22 August 2011

It was a Canning Day here yesterday, as I finally amassed all the right ingredients in one place. Picked a bunch of Straight Eight cucumbers mostly from the garden of a close-by relative on Saturday evening and set to work Sunday morning. I'm pretty sure I've gone over the strawberry-rhubarb jam processing here before, as well as dill pickles. It started out with a literal bang while sterilizing the jars, as one of an older pair that I inherited did a clean break at the bottom, apparently from the heat. And then in the first jam session, I heard another sound from the canner and lifted the lid to see red water and loose bits of rhubarb in the roiling water. Not cool. Not cool at all. But, in total, I successfully processed 12.5 pints of jam. And then with the pickling (after changing the water, of course) I got 16 quarts done in three batches. The cukes were literally so large and seedy that for most of them, I sliced them in half lengthwise, and scooped out all the seeds before cutting them into wedges. Oh well, I never liked the seeds and mushy interior part anyway! (When we bought them at the store, I'd always get the little gerkin dill types that weren't big enough to have seeds.) I also did a few quarts of the "sandwich stacker" cut with some of the smaller cukes from my own garden, which worked out very well last year. I may do a small batch of relish in some of the left over pint jars if and when our cucumbers start to take off.

I just like the self-sufficiency aspect of canning. Not to mention that today's processing is equivalent to ~$100 (give or take) if we had to buy these things in the store through the year.

9 June 2010

Yesterday, I processed two batches of strawberry-rhubarb jam, using a slightly different recipe than from my last post. We opened a jar of one of those and it was a little too thin and sugary for my taste; the rhubarb was like candied fruit. Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly edible and delicious on a bit of buttered toast or English muffin. Still, I think those four that are left are going to be the give-away jars.... Well, let me fine-tune that sentence a bit. I want the jars themselves back. It gets expensive having to replace those, don't you know. Really is a shame that the glass-top jars aren't recommended for canning anymore, as there's probably 100 of them under the workbench downstairs. I guess they'll just be nuts-and-bolts jars now.

Anyway, yesterday I used an envelope of pectin and reduced the Jell-o to one small box. The pectin really helped to firm the mixture up to a proper jam consistency. In the interest of preserving some of the rhubarb's tartness, I also cut down the sugar from 8 cups to 5 cups. In all, it produced 12 half-pint jelly jars and two pint-sized jars, and there was about 1/2 cup left over that I gave to our neighbor.

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Made an appointment for today at the veterinarian for Ruff to get current on his vaccinations and such. The little boy was 5 months old yesterday. Growing like a weed.

Training is a constant process, and he's doing well in house-breaking. Only a few accidents when he gets really excited --- if someone new comes over or when his favorite human, Papa, comes home from being away for an extended time. Otherwise, he's been very good with telling us he needs to go outside. He's gradually getting better with staying on this bed while everyone's eating. Ruff is also doing well on walks, but he still has work to do with not pulling on the leash. Word is that he was the Alpha / lead dog in his puppy litter, and he needs to learn that here, he's the Beta. And on that note, I think it's time for a morning walk.

Banking Some Green

Got in some kale the other night. They're the last plants left in the garden (well, besides the unused swiss chard that's going to get tilled in). Like many in the brassica genus, kale keeps growing after the frosts hit --- actually, many people comment that it tastes better after the first frost. I don't know why that is, but it's probably due to not drawing up a certain nutrient(s) from the ground in cold weather.

Kale is a great plant to grow in the garden. Dark, leafy greens are good for the brain, and high on the desirable list in the new food pyramid released by the USDA a couple of years back. My grandparents in WNY used to have this in their garden every year, and it can probably be attributed to my their mental acuity even as their bodies were failing from old age. Kale and garlic were staples there. I have usually used it in making soups and stews --- one recipe is basically chicken broth, diced potatoes, a significant amount of kale and kielbasa. That recipe card gets a decent amount of action in the winter months. I've also been using it in pea soups. Takes a while to cook down, and it seems like it tastes best when it cooks slowly versus just cooking some on the stove-top.

Anyway, I put in four kale plants this year and they did very well. Harvesting, as I have always done it, consists of doing a preliminary wash with the garden hose while still on the plant, snapping the leaves and bringing them inside. Then, tearing the greens off of the stems, washing, doing a couple of turns in the salad spinner and packing them tightly in Ziploc quart-size freezer bags (and squeezing out excess air). I put them in the freezer and take them out as I need them over the winter.

21 August 2009

The bathroom has been pretty much done for about a week now. Nice to have running water back, that's for sure. Haven't had the wherewithal (or recharged batteries in the camera) to take some pictures yet, but I will.

Have been a little under the weather with what I believe may have been a slight case of food poisoning. This was along with several other people sitting at the same table with similar symptoms. Those people who didn't eat the suspected food didn't get ill. The reasons for my suspicions are logical and numerous (and like so many other events in this world not 100% certainty), as are my reasons for not typing out all of the details. A little achy in the joints but am starting to feel better. Unlike several others, I did not get a fever or have the degree of symptoms, probably attributable to a good immune system and a diet including lots of garlic. That's the nature of these things --- with seven people there can be slightly different sets of symptoms. It is a bit of the control freak in me that, for this reason, I like to prepare the food I'm eating, or know the person who prepared the food. Any restaurant --- from the Waldorf-Astoria to Hell's Kitchen to Joe's hot dog stand carries the potential for these kinds of problems. I really do not intend to offend anyone who may be reading this and I will not be going into specific details in a public forum. I am not looking to blame anyone, am not holding grudges, nor accusing any party of being bad hosts just because a virus showed up uninvited. It happens. It flushes out of the system. We move on.

The power company changed the transformer at the top of the telephone pole in the front lawn. I had noticed several weeks ago that a red light appeared on the transformer and noted that I'd never seen that before. The power went out last week at about 11 p.m., and I woke up at 5 a.m. to yellow flashing lights and the engines of three big power company trucks --- two equipped with cherry-picker hydraulic lift systems. A spiffy new light gray transformer was up on the pole. One of the guys in the cherry picker took out a long pole, turned up a switch and the electronics in the house came back to life with a chorus of beeps along with a loud whir of the central vacuum system. It had been one of those hot, humid nights, but we made it through all right by trapping in the remnants of the air conditioned... air, but if it had taken much longer the windows would've been opened. I cannot wait for this most recent humid spell to end, as the weather personalities say it will early next week. Heat can be tolerated. The worst thing about this weather is that layer of sweaty, grimy buildup from the humidity (caused by sweat not evaporating) that doesn't go away until rinsed in a shower.

Elsewhere, the garden is progressing pretty well. I banked a few quart-sized freezer bags of kale for the winter. The cucumbers are now hitting their stride, leaving me eating about two per day (not complaining!) and we still have enough to give away to neighbors. The yellow squash is rolling along, but the zucchini isn't doing very well. Only two plants have survived thus far (even with trying to stagger-plant some more from seeds "guaranteed to grow!") and they aren't showing much sign of fruit. One root that came apart had been penetrated by the squash borers. Very disappointing. Tomatoes, though, are starting to come around. We'll be seeing more of them ripen in the coming weeks. Have started thinking about putting up some concrete-anchored posts or poles for next year's cucumbers to climb up a mesh work and to try some upside-down tomato plants. It's always such a chore to keep them upright in the cages; perhaps it's time to try out this fad and use gravity to our advantage. We shall see.

Oranges

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"An orange grown in Florida usually has a thin and tightly fitting skin, and it is also heavy with juice. Californians say that if you want to eat a Florida orange you have to get into a bathtub first. California oranges are light in weight and have thick skins that break easily and come off in hunks. The flesh inside is marvelously sweet, and the segments almost separate themselves. In Florida, it is said that you can run over a California orange with a 10-ton truck and not even wet the pavement."
~ John McPhee (Oranges, 1967)

This was one of my favorite quotes from a reading section on McPhee, whose way of interviewing and writing is quite astonishing when you do some reading as to his method. To each his own, but I will simply say that I far prefer Florida oranges. And you can quote me on that.

Back when I was attending UConn (as a commuter student) in the spring semester of 2003, I would often put an orange in the mesh pouch on my backpack. That would be the space that's designed to hold water/soda bottles --- a more recent backpack evolutionary adaptation since everyone seemed to stop drinking free tap water so they could buy a $1 bottled water with a label. During that semester I would drive in at 10 a.m. and stayed on campus all day because I had a "Law of Libel" class that was (probably still is... the instructor the department uses has a day job) only ever scheduled from 6 - 7:30 p.m. Didn't make much sense to drive all the way home in the afternoon only to have to drive back. It was like this for much of my time at the U, but it was for the best, as it pretty much forced me into the library where I would do my reading and other work for most of the day.

Anyway, I would arrive ~30 minutes early in the room in the crummy Arjona building, arrange the desks (which had been scattered hither and yon during the day) in rows, erase the chalkboard, then sit down to peel and eat my orange. It was usually my only sustenance during the day before I got home --- good thing I am a light eater. They were rather large oranges and they had to have been from Florida because they were very juicy.

Before this time I would usually 'eat' an orange by mashing and sucking the juice out of each section, then spitting out the pulp. Wasn't a fan of pulp. Grew up hating what we called "floatees" in orange juice. The semester before, though, I took a Botany course for a science credit and lab dissections really changed how I saw plants and, on the topic, fruit. When you break an orange open, inside the sections are thousands of sacs called hesperidium that contain the juice of the orange. Oranges --- as I found with all fruit --- really have a remarkable structure, when you take the time to look at how they form. But, most people who take interest in an orange do so for the taste, not to look at the hesperidium. Who can blame them?