Month: August 2026

Making Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini

I’d like to share a recipe that makes a delicious, hearty soup! I needed to find an alternate soup to make for our Yard Sale/Bake Sale next weekend (Sept. 11 & 12). If you are local, come join us at the Boalsburg Fire Hall Friday (9-2) and Saturday (9-1).

In the past we had offered a Chicken Corn Noodle Soup and it just didn’t seem as popular as in the past. So, I decided to try this Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini instead. This recipe is from https://allrecipes.com.

This first batch was just for us to see if it would even work. I’ll triple the recipe if the tortellini holds together. I needed something that could simmer for 3-4 hours and still look like tortellini. Usually, noodles worked well, but I knew fresh tortellini just got HUGE and then fell apart if simmered too long. I had corkscrew pasta ready, but I thought I’d try dried tortellini first.

Here is the recipe:

We started with 1-pound of sweet Italian sausage…loose like a package of hamburger. Bert cooked it and drained it in a bowl lined with paper towels. (Sorry…I didn’t catch a picture of the frying pan!)

While Bert was cooking, I chopped up celery, carrots and onions. We decided to skip the zucchini. We didn’t think it would be sturdy enough to simmer for 3-4 hours.

I measured out the minced garlic, basil, parsley and oregano:

I got the Beef Broth and cooked tomatoes out of the pantry:

Bert donated a bottle of red wine (we needed 1/2 cup!). If this works, we’ll save the rest for the triple batch of soup next week (at least another cup and a half!)

This all got assembled in our 5-quart pan and was brought to a boil.

When the vegetables were soft, we dumped in an 8-oz bag of dried tortellini.

Once stirred up, we let it simmer for another 15 minutes or so. Wow…it made a huge pile of soup!

This soup needed no additional seasoning, but it could have used more liquid…or less tortellini. It really sucked up the juice.

Finally, we let the soup simmer for several hours, just like it will at the Bake sale. It still tasted great. The best thing…the tortellini held together! I’ll take an extra box of broth to add if necessary after simmering for 2-3 hours, just in case!

We now have a great recipe to make soup for a crowd…or at least a hearty soup for us this winter! Enjoy!

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com.

Garden Update August 25, 2026

The canner is put away! The few tomatoes and cucumbers left are on the kitchen counter! The air is feeling like fall is coming. We’ve had over 6″ of rain this month so far and the lovely petunias were just beat down. It was time to get some of the garden cleaned up!

Here’s what is left in the garden. On the patio, I still have the planter filled with beets. I’ll leave them for a little longer to see if they will actually make beets! The spinach is doing well too. I’ve been adding a few leaves to my salads!

The petunias and mint have been dispatched! Here is BEFORE the rain:

After 2-3″ of rain, they were a mess (sorry, no picture…too depressing). As Bert picks the pumpkins, he’ll line them up here:

The geraniums continue to bloom if I can keep up with trimming the dead flowers!

In the beds just off the patio, the second planting of carrots are looking good. Not sure how big they are, but we’ll pull a few soon just to check.

The asparagus continues to wave in the breeze! We’re hoping next spring we’ll actually have a little asparagus to eat!

The pumpkins are now visible through the greenery!

Up in the garden on the hill, a few tomato plants still have green tomatoes. The plants look pretty sad!

The beans are all in jars in the pantry! Bert will rototill the garden before fall.

The carrots are finally noticeable! Bert accidently pulled one up when he was weeding and it was over 6″ long! It tasted great!

The cucumbers are done. They were very prolific but I was ready to be done trying to pick them! We have Bread & Butter pickles and pickle relish on the shelf that we’ll use all winter!

And of course, the echinacea is dropping seeds. The heavy rainstorms really beat them down.

On the one hand it’s kind of sad to see the garden season end, but it does feel good to see how productive our small garden plots can be! For another week or so we still have fresh yummy tomatoes and cucumbers on the counter! Time to move on to fall activities! Enjoy!

Please email me directly if you have comments or questions: maryjkisner@gmail.com

Canning Chili

The garden this year has been VERY productive! We don’t grow a huge variety of things but we focus on produce we will use. For vegetables that we want now and then, the Farmer’s Markets and the grocery store are adequate. Now that we are faced with an abundance of tomatoes, it was time to consider other ways to use them. We both like chili, but with limitations. Bert doesn’t care for sweet peppers and could do without beans. Our chili has to have lots of meat! I would like some kind of bean, so we agreed to use chick peas instead. So basically, we make a meat-heavy tomato sauce with chick peas. With the price of beef rising, it was a great way to keep beef in our diet without worrying that the price will continue to go up. We’ll have jars of chili on the shelf when we need a quick meal. Each jar can be stretched with additional fresh tomatoes (or a can of kidney beans…as long as Bert isn’t eating it!)

Many recipes include seasonings like chili powder, but when canning we cook the meat and onions with salt and pepper, and we add chili powder when we reheat it. It tastes much fresher.

Making Chili

We started with about 7+ pounds of ground beef (85/15) at almost $10/pound! Bert cooked it with two large onions (in several batches).

The cooked meat went into the refrigerator overnight. The next day I started on a pile of tomatoes…washing, cutting off tops, scoring the bottom with an X, boiling for 1 minute to loosen the skins, dropping into cold water and then peeling and cutting up the tomatoes. Long process, but necessary to remove skins…they are tough this time of the season.

The pile…

Tops cut off and the bottom scored with an X…

…dipped in boiling water for 1 minute…

Pulled out of ice water ready for peeling…

Tomatoes cooked until soft…

Cooked tomatoes run through the food processor, ready to assemble chili…

Assembling the chili…

Chili was packed into pint jars and pressure canned…1 hour 15 minutes at 10 pounds pressure!

We ended up with 17 jars of chili!

Each jar is a meal for the two of us! We often add extra fresh tomatoes and spices. I occasionally add kidney beans. So pretty!

Without the garden, I could have purchased tomatoes and onions at the Farmer’s Market. Gardens around the area are also abundant! Make use of what you have! Enjoy!

Please email me directly if you have comments or questions: maryjkisner@gmail.com

Garden Update August 10, 2026

The garden is changing as August arrives. We can now anticipate when we need to set aside time to pick and can produce. By August, it’s just too hot to keep up with radishes. The lettuce just gives up and gets bitter. The cucumbers have outdone themselves and the tomatoes ripening quickly. I’m now down to just one box of pint jars and Bert is going to pick up two more boxes so we can finish the season.

Just as I’m thinking we’re almost done…my neighbor brought me two large bags of commercially-frozen strawberries. I was just thinking they could be made into Jam! I have lots of ½ pint jars; I have several boxes of Sure-jell. Why not!

At the moment, we’re focused on using our latest picking of tomatoes. We’ll get a bunch of hamburger and onions and make a big pot of chili. We will pressure can the jars and have easy meals all winter! I’ve already made pizza sauce and just plain canned tomatoes so I don’t need those this year. Here’s the latest pile of tomatoes…with more to come! Yesterday we canned 12 pints of pickle relish and we still picked more cucumbers! Crazy!

So, let’s tour the garden today.

The petunias are going strong but after the rain storms, they look beat down.

The spearmint is growing tall but we haven’t seen any flowers at all.

In the planter on the patio, I’ve planted some old beet seeds. I wasn’t sure what would happen! We’ll wait and watch to see if they actually make beets!

The planter that held lettuce and radishes now has beets and spinach…also old seeds. I can start adding a few leaves of spinach to my salads! The center section had lettuce that I cut off. We did not pull the roots and it continued to grow! However, the lettuce is very bitter so we’ll save it for a friend who has rabbits.

In the bed off the patio, the row of carrots is looking good. Always a waiting game to see if carrots will develop properly.

The asparagus continues to just be there. It’s hard to get a picture of them because their green tops blend into the hillside behind them.

The pumpkin patch is looking impressive. We’ll wait to see how many pumpkins survive roving critters, but so far the fence has kept the groundhogs out.

Of course, there are one or two that insist on growing outside the fence!

Up on the hill, the tomato plants look like they’ve had it. However, the tomatoes are ripening quickly.

This row had beans. We’ll leave it empty now. Actually, the extra space makes it easier to pick tomatoes!

Here is the second planting of beans. They grow fast in this hot, wet weather!

I’m not optimistic that the carrots will produce much! Luckily, we have that section down by the patio that seems to be doing well!

The cucumbers have outdone themselves! I have a few just to eat and that’s fine. The wandering voles have managed to take little bites out of most of them and at this point I don’t care!

And finally, the echinacea is still pretty, but the seeds are falling and the seed heads are turning black. Let’s us know fall is on the way!

We’ve had plenty of rain this summer and no serious plant diseases to worry about. I marvel at how fast the summer is going. If I get depressed about it, I can just check out my pantry and admire all the beautiful jars!

If you have comments or questions, please email me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com. Thanks!

Canning Pickles and Green Beans

When my kitchen counter starts to look like this, I know it’s time to consider pulling out the canner!

About the only thing I do with cucumbers is eat them! This year Bert suggested we try Bread & Butter pickles. The cucumbers are still producing, so next week I think I’ll make a batch of pickle relish…that we will use!

Bread & Butter Pickles

I found a recipe in my canning book:

Then we found packets of the seasoning in my supplies. We followed the recipe above and used the packets for the spices.

First, we chose some of the smaller cucumbers so we could slice them into rounds 1/4″ thick.

Bert chopped the onion.

We sprinkled the pickling salt over the chopped pieces and put lots of ice on top. We let it sit for about 2 hours.

The vinegar, sugar and spices were added to a large pot and brought to a boil. The cucumbers and onions were rinsed and drained several times and added to the pot.

Once this boiled, the mixture was spooned into hot jars, topped with hot vinegar mixture and sealed with a lid and ring.

The jars were placed in our big canner and covered with boiling water. They boiled for 10 minutes.

Within minutes of being removed from the canner, the jars all sealed. We have no idea how they will taste…they have to ‘cure’ for about 4-6 weeks on the shelf!

This is our canner set up. The canner is too big to put on our ceramic-top stove and is larger than the burner. We had to find another way to heat up the canner out in the garage. So…we have a canning party while things need to be monitored! (Actually, Bert monitors the canner while I clean up the kitchen!)

Canning Green Beans

Once we start the canning process it’s just easier to spend several days in a row canning what’s ready. While we’ve had quite a haul of green and yellow beans from the garden, the green beans did not do well. So, I went to the Amish Farmer’s Market nearby and picked up a box of green beans that weighed about 10 pounds for $20. (The green beans were selling for $2.25/pound, so I got a good deal!) The best thing was they were all about the same size and very blemish-free! All I had to do was ‘snap’ them…that took half a day!

I separated the snapped beans into 3 bowls and washed them well. Then they went into a big pot (one batch at a time) with water to boil for 5 minutes. That really made them easier to handle and they fit better into the jars.

I got the jars ready and put 1/2 tsp of pickling salt into each jar. The canner holds 19 pint jars.

Each filled jar was topped with hot water and sealed. They were put into the canner (with the appropriate amount of water for pressure canning) and processed for 20 minutes at 10 pounds pressure.

The 19 jars are beautiful and ready for the pantry shelf! They will be tasty in the winter!

Of course, the cucumbers continue to produce so I expect I’ll be grinding up a bunch to make pickle relish next week. We’ll also have a new batch of beans from the second planting. My back is grateful for a rest from bending over to pick them! And so…the 2026 garden continues!

If you have comments or questions, please contact me directly at maryjkisner@gmail.com