I seemed to have finished the great dining room project just in time for our favorite summer veggies to hit the farmer’s market. Which means, it’s time I start getting serious about putting up some food.
Category: pickling
Well I’ll be.
It’s not all fun & games, lazy pool days & popsicles for breakfast while slowly overhauling the dining room here. This morning, I got up, put a second coat on the walls (ain’t nothing left to do but the trim!!), packed some lunches, made a decent breakfast (and got it into her!) before dropping Edie off at her ‘mother’s helper’ gig at The Boar’s Head and then headed out to pick blueberries.
Strawberry Pickles, Take One.
A few weeks ago I posted a sneak peak from my day – a photo shoot I participated in with Sarah & Andrea of Beyond the Flavor with their post yesterday on pickling carrots as the result. The shoot itself was good practice for all the demonstrations I have lined up for myself this spring & summer, while writing the text gave me a chance to articulate everything I know about the process and gather my thoughts for what I want to talk about when doing said demonstrations. Continue reading
Adventures of a few different sorts.
Remember how last year it was freakishly warm super early last spring? Strawberry season came & went in the blink of an eye with that heat. This year, the opposite has happened – it’s just not warm enough for strawberries to ripen at many area berry patches, including the one in my own yard. Some of the berry patches have yet to open for the season – including my favorite, Middle River Farms, outside of Grottos. Considering it’s over in the Shenandoah Valley, which is always just a little bit behind us in the harvest, it’s not that much of a surprise. I’ve been chomping at the bit to pick some strawberries this year though. Maybe it’s the result of last week’s canning class, with it’s successful jam that Edie said was “almost as good as Daniel’s“. High Praise indeed. Or maybe it’s that we finished up the last of the freezer strawberries last week. Or maybe, it’s that it’s mid-May and I want fresh strawberries every day, because this is the time of year for them.
Whatever the reason, I decided to check out a new berry patch I’d heard about south of town, Seaman’s Orchard, outside of Roseland. Which is more than a little south of town – it’s south of Lovingston and closer to Lynchburg than it is Charlottesville. Price wise, their pick your own is more expensive than Middle River Farms, but still cheaper than Chile’s. And the view?
It’s Canning Season.
Sarah Cramer Shields for Beyond the Flavor
I kicked off the season of canning classes at The Happy Cook last night. Thanks everyone who came out – I had a blast, I hope you did too while learning something. I’m happy to report that the jam I rushed into jars last night that hadn’t quite set was good and firm when I got up this morning. Hooray. A jam success story!
I popped open a few jars of pickles in last night’s class and when asked for the recipes, I promised to get them up on here. My friend Justin was there with his camera last night, capturing the class for an upcoming blog post for The Happy Cook and I’m going to let him sum up the class for everyone while I post the requested recipes and links.
And for everyone who didn’t make it to last night’s class, there will be plenty more as the season progresses. Keep an eye on my Events page, for others. I’ll be at The Happy Cook again on May 28 with more hot water bath canning and on June 11 with pressure canning. Onto the recipes…..
Taking Flight.
Last fall, my friend Guinevere gave me some encouraging words about organizing Cville Swaps, about how it would someday take on a life of its own.
Sneak Peek
What I did today.
Details coming to a local food site soon.
My latest idea.
I am excellent at ideas. And here’s my latest one.
A pickle subscription.
Here’s how I envision it working:
One. Customers preorder the quantity and type of pickle(s) you prefer in the spring. You would pay a small deposit and the balance would be due when you receive your pickles at the appropriate point of the season. Love my bread & butter pickles or want to have pickled okra and green beans for your Bloody Marys but don’t want to make them yourself? Did I hook your toddler on my pickled peaches? Then this is for you.
Two. Pickle of the month club. Every month, a different pickle is mailed out to subscribers. I’m thinking this would make an excellent gift. Not sure what to buy your parents or fussy Aunt Sue? How about a pickle of the month club subscription! The monthly package wouldn’t just be pickles, there would be recipes or menu suggestions (what to serve with your watermelon rind pickles or a pickled peach pound cake recipe), perhaps another homemade treat as well.
While I’ve looked into what it would take to make this a legal enterprise (a two day class offered by the state for starters), I haven’t crunched numbers on this one too hard. I hear quite a bit I should sell my pickles and I’ve come up with this as a way to do that but not extend myself too much financially or end up with too much stock on my hands. There’s still quite a bit of work to do to flesh this idea out, but this idea has been in the back of my head since last summer. Just last night, I could picture my little catalog of pickles that would go out, with pictures and descriptions of pickles. I’m thinking very seriously about doing a test run to a limited group this spring, with the idea that I’d be fully legal and ready to offer Pickle of the Month club by the holiday season this year.
So, tell me friends, what do you think? Would you be interesting in obtaining some of my tasty pickled treats, when you read the pickle of the month club idea did you immediately think that would be a perfect gift for certain hard to shop for members of your holiday gift list? More importantly, do you want to be part of the initial group? If so, make sure I have your email address.
Pickled Peach Pound Cake.
I am frequently asked what I do with all the pickles I make. Some we eat. Some are shared as gifts with friends and family. And some get used for things like pound cake. Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
Pickled peaches have essentially the same texture as canned peaches, but as they are infused with ginger, cinnamon, sugar and vinegar, they have a bit of a spice & tang. Which is precisely why I thought they would pair beautifully with the rich, buttery sweetness of pound cake. And they do.
Not that most of you have pickled peaches on hand, nor will peaches even be in season for pickling anytime soon. But in case you, like myself, are sort of over February to the point that you’ve turned the calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen over to March already, then you are probably starting to think about peach season and pickling said peaches and the possibilities of enjoying those pickles in various ways all year through. Because really, nothing says February like a pickled peach pound cake.
In progress.
Now that the canning season is winding down, I’ve been able to move out of the kitchen somewhat and onto other projects. First up, a check on the progress of Pat’s sweater.
From that angle, it doesn’t appear as if much progress has been made, but really, it has.
See? That’s a few inches there. There’s 360 stitches per row. The first few rows took me about an hour each, but I’ve managed to pick up some speed and can now do a row in 30-45 minutes. I’ve completed the armpits and am now starting to shape it, heading up to the shoulders. I had Edie help me with the math and I think I have about 60 rows or so until I can start the collar. If I sat and did nothing else for an entire work week, I might get it done by Christmas. I think I’ll shoot for his birthday towards the end of January. That seems do-able as well as gives me a project for those lazy days after Christmas when I like to sit around, watch tv and eat cake.
I also went ahead and bought another cone of yarn, ensuring that the last of the two cones I had on hand for this will be enough. Whenever I get nervous and go out and buy more yarn to finish a project, I ensure myself leftovers. I haven’t decided what I’m doing with the leftovers yet. Thoughts?
I’m also whipping up a pair of fingerless gloves for the lucky coworker that my husband drew in his office holiday gift exchange. She had fingerless gloves on her list of suggested gifts. I’m using some merino from the stash that I inherited when the university students moved out last spring. Someone left two large boxes of yarn out by the curb that my friend Eddie found and dropped off here. There was a mix of acrylic and really nice stuff (like this merino), but most of the nice stuff was in some weird colorways. I kept some for myself and shared some, just for projects like this. This yarn is from a local farm and is dreamy to work with. The pattern is a slightly altered one from Knitty called Fetching– they are quick and easy. I knit the left handed one seen there in a night’s worth of television watching.
Also on my needles is a poncho for Edie. I’m trying to surprise her at Christmas, which means working on this when she’s not around. Which means outlasting her at bedtime. Thankfully she’s got a sleepover this weekend, so I’m hoping to make some real progress, because outlasting her at bedtime is really hard.
I’m basing her poncho on the poncho I knit for myself several years ago that was only slightly based on a pattern. Her poncho involves a good bit of counting stitches, looking at my poncho and math. Oh math. How I don’t like you.
The yarn for Edie’s poncho is also from the stash, some of it from the discarded stash Eddie dropped off. I’m hoping I have enough and am resisting going out to buy more until I really have to. Really.
This last project is something for me. I found this yarn (which I can assure you does not glow like this in real life) for $2/ball at the Fiber Festival last month. I had gone telling myself I was not going to buy myself anything unless of course, I found a deal too good to pass up and especially if it involved orange yarn. Clearly the yarn gods were listening. I want to do a lacy scarf with this, but I’ve had the hardest time finding a pattern I can work without having to rip it out and restart it 4 times. These two have passed the test, but I’m not sure about committing to either one.
Yes, this one is lovely and open, not to mention knits up incredibly fast and easy, but I just knit myself an orange zig-zag scarf last fall.
And while one can have multiple black velvet pants, black wool pleated skirts and black cardigans, how many orange zig zag scarves can one really have?
And while I like this pattern, something about it says Old Lady Acrylic Sweater to me. I like it, but I’m not sure I want to commit to it. I’m starting to think that maybe I should knit a cowl out of the orange yarn but I’ve yet to find a pattern I really like, so I’ve started pondering the idea of maybe just making one up. I know, it’s a huge, HUGE step for me, poncho not withstanding. For what I have in mind and from what I’ve read, I think I can do it. I am starting to see the appeal of a cowl, and I want something new & orange to go around my neck, so why not?
I have not completely abandoned the kitchen though. Currently sitting on my counter are two hot pepper ferments:
On the left is a roasted poblano ferment. My friend Kathy brought some to last Sunday’s swap and it was quite tasty. I swapped her for a jar of it, in addition to her recipe, as I still had a few gallon bags of poblanos sitting in my fridge, waiting to be dealt with. (Also, it was soooo good, I wanted to make sure I had a supply before eating it all!) I had a goal of getting a few more jars of pickled peppers, another batch of fermented peppers and at least one batch of chili rellenos out of what I had grown this year. I can report complete success – I got two more pints of pickled peppers, a batch of Kathy’s roasted ferment AND I have exactly enough good sized peppers to make chili rellenos for the fam for dinner soon.
The ferment on the right is a mix of chili peppers from my friend Cynthia, some of Grandpa Jack’s habaneros and my jalapenos. They’ve been sitting there about a month or so now. I’m not exactly sure what my next step with them is going to be, as it’s an experiment, but I can tell you that when you open the jar, your sinuses totally open up. I read that fermenting chilis was the key to a good flavorful hot sauce (Tabasco is fermented), so in my quest to make a good hot sauce, I thought I’d try it.
I haven’t totally stopped canning, but it has been winding down. I did several batches of applesauce and apple butter from a few bushels of apples I got out at Henley’s orchard. I came to the realization that I could make a batch of applesauce in my stock pot in a fraction of the time (45 minutes) it took me to make it in the crock pot (about 4 hours), although with the crock pot, I can come & go and not have to keep an eye on it. I also get nervous about burning the bottom of my pot, as I’ve done with things in the past. So far so good, I even did a batch of cranapple butter on the stovetop, which took less than 2 hours on low (vs. overnight on low in the crockpot). I’m not totally giving up the crockpot, as it makes far less of a mess than doing it on the stove and I can leave it unattended, but it’s nice to know I can put up a bushel or two of apples in no time flat on my stove top.
The cranapple butter came out tasting like cranapple juice – you mostly taste the cranberries, but they are sweet thanks to the apples. I threw some cranberries and a bit of water in a pan, cooked it for about 10 minutes, then threw it in with the applesauce, about a half cup of sugar and cooked it down until it was the right consistency. Edie has a big thing for cranberries and claims to be ‘over’ apple butter, so I thought she’d like this. The freezers got a few apple pies while I was at it. My two basement chest freezers are now at capacity, I’m out of half pint jars and down to my last half case of pint jars. I might try a small batch of pickled cranberries before I completely call it a season until strawberries come back around, but as you can see, I have some knitting to knock out in the next few weeks.
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 