always add a little extra time to my processing because of our altitude.)

marmalade close up

 

Finally, to end our citrus saga, I peeled all the ‘cutie’ style Mandarin oranges,which, due to their easy to peel-ness, is a great thing for toddlers to help with . Connor had fun getting the peels off.

Mandarin oranges being peeled

 

 Then I made a simple syrup of 5 ¾ cups water to 1 ½ cups sugar, placed the orange segments in clean jars, covered them with the hot simple syrup and processed them in the water bath canner for 15 minutes. Voila, homemade canned mandarin oranges. For basic, “can it be canned?” questions, I have found this site, "Pick Your Own" to be very helpful.  Pick Your Own is actually a farm's website but they have such a comprehensive canning and preserving section that I find myself consulting them regularly.

canned mandarin oranges

Since blogging about this process has taken me four times as long as the actual canning weekend did, I will very quickly mention that I also made 4 pints of apple sauce using the recipe from “Homemade Pantry” and 2 quart jars of lemony cauliflower pickles, recipe originally from the amazing author of Food in Jars. The cauliflower pickles are refrigerator pickles so they didn’t have to be processed in the canner. They are lemony, salty and amazing as a side to a snack of cheese and crackers. The kids love the applesauce. Alana uses a food mill to puree her apple sauce nice and smooth whereas I usually leave mine chunky. I tried the food mill version and the kids have both been devouring it.

so...much...canning...

 

Here ends this month’s canning saga. Sorry it has taken me so long to update. I find when I have to choose between sleep and blogging, sleep has been wining out lately. I have several more posts planned, so hopefully I can get them out in a reasonable time and this site will start to feel like a real blog again.

 

Mom/Preservationist…The big weekend canning project!

I posted the other week about Bountiful Baskets and how much fruit and vegetables I have been getting from them. Not only do the baskets themselves give you lots of produce, but the add-ons are often too good to resist. 25 pounds of mixed citrus for $15?! 25 pounds of Roma tomatoes for $12? Yes please! Well the problem with buying all this stuff is that you have to use it before it goes bad, so this weekend, surrounded by citrus, tomatoes and plenty of other great stuff over-running our kitchen, Tim and I rolled up our sleeves and got canning.

I used to be a reluctant canner, jam and the occasional pickle would be all I would can. Fear of botulism kept me from getting too into canning. However, last winter, realizing we would be moving by spring and needing to use up the dozen chicken carcasses in our freezer I let Tim talk me into making and canning chicken stock. 19 quarts of it. Once safely through my first pressure canning experience I lost my fear of it. This past summer we expanded our pressure canning repertoire and canned 14 quarts of whole tomatoes. There is something so reassuring about pulling out big glass jars of produce you put up. And I know exactly what is in it: tomatoes, lemon juice and salt. End of story. Except for the jars in which we added some oregano and rosemary.

So back to this weekend wherein we have several flats of empty jars, two canners and mountains of produce.

A quick note on my canners. The one on the left is my mother's Presto aluminum canner from the 1970's. Still works great, unless you need to water bath process quart jars, it is a little too shallow for that. The one on the right is my brand new All American heavy cast aluminum pressure canner/cooker that the best Christmas present ever fairy brought me this Christmas. Works great, it is slower to come up to pressure than the smaller Presto, but quicker to cool down, and as anyone who pressure cans know, half the time of the project is spent building up pressure and bringing it back down again.

Tim started out working on tomatoes. We got a 25 pound box of Roma Tomatoes so we decided to make sauce and to try a batch of homemade ketchup. The recipe for the ketchup comes from “The Homemade Pantry: 101 foodsyou can stop buying and start making.” by Alana Chernila. This book was a recent purchase to go along with the recent direction our cooking and eating is taking, (but that’s another blog post) and is my new favorite cook book.

 

Tim seeded and cored the tomatoes and cooked them down with onion, garlic and spices. After a good run through with the immersion blender and the addition of vinegar, brown sugar and molasses we had ketchup. One recipe uses 6 pounds of tomatoes (we might have used a little more) and we got 3 quarts of ketchup plus a little left over that went straight into the fridge.

Now for the critique of homemade ketchup. This recipe is heavily spiced. We ended up adding extra brown sugar and molasses to get a more ‘ketchupy’ taste. Tim really likes the finished product. I think it tastes more like the base for an Indian sauce then actual ketchup. I could see it as the start to a good butter chicken sauce. Still, it was a good experiment and hey, how many people can say they made their own ketchup?

Homemade (spiced) Ketchup

From “The Homemade Pantry” by Alana Chernila.

2 T olive oil, 1 C diced onion, 5 garlic cloves, minced

6 pounds ripe tomatoes: peeled, seeded and cored. (We did not peel and it turned out fine)

3 t kosher salt

1 T paprika, 1 t ground cinnamon, ¼ t ground cloves, 1 T celery salt (we used celery seed)

½ t ground cumin, ¼ t dry mustard, 1 ½ T chili powder, ½ t ground pepper

¼ C apple cider vinegar & ¼ C white vinegar

1 T brown sugar, 1 T honey (we also added molasses)

Canning specific instructions: ½” headspace, water bath process for 30 minutes.

Now that the ketchup was out of the way we started on tomato sauce. We saved the insides of the tomatoes we used for ketchup and added those in with more of the tomatoes, plus onion, garlic, bay leaf and oregano and cooked it all down. Salt and lemon juice were added to up the acidity and we ladled the sauce into quart jars. The tomato sauce we pressure canned at 15 pounds of pressure for 45 minutes. I think that was actually a little long, but we are at a higher elevation here (around 4000 ft) and we added the extra time just to be safe.  

 

This weekend project is being split into two posts due to length and my inability to sit at the computer for more than 5 minutes without a child meltdown. More on canning and the marmalade project soon!

Mom/Reporter...notes from last week.

Do you know the single best thing about unpacking? Unpacking the kids’ toys is like Christmas all over again. Toys they haven’t played with for months are suddenly brand new. One box I opened this morning has kept them busy most of the day. It is a nice bonus in the middle of threading my way through box mazes and unpacking two boxes only to have to clean the kitchen make a meal, clean again and then unpack something else.

Do you know another fun thing about unpacking? Discovering things you forgot you had. I just recently unpacked all my cd’s. I had last seen these in May of 2012, when we left Roslyn for Kelso and Tim starting school. When we moved to Kelso, since we knew it would only be for six months we decided to only unpack the essentials. Music and a lot of books didn’t make the essentials list considering I had Pandora and my Kindle. Plus kids don’t allow me a lot of time to read anyway, or, you know, do anything for myself.

So I unpacked my cds and it was like a time capsule. Remember when I was obsessed with everything British/Celtic as a teenager? Hello everything Enya ever released. Remember that college roommate who introduced me to Sky Cries Mary? There’s the cd I bought at their concert. (They played our college). How about that time an ex and I went to Bumbershoot to see someone perform and discovered Beth Orton when she opened for the act? I can’t remember who we were there to see, but here are three of her cds that I obsessively played for a year or more. And question, why the heck do I have a Nine Inch Nails cd? I’m definitely not a downward spiral girl, maybe not since high school. Here are a bunch of compilation cds that my favorite radio station in Seattle, KEXP releases every year as part of the pledge drive. Remember when I was a city girl and kept up on things like current music?

So, amidst the dust and mess and stress of trying to unpack and set up our house, there have been some fun discovery moments. Just enough to help make the seemingly endless boxes a little more bearable.

It's okay mom, boxes can be fun.

 

Mom/Chef...Bountiful Baskets

In my search for healthier, better food for my family, and frankly for alternatives to the very high prices at the one grocery store in town, I discovered Bountiful Baskets. Several moms in the playgroup I attend first told me about it. Bountiful Baskets is a food cooperative in the purer sense of the word. It isn’t a store where you pay a membership to shop at; it is a group of people who pool together their money to buy fruits and vegetables each week. They are all over the United States, and luckily we have one here in Cut Bank.

It goes like this: on Monday or Tuesday of each week you go online to their website and purchase your share. I pay $15 for a conventional basket, which is comprised of 50% fruit and 50% vegetables. You can upgrade to an organic basket for $10 more. There are add ons each week, several different types of bread packs (5 loaves for $10, healthy whole grain breads not cheap filler breads), organic granola, in season you can buy big flats of fruit or vegetables for canning purposes. Once you have purchased your share, that’s it. Friday or Saturday, depending on the pickup time in your area you show up and pick up your food. People who want to volunteer show up an hour early to unload the truck and sort out everyone’s share. I’ve done this two weeks in a row now, and there are always a ton of volunteers at the site here.

Now I am not sure where they source everything. I know that their bananas are sourced from some smaller family farms in Mexico, so they are more fair trade. But some of their vegetables are of a size and quality Tim and I have only seen in restaurants, so we suspect that they sometimes source through Cisco or other food purveyors. Which makes sense, which is why restaurants use companies like Cisco, you get big amounts of high quality veg for a very low price.

The downside of all this is that you don’t know what you get until you pick up your basket. For instance, I was a little disappointed the first week as my vegetable portion was: 5 pounds of potatoes, 4 onions, 1 big head of celery, 3 green peppers and 5 tomatoes. However, this week was different; here is the list of what I picked up last night.

1 large (3 pound) yam; 3 pounds of apples; 1 bunch bananas; 7 Asian pears; 1 pint strawberries; 1 big head cauliflower; 1 big head cabbage; 1 pound green beans; 1 bunch radishes; 5 tomatoes; 3 cucumbers.

Now I don’t know about where you shop, but that much produce would cost me over $30 at my local store, so already I’m cutting my produce bill in half. I was happy to see the yam, cabbage and cauliflower this week. I wish they would be a little more seasonal, I personally would prefer some kale over strawberries in winter. And I gave them that feedback on the survey they send you after your first basket pick up. Seasonal produce aside, overall I think Bountiful Baskets is a good deal, we get lots of fresh produce and it saves on my grocery bill. For instance, the only extra produce I bought this week was a head of lettuce and a couple of avocados.  And it can be fun trying to think of ways to use everything. Last week I got 4 lemons in the basket, add that to the 3 I already had and you get my preserved lemon project. The tomatoes last week were not very ripe so I stuffed them and baked them. They were delicious as a side dish for dinner and reheated for lunch the next day. I went to the store after picking up my basket last night and bought a head of lettuce; since this week’s box included radishes and 3 cucumbers I think I will be having lots of salads this week. Maybe we will have Greek Salad one night, I’ve got feta cheese in the fridge and garbanzo beans in the cabinet.

This brings me to the special add on this week: a 20 pound box of mixed citrus!

 

There is a big yellow pomello, which is similar to grapefruit but sweeter. Blood oranges and naval oranges, tangerines and the "cutie" style mandarin oranges. The oranges in the bag are Seville oranges, aka Marmalade Oranges, so I will be making marmalade this week! With all the citrus I hope to get at least two big batches of marmalade out of this box, also we will be eating citrus for a snack several times a day. That’s okay though, it is flu season and we could use the vitamins.

Well friends, it is Saturday morning so I am going to go make French toast for breakfast (bread pack add on!) and get the family fired up to finish unpacking this house, I’m getting sick of looking at boxes. Have a wonderful weekend!

Baked stuffed tomatoes:

Wash and dry your tomatoes. Cut the top ¼ “ off the tomatoes and scoop out as much of the inside as you can (a grapefruit spoon works awesome for this) while still leaving the outer walls intact. Chop up the inside and the top of the tomatoes, removing the core, and set aside. Salt and pepper the insides of the tomatoes and place in a baking dish. Chop up a little onion and garlic. Bring some oil or butter up to medium-high heat in a sauté pan. Add the onion and start to cook, when the onion starts to soften, throw in the garlic. Let the garlic cook for a minute then throw in the tomato innards. Add in a few fresh or dried herbs (marjoram and oregano are very good, as is basil), some salt and pepper. If you have it, add in some frozen chopped spinach. Or even fresh if you happen to have it. I almost never keep fresh spinach around but always have some frozen spinach in the freezer.  Throw in some cubed up bread, any sort will do (this is a great way to use up those last few slices that are going stale). Stir and let everything cook together for a few minutes, the bread will soak up any extra juice in the pan. Pull the pan off the heat and fill the tomatoes with the stuffing. This would be a good time to throw a little mozzarella or parmesean cheese in as well. Cover the baking dish and bake for approximately 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Pull the cover off the dish, add a little cheese on top and cook 5-10 more minutes until they start to brown.

Serve as a side dish to almost anything. I served them alongside shrimp and grits. They really will accompany anything. And they reheat well too.

 

Yum!

Mom/Preservationist...preserved lemons

So the other day I realized that I had seven lemons in my fruit basket. (More on why coming up soon.) I was trying to think of what to do with them all and it hit me, preserved lemons. If you've never had preserved lemons before, they are a staple condiment and flavoring in Moroccan cuisine. They are mellow, lemony, salty and add a certain something that is hard to duplicate. Luckily, the process to make them is very easy. I researched several recipes and settled on one from "The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest." By Carol W. Costenbader.

Ingredients:
5 small lemons-organic if possible (I used 3 large ones)
2/3 cups canning salt
1 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil

1 air tight glass jar with lid

Step 1: Scrub the lemons clean and dry them. I had conventional lemons, not organic, so I soaked them in a mix of warm water and white vinegar to help get the wax off of them before scrubbing them.

Step 2: Juice some of them. You need approximately 1 cup of lemon juice.

Now if I had been thinking ahead, I would have zested these lemons and frozen the zest for another use, but as I was trying to document this project and wrangle kids, I forgot. Instead I just chose the three ugliest of the lemons and juiced them. Three big lemons gave me exactly one cup of juice.

Step 3: Cut the remaining lemons into quarters and place the wedges in the jar.

 I cut the ends off before cutting them into wedges so they look prettier and fit better into the jar. I started with a pint jar but it became quickly clear that I needed a quart jar instead.

Step 4: Pour the salt into the jar. Now the recipe calls for canning salt but I just used kosher salt that I whizzed in the magic bullet for a few seconds. The only real difference between the two is that canning salt has smaller grains that dissolve quickly in hot or cold liquid. Either is fine, just don't use iodized table salt.

Put the lid on and give the jar a good shaking. Here you can see the salt coating the lemon wedges.

Step 5: Pour in the lemon juice.

Step 6: Put the lid back on and shake it up until a good portion of the salt has dissolved. It won't all dissolve yet and that is ok.

Now store the jar on the counter at room temperature for 7-10 days. Be sure to give it a good shakeup every day to get brine over all the lemons. At the end of the ten days, pour in the olive oil so everything in the jar is covered and store in the fridge. This isn't a hot processed canning project so you can reuse an old canning lid, just make sure the lid and jar are clean and sanitized before you begin.
As you can see, I just started my lemons yesterday, so I can't report on the success of this recipe yet. I will report back in two weeks with the results and a couple of recipes to use these yummy lemons.