I’m just peachy – you? September 12, 2012
Posted by Toy Lady in canning, Food.comments closed
Remember how I bought some peaches the other day? The peaches – in fact, pretty much all the fruit – have been so good this year, and I just couldn’t resist trying to preserve as much of that sweet summery goodness as I could!
So when I stopped at the farmers’ market last weekend and saw a peck basket of “seconds” for, well, dirt cheap, I knew it was exactly what I needed for some peach jam. After all, it’s JAM – who cares what the fruit looks like?
I’ve been making jams and preserves for, well, for a lot of years, I guess. And up until very recently, I’ve always used the standard Certo recipes – just like my mother always did. And if you’ve ever made jams this way, you know that the basic recipe involves “take some fruit, add about twice as much sugar. . . “
You think I’m kidding? The recipe for nectarine jam calls for 4 and a half cups of fruit to 7 and a half cups of sugar.
WOW that’s a lot of sugar!
You see, as I understand it, the commercial pectin uses the sugar (somehow) to create a solid jell – and it only needs to cook for a minute. This can be desirable if you want your preserves to taste more like fresh fruit. (And sugar, of course.)
I find, though, that the older I get, and the more “healthy” I try to eat, the less inclined I am to want to, well, lick the sugar bowl. What can I say, I like my fruit to taste like, you know, fruit.
So I was walking the dog, listening to a Splendid Table podcast, and one of the guests, Cathy Barrow, was talking about making preserves. Fruit jams with NO commercial pectin – and only as much sugar as you want!
Oh my gosh, this was so easy-peasy I’m embarrassed I didn’t already know it!
I’ve been thinking about doing this anyway, in order to enjoy homemade “fruit-on-the-bottom” yogurt – I wasn’t even that concerned about the jams thickening too much – I just wanted them at least a little thicker syrup, and tasting like fruit, that’s all.
I’m really quite easy to please!
So here’s what I did.
I took my big old basket of peaches, and I peeled and pitted them, cut them into small-ish bits, and then weighed them.
For every pound of fruit, I added a scant cup of sugar, plus a tablespoon or so of lemon juice, give or take. I’ll admit it – I used bottled lemon juice for this because (1) I keep it on hand for canning tomatoes, and (2) I didn’t know this at the time, but there was not a SINGLE fresh lemon in the house!
So we stir the peaches and sugar, cover them, and shove them in the fridge for a couple of days.
That’s right – just walk away and let the fruit macerate.
You will be amazed by just how much juice will seep out of those peaches, mix with the sugar, and become lovely, fragrant, fruity syrup – syrup that’s actually more fruit than sugar.
Once we had a free evening, we strained the syrup into a Dutch oven – a pot significantly larger than it looks like you’ll need, because that sucker will foam UP!
Sugar is one of those amazing things – even though the “boiling point” is 212 degrees, well, you can let sugar go and go and go, and it’ll go past that.
We wanted this to reach 220 degrees, or what’s known in the candy-making world (of which I am DEFINITELY NOT a part!) as the “soft jell stage” or, as is noted on my candy thermometer, “jelly.”
Huh. Coincidence?
I guess, at that point, it’s technically jelly, right?
So that’s when we dump the diced fruit back in. Remember the diced fruit?
See, this is how we avoid the whole “fruit cooked to death” thing, though, to be honest, I don’t hate that. I guess I’m just a general fruit fan.
We returned the fruit to the soft jelly-boiling syrup stuff, and bring it back to a boil. Not just a boil – a STRONG boil.
Let it boil (but don’t let it boil over!) until the fruit sinks – that means it’s soaking some of that syrupy juice back in – and the syrup thickens. The foam will eventually clear. Mostly, anyway. Really.
And that’s the point where you want to grab the ladle and start filling jars. Leave an inch or so of headspace, and fit with lids and rings.
I started with 5 pounds of fruit, and once the syrup had reduced a bit, I ended up with 3 and half pints of jam. I, unfortunately, didn’t have enough empty half-pint jars (most of them are full of apricot and blueberry preserves), so I ended up sticking it in pints – which we processed in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
I’ve been enjoying the extra half-jar with breakfast, and you know what?
Homemade peach fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt is pretty darned good!
Monday Musings: 09.10.2012 Edition September 10, 2012
Posted by Toy Lady in Musings, random stuff.Tags: monday menu
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Yup, fall is on the way, isn’t it?
I managed to pick up a bag of nice, fresh onions – no more of those nasty last year’s onions for us! Of course potatoes are in season, and I just couldn’t pass up a couple of freakishly huge sweet potatoes – I’m not sure what exactly we’ll do with them, but I do love sweet potatoes!
I think this is probably my last chance for fresh melon – it’s been so good this year that I just had to have one more!
I did manage to avoid the weather while at the market – I passed through a bit of a cloudburst on my way downtown, and it was kind of raining when I came home, but nothing like what the market saw later!
We’ve had an unusually busy week.
It all started Tuesday. We’d planned to grill chicken for dinner, but it was raining, so Peeps suggested just roasting it. Only he went to turn on the oven, and it wouldn’t light.
So while we were NOT roasting chicken, I started working on a batch of no-pectin jam, and that ended up taking a bit longer than I’d expected, so dinner (pasta) was a bit later than expected, and we were up later than planned.
Then, Wednesday, I had about a bushel of tomatoes that needed to be canned – my mother had kindly shared them with me when we were there for the Labor Day holiday, and, while they weren’t completely ripe Sunday, they certainly were by Wednesday! For the record, prepping and pressure canning 21 quarts of tomatoes will, indeed, keep us up past our bedtime!
Oh, and for the record, the oven is back up and running – it was a small part that was fixed in about 15 minutes, so WHEW!
Believe it or not, there are moments that the dog gets tired of hanging around with us in the kitchen!
And, of course, lest we get too lonely, the cat is more than happy to pick up the slack! She does love that garden window, and she’ll just have to get used to it again when I bring the Christmas cactus back in and it fills the window – she’ll be Jungle Kitty!
I almost forgot!
Several years ago, after replacing dining room chairs two or three times, I finally broke down and bought some good chairs – there was a store nearby that only dealt with quality wooden furniture, and they were running a chair sale, and I had a teenager in the house who was kind of hard on furniture.
I walked into that store and determined, then and there, that someday I’d be back to furnish the rest of my house.
Well, sadly, after 62 years, this store was closing, so I knew that if I wanted anything from them, now was the time.
And I found the most beautiful dining room table – that I had finished to match the chairs! We love it.
And once again, it’s time for the weekly menu plan. It’s looking to be a beautiful – and slightly less busy – week, which is a good thing. We’re also getting serious about clearing out the freezer, so every dinner is coming from there, in some way.
Monday – Our supermarket frequently has single-serving packages of seafood on sale, and a while back, we picked up some packets of bay scallops – the little tiny ones. Which, as it happens, are perfect for broiling with a bit of butter, lemon and garlic. We’ll serve that with rice and some tossed salad, for a nice, light dinner.
Tuesday – We unearthed a 1-lb. flank steak, which Peeps is going to season simply and grill for dinner. Since there are just two of us, that’ll probably end up being stretched into a second meal over the weekend. We also had a package of mixed veggies in the freezer, and we’ll do a packet of seasoned potatoes on the grill with the steak.
Wednesday – We’ve got a package of white hots in the freezer, along with half a package of tater tots. I’ve also started dough for homemade hot dog rolls, using the pan that Peeps got for my birthday. We’ll probably have salad again, because, really, what else are you gonna have for a vegetable with hot dogs?
Thursday – I’m just going to say it. I love eggplant. And it’s in season. So I got a big, beautiful one at the market, and we’re doing eggplant parmesan and Peeps will just suck it up. Of course, the fact that we froze a bunch of meatballs in with the sauce will probably help with that – he’ll probably have pasta with meatballs, while I have pasta with eggplant parm. It’s a win-win!
Friday -And it’s pizza night – I should still be able to enjoy tomatoes and fresh herbs – that’s my standby during the summer! If worst comes to worst, though, I’d imagine I’ll have some leftover eggplant, and I’ll bet that would be fabulous on pizza.
Be sure to click on over to The Organizing Junkie’s Monday Menu Plan post for loads and loads of other ideas.
I was gonna . . . September 6, 2012
Posted by Toy Lady in Cooking, Garden, Home, mirth & woe.comments closed
I was going to tell you all about the lovely salsa we made the other day. Not with my own tomatoes, alas, but a basket I picked up at the Public Market.
My tomatoes are evidently on strike or something – I don’t know what their deal is.
I mean, I watered them religiously for most of the summer, went out and talked to them, staked them – I even gave them the lion’s share of the compost! Yet still they disappoint me.
So as I was saying, I was going to tell you about this salsa, not that there’s much to tell – as salsas go, it was pretty standard. Peeps’s salsa preference is usually the “hot” version of Pace Picante, so we do our best to imitate that. We’re not exactly there yet – but we’re close!
The basic “stuff” in the salsa is all there – onions, peppers, garlic, salt, dried minced onions (really!) and chili powder (seriously!) – plus some white vinegar.
And, of course, the tomatoes!
Because Peeps is the salsa expert in the house (that, and he’s the one who actually uses it most often), I defer to his preference to have the tomatoes pureed.
From there, it’s a simple matter of cooking the salsa down until it starts to thicken, then it gets ladled into pint jars.
Ideally seven of them, since that’s how many will fit in the canner!
We used the boiling water bath method – make sure the jars are in a pot that’s big enough to cover them with water by at least an inch, bring to a boil, and process for 15 minutes. How much simpler can it get?
We find that a couple of batches of this salsa – that would be 14 pints – will last the better part of the year. It’s getting better every year, and, not surprisingly, I can make at least one batch for about what a single jar of salsa would cost me to buy – and mine are bigger jars!
To make 7 pints of salsa, I used:
- 6 lbs. ripe tomatoes
- 3 large onions
- 3 large cloves garlic
- 10 seeded jalapenos
- 2 seeded poblanos
- 2 Tbsp. chili powder
- 1/4 c. dried onion
- 3 tsp. kosher salt
- 2 c. water
- 3/4 c. white vinegar
So anyway, I was going to tell you all about this, and, well, it seems that, while the second batch of tomatoes is processing, I’ve done just that! I guess I’ll tell you later about how we were going to grill chicken Tuesday, but it was pouring, so we decided to bake it instead, only when we turned the oven on, it just . . . wouldn’t. And I can tell you another time about the batch of peach jam I made with no pectin and very little sugar – and it still jelled! And, of course, the boxes of tomatoes that I brought home from my mother’s house on Labor Day that have been littering the dining room, until it was clear that they weren’t going to last another day – who knew they’d ALL need to be processed Right This Minute?
Don’t you love harvest season?
Monday Musings: 09.03.2012 Labor Day Edition September 3, 2012
Posted by Toy Lady in Big Lug, meal plan monday, random stuff, Shopping With Peeps.Tags: monday menu plan
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You may have noticed – blogging around here has been a little sparse lately! It’s not that I don’t have anything to say – I do! (Well, as much as ever, anyway!) It’s just that this is such a darned busy time of the year, isn’t it?
Besides work, and my own garden, and work, and the pets, and the Boy (he’s just moved into an apartment!), well, it’s tomato season! And peach season!
Yup, both the pressure canner and the water bath canner have been getting a bit of a workout lately. . .
Of course, the easiest way for me to do any canning starts with getting the dog OUT of the WAY.
And the best way to do that is to find him a nice, big, meaty bone – fortunately I buy them by the bag at the public market and stash then in the freezer.
I’m tempted to take what’s left of this bone to the butcher and ask him for more – this thing kept the Jar busy through 2 batches of tomatoes, cooking dinner, AND he went back outside for it after dinner AND the next day!
Now THAT is a good bone!
And somehow, the Kitty always knows when it’s safe to lurk – though sometimes her eyes do get a little, well, glowy.
I’m convinced, though, that she’s truly not afraid of the dog. She just wants us to think she is. She definitely prefers for him to not be around, though – that’s for sure!
Oh, hey, how about a little Shopping with Peeps? Well, sort of, anyway.
We went to a different supermarket this weekend – they had some stuff on sale that we just couldn’t pass by. This store is in what you might call “the ‘hood” – it’s not the nicest part of town, though certainly not the worst part, either.
Anyway, before we even got into the store, Peeps pointed out the PINKEST, most SPARKLY Dodge Durango that either of us had ever seen! It even had dyed-to-match rims!
I have got to say – if I were a pimp, I’d totally drive that car!
We celebrated Labor Day on Sunday afternoon with my family – it’s a bit of a drive, but Sunday was the perfect day for a nice long ride. It’s a scenic drive, with farms and forests and hills and lakes.
And construction. Miles and miles of cones!
Fortunately, there wasn’t any actual construction going on during the holiday weekend – just an awful lot of single-lane highway stuff. But at least we didn’t get stuck behind that awful guy hauling the camper at 40 mph!
And, of course, The Jar is an excellent riding dog. (Mostly, anyway – once he realizes that NO we’re NOT going to the BEACH!)
He just hangs out in the back, watching the road. I know he’d prefer to be in the back seat (or even the front seat), but that’s not going to happen!
It’s too much fun to watch the people in the cars we pass turn and stare at the GIANT DOG in the back of the wagon!
And once again, it’s time for the weekly menu plan. As gorgeous as last week was, it looks like it’s going to be raining most of this week. We can still use the rain, though – it’s nice to see the lawns go back to being green!
Monday – A couple of weeks ago, I got the Splendid Table e-newsletter, and it included a recipe for Spicy Shrimp Tagine which I knew I’d have to try before tomato season was over! Since I’m home Monday, I can fuss with it a bit. (Grating tomatoes? Really?) I’ll serve that with couscous (of course!) and, hopefully, I can pick enough green beans for the two of us!
Tuesday – We are hoping that it won’t rain too much – our supermarket had whole chickens on sale (79 cents a pound – no WONDER we can’t get the freezer emptied!) and we do want to do this Greek spatchcock chicken – it was in my binder, which means we’ve done it before and liked enough to do it again, so, well, there you go! Peeps wants to do some pan-roasted baby potatoes, and we’ll probably have salad.
Wednesday – The herb garden is crazy – CRAZY, MAN! That means, of course, it’s time to do the tuna-herb pasta that we love so much!
Thursday – We’ve got an appointment after dinner, so we want to get the meal on the table quick – and get it cleaned up fast, too. Peeps suggested hot pastrami sandwiches and we’ll make either some macaroni salad or potato salad (that we never got around to making last week!).
Friday – And again, it’s pizza night – last week’s pizza with the sauce that I mentioned last week was, in fact, a perfect pizza sauce! If I get to make more this week (come on tomatoes!), I will, otherwise I’ll go back to my basic olive oil – tomato slices – fresh herbs. That is always a classic!
Be sure to click on over to The Organizing Junkie’s Monday Menu Plan post for loads and loads of other ideas.
Dark Side of the Fridge 