It’s all one big experiment.

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A friend gave me two of these ground cherry tomatillo plants. Not only have I never grown them before, I’ve never even heard of them, let alone tried them.

The first salsa I made with them was so-so. The second? Could have used alot more hot pepper. But I did notice they have a natural sweetness to them – similar to a mango. So, today’s experiment is to use them in a mango salsa recipe instead of the mango. I think it will be pretty tasty. Here’s hoping…

I look at gardening as an experiment. I try something and see what works. Growing different vegetables leads to experimenting in the kitchen – another favorite thing to do. It’s all just one great big experiment really.

How to make Watermelon Rind Pickles.

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First, you consult every cookbook in the cabinet. You pull out all the ones that have a pickled watermelon rind recipe. Then you look to see what all the differences are and pick one.
Then, you take the rind of a watermelon. You peel the green outer layer off.
You chop it and soak it overnight in pickling lime. I read if you leave some of the pink on, it looks prettier. So I did.

You simmer it until translucent in a brine of sugar, vinegar and water, as well as select spices.


When it has achieved proper translucence, you pack it in jars, pouring the brine on top.

Process for 10 minutes and VOILA! Watermelon rind pickles!

I am the sort of person who hates to throw things out, I’m convinced I can get one more use out of it. I use vegetable scraps to make a broth before I put them in the compost bin. I turned a bedsheet turned shower curtain that I thrifted into matching skirts for me & Edie. If there is a way to find a new life for an object, I am all about it. So, watermelon rind pickles have appealed to me for years. I’ve never actually had one, but I love the idea. So, I finally decided to try them.

I pulled out every last cookbook I own and came up with 6 different recipes for them. Then I went on the internet and read some more about them. A friend who is a chef, who’s had them but never made them said to use pickling lime. Never used that before and only one recipe from my 6 had that. I found a recipe on a blog that used lime and it was from a New Orleans chef. The one recipe I had that used pickling lime was in one of those collections from a former college roommate’s grandmother’s church – you know the kind, the ones everyone submits a recipe for and they sell to raise money for something? I have a whole collection of them – all your best home cooking is right there in those.

Anyway, I had two seemingly credible recipes that involved the same proportions of sugar, vinegar and water, as well as similar spices. In talking to folks that have actually had these before, I made sure to ask about the spices, and the ones included in these two recipes came up time and time again.
A friend offered to come help, she’d actually eaten them before and so she had a good idea of what they needed to look like. She brought a few more recipes, one of which matched up with the two I was following, so I felt I was on the right track. Thank goodness she was here, because I probably would have jarred them up as soon as they started looking translucent. It’s a long time before they start looking that way and are totally that way.
The one deviation I made was cardamom. Betty said you needed it in there and one of the recipes called for cardamom seeds. I borrowed some ground from Betty and just threw it in, not measuring, just eyeballing. That’s the one part of the equation I’m not 100% on. Betty came by today though and looked at a jar up close and said they LOOK like the ones her grandmother made. In 6 weeks, we’ll know how close they are to TASTING like them.
The Recipe:
Take one watermelon rind. Peel the outer green layer off with a vegetable peeler. Cut into 1 inch by 1 inch pieces.
Dissolve 3 teaspoons lime in 2 quarts water. Pour over watermelon rind and soak overnight. Rinse at least 3x, or until water runs clear.
Combine:
8 cups sugar
4 cups water
4 cups white vinegar
Bring to a simmer.
Tie in spice bag and put in simmering liquid:
1 lemon, thinly sliced
1 large piece of ginger
3 sticks cinnamon
1 tablespoon whole cloves
(Generous sprinkle of cardamom)
Simmer spices in brine for 10 minutes, then add watermelon rinds. Simmer until translucent – this actually took about 2 hours. Pack in jars, cover with brine and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
I used one decent sized watermelon and got a dozen jelly jars full.

Two in one day.

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I had just finished posting about the dress I finished for myself when suddenly, someone decided she needed a new dress for the first day of school the next day. It was 4:15 in the afternoon and I was about to crack open a bottle of wine….but how can I say no to that?
So, in a burst of super productivity, I whipped this out.
It was going to be chocolate brown linen at first, then I realized that she is no longer of the size that I can scoop up remnant pieces from the fabric stores and whip it up into dresses for her. Her legs are simply too long. So, I reached into the stash for some purple linen that I’d been waiting to make something for me out of. Admittedly, I scooped it up on sale somewhere and made myself a skirt quite a while back, so I suppose I could share and make her something too. And purple is her favorite color now as well. I really should share.
And share I did. I whipped that thing out in a matter of hours – it’s really quite a simple dress and thanks to not only the stash, but my love of the color purple, I had everything on hand to do so.
She claims it’s ‘pretty good’, but a little too long. Given the way she grows, it might fit her halfway through next summer….she’s already told me how great it’s going to look with T-shirts and leggings underneath.
And as for the super-productivity required to make it as well as my dress? “It’s not like you’re that productive every day Mom.”
Thanks kiddo.

What Long Strange Trip It’s Been.

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I can’t even remember when I started this dress. It was summer, and it was before we had a baby, or even a thought of one, so that places it at least 10 years ago. A friend convinced me to make myself a dress out of Liberty of London fabric. And since we had no kids, I had plenty of time and we were a full time double income couple, it seemed reasonable. I bought a pattern and without double checking any measurements on the sizing, jumped headfirst into the project.
After I finished what was hands down the best zipper job I’d ever done, I finally stopped to try the dress on for size. All that was left was the hem and the shoulder seams.

It didn’t fit.

IT DIDN’T FIT. The best damn zipper I’ve ever done in my life – and I avoid them like the plague, a small fortune spent on fabric and the most careful sewing I’ve ever done in my life and IT DOESN’T FIT.

It was too small in the chest, I couldn’t get the zipper to close. Frustrated, I threw the unfinished dress in a bag in a closet, that got moved upstairs when we built out the attic and I moved my sewing area to a corner in our new master suite. It sat there until earlier this spring, when I went looking in that crawl space for something and found this bag of forgotten fabric. And apparently projects. Having just lost a good 30 pounds thanks to the removal of my stomach tumor (and part of my stomach with it) and knowing I was thinner than I had ever been in my life, I decided to try on the dress, just to see….

It fit.

IT FIT!!!

I managed to find the original pattern and the directions I needed to finish it. I realized that I was going to have to finish the shoulder seams by hand, in a blind stitch – definitely not my strong point. So, it sat some more. Until the other day, when I was procrastinating on some other projects and decided to just give it a whirl. The shoulder seams didn’t look too shabby, so onto the hem.
I will admit, I do have fabulous legs, but there wasn’t much room for a hem and still leave the dress at a respectable length. After all, I probably cut this dress out when I was in my 20’s and now that I’m in my 40’s, I do like my skirts just a little bit longer. (But not much. Did I mention I have good legs?). I played around with different ideas and then noticed a long hunk of scrap fabric from this dress in a box of scraps I’d given Edie to play around with. I’ve been digging some unfinished ruffled edges lately, in fact, I just finished a skirt with one, so I thought I’d give that a try.

I vaguely measured the strips of fabric, didn’t even make sure the gathering stitch was evenly in the center, just ran it through the machine and went with it. I did finish all my edges, so I have that going for me, and then I simply tried to make sure the gathering stitch was at the edge of skirt fabric. I really like it. The skirt hits just at my knee – perfect.

I still have to wash it, tack down the facing in the back around the zipper, but it’s done. And it fits. I do believe a celebration is in order.

What a difference a year makes.

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This time, one year ago, I came home from open house at Edie’s school to several messages from my doctor, to please call him as soon as I got in. I had had a CT scan before meeting up with her & my husband to attend said open house and when I left the test, they said it would be 3 days before I heard anything. So imagine my surprise at getting the results so fast. I’ve heard that good news waits, and I can say, indeed, it does, because bad news travels at light speed as far as I’m concerned. It was literally, 45 minutes between my leaving the lab and the phone call. Talking to him on the phone that day, it was one of those moments where it was like a movie, where someone yanks the needle off the record all of a sudden, where you hear a big scratch and then it’s suddenly all silent and everyone is standing around looking at who just walked in. You know that scene. It was one of those moments for me. I had to hand Pat the phone because I couldn’t really comprehend what was being said to me. It was a moment that changed our lives forever. Thankfully, all turned out well, but it was a nerve wracking and terrifying few months. Over the course of those months, I learned who I could count on and who I couldn’t. It struck home what mattered and what didn’t. I learned doctors don’t know as much as they think they do and some of them can terrify you with their pretending they do. Doctors, even the best ones, make mistakes. Health insurance, the good kind like we have, is nice to have. It really should be available to everyone, regardless. I learned that if you really tell people what’s going on with you, they don’t always walk away. In fact, I ended up with a much better surgeon than my original specialists had recommended, thanks to friends who cared. I had never before leaned on other people quite so much, I’m not one to open up easily and quite honestly, it was terrifying for me. Members of my own family walked away, while I had friends rushing up to help. Most importantly, it changed me and just about everything about me, in an instant.
I am, slowly but surely, still finding my way back. I am still learning what my new stomach likes and doesn’t like. I lost my creativity there for a while and it’s coming back in spits and spurts, but isn’t entirely restored yet. I’ve gotten pretty lax about the state of my house – not that I was ever really super uptight about it, but I had my moments where I liked a clean house and frankly, I didn’t have too far to slide backwards in my lax standards, and yet, I did. I used to have alot more energy than I have now, I definitely lost some of it, but a few of my kinder friends have suggested it might be because I’ve turned 40 and not the results of losing part of my stomach. I’ve learned to tell the people I care about the most that they are just that, and more importantly, I’m learning to show them that. I’ve learned to let go of what I cannot control and that’s quite a bit. And just in case I didn’t get the memo, mother nature hit it home again to me twice this summer.
Sitting here, a year later, I look and feel a different person. I made a vow to myself to not forget the lessons I learned in what I went through and so far, so good. I’m ready to see what the next year brings. Great things I hope.

Canning everything in sight.

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It was a cool, grey weekend. I had a fridge full of seasonal goodness, some of which was fading fast, but most of which we had no hope of eating it all in time. So, I broke out the canner.
First up, ever since Ryan was here and sang my green bean pickle praises, I felt the urge to make a new batch this year. I don’t make them every year, we don’t eat them much, but we seem to have friends who love them and clear us out of all known inventory. I usually make them with basil from the garden. The other night, out at Leni’s, she gave me a handful of her lemon basil – she grows it, but doesn’t eat it. It has this incredibly wonderful lemon taste – I threw it in with some boiled, buttered potatoes the Friday night and it was out of this world – and I really wanted to see what it would do to some green bean pickles. So, a few jars of the pickles have the lemon basil and the rest are regular basil. I have some of the lemon basil left – I think it will make a fabulous pesto and I’m tossing around the idea of using it with artichokes in my artichoke lemon pesto….I definitely will be growing that next year, as I have lots of good ideas of how to use it…Gail suggested it with a nice sherbet as well.
Next up, were cherries. I love cherries, hands down next to apples my favorite fruit, but unlike apples, they don’t keep well, so there is a small window every year where you can get good cherries. And that window is fast closing. Normally I prefer all my produce be local, but for cherries, I make an exception. They just have to be grown in my hemisphere. As I’m getting tight on freezer space, I wanted to experiment – normally, I buy a big bag of cherries at the grocery store every week, eat a bunch, then chop and stew the rest, and freeze them, and then eat them in my yogurt all winter. I filled a pot with chopped cherries, stewed them up, and then canned them. We’ll see how they turn out. It’s a bigger portion than I usually freeze them in, so I’m thinking there might be a nice cherry cheesecake in our winter future….
And lastly, our peaches. Pat planted a peach tree in our front yard and we tend to battle the squirrels for them. This year, I actually got to pick an almost ripe one and realized we had a tree full of peaches….not quite ripe….and if I didn’t act, it wouldn’t last long. So, I picked every last one and watched gleefully not 20 minutes later some poor squirrel wander around the tree wondering what happened. Served them right. Anyway, having canned a mess of peaches last week, I needed to do something different. A comment a friend left on facebook the other day got me to thinking about making peach butter. All my attempts at jam have been a bomb, so as I read about making a fruit butter, I thought, oh yeah, I can do this. Even better, I found several overnight crockpot recipes that meant I wouldn’t damage any of my pots (I came very close to ruining a very nice and expensive stock pot by having the heat too high on one jam attempt.). I altered the recipe a bit, so I was totally winging it, but, it seems to have turned out okay, in fact, even better than okay.
I opted to go the no-spices route. These are peaches, and I wanted it to taste like peaches and not an apple butter wanna be. (I have no room for wanna-be’s anywhere in my life, but that’s an entirely different conversation.). So, I peeled and chopped all the peaches, filling my crock pot. The recipe I was vaguely following called for 1 cup of sugar per 5 peaches….about 15 peaches into it, I altered it. I think next time I’m going to try for 1 cup to maybe 10 peaches. I followed the suggestion of laying 2 butter knives across the top of the pot and then resting the top on that, to allow moisture to escape and your peaches to cook down. This recipe also suggested water, which I skipped, and I’m glad I did. I left them on low overnight. All the recipes I found said to cook them 6-12 hours, knowing mine were under ripe, I checked them about 4 hours in and realized, they needed much longer, went to bed, and by the time I got up to check them, they had been in there about 14 hours or so. They were cooked down quite a bit, but there was an awful lot of juice. I strained them and threw them in the blender to puree, adding just enough liquid to make that process easy. When it was all said and done, I had a big bowl of peach butter and a about 4 cups of Peach flavored simple syrup left over. Of course I canned all that, because that peach syrup will come in handy. Also, I admit, I hate to waste anything. Pat suggested the syrup would be good on pancakes, but I’m thinking more along the lines of a peach julep – like the mint version, only, using a peach syrup with my bourbon. Might have to try one later, as there was a smidgen of syrup that didn’t get canned….
All told, I put up 2 cases of produce and am feeling quite productive and pleased with myself. Up next, I think I might try watermelon rind pickles….I just happen to have a watermelon sitting there and a case of canning jars I just bought….any recipe suggestions? I have about 6 in my cookbook collection and can’t quite tell which one is best….

My Charmed Life.

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I have this theory that I operate under and it goes something like this: If I just leave it up to the universe, I will eventually get whatever it is I want. It might not be on my terms, but, in the words of Mick Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need”. My husband simply says I have the ability to tell the universe which way it moves. I don’t think I’m quite that powerful, but I do like the way he thinks.

Lately I’ve been thinking I’d like to have another freezer in the basement, because I’ve filled the one we have down there up already – and yes, we do cycle through it, I clean it out at least once a year, but it’s still early August, there is so much more seasonal produce I’d love to put up myself and let’s face it, freezing is easier and cooler (no pun intended) than canning. I mentioned this to a friend and yesterday morning, there was an email from her, connecting me with someone who has a freezer to give away free to a good home.

I like to say we have a charmed life – there are alot of great things about our life, but flush with cash is not one of them. Sometimes getting through a month has it’s frustrations. Alot of what we have I have somehow managed to score a deal on. Our big splurge is food – fresh, local, organic. If I could get over wanting to know exactly where my food comes from, we might have a little more cash in pocket in every month. But I’m not quite there yet.

Part of our charmed life are these little reminders, like a free to a good home freezer. My house is full of things others have discarded because I still find life in them. Our living room curtains? Found at a yard sale this spring for a whopping 50 cents. My closet upstairs is chock full of my favorite label Talbots, 95% of which has been purchased for under $5 at some thrift store around town, usually with the original tag still on it. My sewing machine went kaput? Uncle Kevin thought it would be a great idea to buy Aunt Jenny a new one for Christmas and apparently bought her a few until he found just the right one and so I got a new one out of the deal too, because he had already wrapped it and it was too much trouble to unwrap and return. I wanted some peaches, but couldn’t quite figure out when I was going to find time to go pick them when Betty called and offered up that box sitting on her porch she couldn’t deal with, so I got it and canned a little over a case of peaches and got a huge cobbler out of it to boot.

Occaisonally I do have small meltdowns worrying about how I’m going to make this or that happen. And when I do, my dear husband always reminds me that if I just sit back and not worry about it, whatever I think is a problem will resolve itself. I just have to be open to the way it happens. And usually, it happens in a way that is win-win. Like my free freezer.

When life hands you peaches….

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It felt like I spent all weekend dealing with produce. Friday, it was corn, beans and peaches. Saturday, it was tomatoes, tomatillos, and zucchini. Sunday, it was more peaches in the form of a good half bushel that landed on my front porch from a friend and then a nice pot of gumbo to use up whatever produce was left sitting in my fridge after the weekend’s work.
Since both freezers are close to full, I realized I was going to have to fire up the canner. My last attempt at canning involved tomatoes and while the first batch turned out okay, the next two batches had a jar explode both times, so I took a step back and wondered if I really do know what I’m doing when it comes to canning. Admittedly, not really. It’s like everything else I do, I just jump in and go for it and when I make a mistake, I try to learn from it.

These peaches were definitely seconds and free to me, so I couldn’t complain, but after spending a few solid hours chopping and cooking and preserving the two days previously, I just wasn’t in the mood for more, you know? But, certain members of my family love peaches and heck, they were free, this way I don’t have to go pick them or pay gobs of money for someone else to pick them, right? So, after the house cleared out (People seem to love to come visit us, not sure if it’s the location, the food or the company, but we have definitely been running a small B&B lately.) I got to work Sunday afternoon, dealing with the peaches.

I peel them by dropping them in hot water for a few minutes, then cold water. Last summer, I came up with a new trick of using a cooler to submerge them in cold water and then that frees up my big bowls for the chopping part. I highly recommend it if you haven’t tried this before.

Just in the nick of time, our Sunday night company arrived, one of whom has lots of experience in the arts of preserving food, and he most gratefully jumped in and lent a hand to the gumbo process so I could finish getting the peaches put up. The first round went beautifully, but the second round? A jar exploded. I had taken the time and inspected each jar this go round, and for the life of me am just so confounded by this problem. Really? Three times in a row? My canning partner suggested that the water was TOO hot, that I should just cool the water down a bit and start over. Which I did and the second batch turned out beautifully too. I am now reminded why I like to can with someone else and someone that I haven’t taught to can – because I’m still learning too. My confidence is restored in my ability to can. I’m ready for the next round…..I was reminded the other day I do make some mean Pickled Green Beans. That might be next up.

Roadtrip.

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I joke that my world is between my house and downtown. Anything outside of that circle is too far to do on a regular basis. So, anytime I head out of town, even just to visit friends ‘out in the county’, feels like a roadtrip. July has had all sorts of roadtrips – near and slightly far, solo and the entire family.

The air conditioning in my car is busted, but honestly, I prefer to drive without it. I LIKE it, especially on roadtrips. Okay, so during the day, it might be nicer to have the air on. But at night? There is just something sweet about driving down a back road with the windows down. And just the right music. I have a certain fondness for R.E.M.’s Green album during the summer at night. Coming back from Baltimore the other night, I had the distinct pleasure of driving under the light of the full moon to that soundtrack. Many a spring and summer night I’ve driven home to that – to the point where I’ve worn through at least 5 copies of that album over the years. Probably more.

There is something about July that encourages the love of the roadtrip in me. I’m not sure what….I’ve completely neglected my house, I’ve watered the garden but probably (no, I know I have) given more attention to weeding friend’s gardens when I visit them and I have more sewing projects half done than I care to admit to. And yet, I go on the road at the drop of a hat, promising to tend to everything when I get back. In alot of ways, it refreshes me. After all, I do need to expand my world between my house and downtown – that circle is only a mile and a half for crying out loud. And I have August to catch up….although I do feel the need to plan just a few more roadtrips before summer comes to an end, because once school starts and everyone’s schedule kicks in, it’s hard to go out of town at the drop of a hat.
And you can’t drive to the light of moon to the soundtrack of the cicadas.