Winter Jellies

Crowberries

Blueberries and Rhubarb

While I was taking things out of the freezer for Thanksgiving I took the opportunity to take stock of the berries and rhubarb left in there. The total was four gallons of blueberries (that's after two or three batches of blueberry jam last fall), two gallons of rhubarb, and a gallon of crowberries I had no idea were in there. We like having blueberries in the freezer throughout the year for baking and smoothies, but we don't need four gallons. Crowberries, however, aren't good for much except jelly (or juice) because of their seeds and bitter skin. So, I made crowberry jelly. I have so much blueberry jam thought that I decided to try a new combination and make blueberry rhubarb jelly. It's a tasty one - and dark - it was hard to tell the crowberry apart from the blueberry/rhubarb once they were in the jars! These will probably be my last batches of jelly and jam before next summer. I think we have enough to make it until then...

Our stock of jam and jelly before I made these two batches

Late Summer Canning

I unexpectedly found myself at home this weekend and took the opportunity to cram in some late summer canning, although I'm not sure there is anything summer-ish about the weather right now - the produce is from somewhere where it's still summer though! My sister brought a bag of adorable little jalapenos from her garden in Montana (who doesn't fly with a giant bag of jalapenos in their purse?). Taking advantage of what will probably be the last decent peaches and corn we will get in Alaska, I used as many jalapenos as I could in a batch of peach salsa and then a batch of corn salsa. The remained  were made into "unfancy" pickled jalapenos from Food in Jars.

Cold Temps and More Jelly

We're in another cold snap and I finally broke down and decided to get a gym membership. Yesterday morning it was -18F at our house and today it never got above -8. I did get outside for a little walk on the Lower Eagle River Trail with a friend today. Even though there is no direct sunlight in the bottom of the valley, it's still nice to be out during the day. I think soon I may also have to break down and learn how to cross country ski.

I also made more high bush cranberry jelly this weekend and actually used my store-bought strainer stand thingy. It worked fine but it makes me a little nervous because the slightest bump could tip it over (remember, this is the product that claims to be both adjustable and sturdy - ha!). It is definitely not adjustable - it fits on one size bowl and that's all. Anyway, it's alright, but I'll probably stick with tying the bag around a cabinet knob next time.

I also actually measured the ingredients on my jelly this time. I don't often measure ingredients when I'm making jam or jelly, which normally goes just fine...until I want to replicate the product. Then I realize I have no idea how much of what I put in the last time. So, this time I ended up with about 1 1/2 cups of high bush cranberry juice (which came from about 2/3 gallon of frozen cranberries), and I added 4 cups apple juice, and 2 1/2 cups sugar. That made about 2 1/2 pints. After I put it in jars, boiled them in a hot water bath, and let them cool and seal, I put them in the fridge to help them set. That was a few hours ago and they look like they've now set!

First Time Making Jelly

Despite all the jams and other fruity things I put in jars, I've never made jelly. It's the extra step of having to strain the fruit that has deterred me. In general, I avoid canning recipes that involve too many steps or points in the process where you have to wait on something, since I'm not very good at planning ahead. I did try to make jelly once last year, or should we say started to make jelly. Once I strained the fruit, I lost interest in turning it into jelly and just drank the juice. Oops.

This year I ended up with several bags of fruit that need to be turned into jelly - high bush cranberries, salmonberries (thanks, Mom!), and rose hips. We don't have a chest freezer so it has been a priority of mine to get some of these things into jars so I can put other things in our tiny freezer. Last weekend I finally tackled it.

I made both salmonberry jelly and high bush cranberry jelly over the course of the weekend. On Saturday I cooked the fruit down and put it in strainers. As simple as it sounds, that caused me a lot of anguish and turned my kitchen into a pink fruit juice spattered mess (I'm still finding splatters in odd places). The main problem was that I wasn't sure what the best straining set up was nor how to get the hot fruity stuff into the straining bags (somehow I always manage to make things harder than they should be). I bought a neat little jelly strainer stand and bag, but it was neither sturdy nor adjustable (as the package indicated). I can't remember what the brand was, but it looked like this. I didn't end up using it. The string on the bag is pretty handy though and I was able to hang that around the knob on our of our cabinet doors (the idea came courtesy of Patrick). I had some other strainer bags I'd picked up somewhere else and found they fit perfectly over my Vitamix. Another I put over a tall Mason jar. I let them all strain over night. I'm still not sure what the best way to get the fruit into the bags is, especially the one that got hung on the cabinet, but I managed to get it done and only burned myself a little. I suppose I could wait for it to cool, but that would just add one more step and more planning...

The next day I mixed the salmonberry juice with about an equal amount of cranberry pomegranate juice to make it go farther and give it a little extra flavor. The cranberry juice was mixed with about an equal amount of apple juice. High bush cranberries have a very strong, tart taste (and a very distinct smell), so I wanted to tone that down but just enough that the cranberry flavor was still there. I added the usual sugar and pectin to both, put in jars, and hoped for the best!

I don't think high bush cranberries have very much natural pectin, so I put those jars in the fridge overnight hoping it would help the jelly set. It did!

The salmonberry jelly turned out delicious (as I would expect since I followed my mom's recipe) and the cranberry set just enough to be called jelly. It's pretty tart, but I love tart fruit and I love the high bush cranberry flavor (some people, I won't name names, think I'm crazy).

salmonberry on the left and high bush cranberry on the right

p.s. If you are wondering if Ryan is still on St. George, the answer is yes. There is a flight tonight, so fingers crossed he makes it home! If not, he'll be eating fresh reindeer and getting paid so it's hard to complain.

Canning Season

Now that we're feeling settled in our house and I'm back from the field, I'm feeling the pressure to can as much as I can put up while the produce looks good. I bought a couple moderately late zucchinis at the Saturday Market in Anchorage yesterday, but they are nothing compared to this honker:

The zucchinis are going in zucchini relish (from http://www.jessieknadler.com/tartsweet.html)this afternoon. I also made some refrigerator dill pickles (http://m.allrecipes.com/recipe/75145/spicy-refrigerator-dill-pickles) yesterday and have bread and butter pickles (from http://foodinjars.com/the-cookbook/) are on the schedule for today. 

And here are some serious blueberry cinnamon pancakes from The Joy of Blueberries:

Quick Pickled Celery

 I like pretty much any kind of pickle and just discovered an awesome quick one that hardly takes any prep and pickles in 30 minutes! I read a recipe for egg salad on Smitten Kitchen that included instructions for the quickest pickled celery you've ever eaten. Did I mention it's easy?

All you do is dice two stalks of celery.

In a mason jar, mix 1/4 cup white wine vinegar (or plain white vinegar), 1/4 cup water, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar. Shake until salt and sugar are dissolved.

Then let it sit in the fridge for half an hour. Or as long as you want (they're pickles, they should last for a while...)

I did put them in egg salad and it was delicious. Best egg salad I've ever had. Especially with rosemary flatbread.

Apple Harvest

For some reason we keep getting more apples off our tree each year we live in this house. The first year we had none (in fact we didn't even know it was an apple tree), the second year we got 10 lbs, last year we got 15 lbs, and this year I've already harvested 23 lbs with a few more on the tree!

After the 30 lbs of plums we harvested last month and the gallons of huckleberries I picked this year, plus the all the frozen salmonberries and rhubarb my mom sent home with me, I've put up a sizeable amount of canned goods - more than any other year so far.

I've made four batches of applesauce so far as well as cranberry sauce with apples. The VitaMix has been a lifesaver for the applesauce production - I don't peel the apples. I just quarter them, cook them until their soft and then blend them. You would never know there are peels in there!

First Canning Fail

Peach salsa from Food in Jars

Last night I ruined a batch of peach salsa with a really dumb mistake: I read ONE line from a recipe on the wrong page and added two tablespoons of salt to the pot of salsa. After I did that, I looked back to see what the next ingredient was going to be, and realized it didn't call for ANY salt. I had read off the Zucchini and Pepper Relish page by accident. It was definitely too late to do anything about it, so I heaped the salsa into jars and boiled them for ten minutes. I was hoping that two tablespoons of salt could be swallowed up by four pounds of peaches. But it couldn't.

I tasted a little while it was still warm and it was too salty. Still, I was holding out hope that after it cooled, the saltiness would mellow out. I tried it tonight; it didn't.

Even though I'm going to have to throw away 4 1/2 pints of otherwise perfect peach salsa, I've decided I can't let it bother me too much because after almost two years of canning, this is the first real canning fail (baking fails are another story). And I got a really good deal on the peaches at Grocery Outlet.

I'll just be double, triple, and quadruple checking every ingredient against the recipe for every batch of anything I make from now on. That should be fun.

Food in Jars Book Signing

Marisa signing my book today

My collection of canning books

Today I got to meet the lovely author of Food in Jars - the book and the blog. Marisa writes about canning, using canned goods, and other uses for jars. Her blog has been a treasure trove of information about the technicalities of canning and her writing and recipes have inspired more than a few of my canning/baking successes. Her first cookbook was just published in May and I ordered it right away. It's not only full of mouthwatering recipes from everything from classic jams to carmelized red onion relish, it's a pleasure to read. I don't usually read cookbooks just for fun, sometimes I flip through if they have nice pictures, but read? No. This one, however, I read from cover to cover in one afternoon.

Ryan and I showed up to The Book Larder this morning to watch Marisa make strawberry vanilla jam (a good choice for a demonstration because the berries and vanilla smell delicious as they cook down). She then signed books and we got to chat for a few minutes before tasting the jam and some pickled garlic scapes. Marisa is just as entertaining in person as she is in her writing and I'm so glad I got to meet her!

Banana Coconut Rum Butter

Some recent canning projects: cantaloupe vanilla jam (from the preview of Food in Jars), strawberry rhubarb jam, zucchini relish (from Tart and Sweet)

Cantaloupe vanilla jam (tastes like an orange creamsicle!)

Four pounds of bananas

Ready for some banana rum butter!

Turns out banana butter isn't exceptionally photogenic

Just recently, I've started working my way through some recipes in Tart and Sweet. This weekend I had my heart set on banana rum butter with a twist - rather than the dark rum it called for, I had coconut rum (a gift from a friend who was recently in the Carribean, and while tasty, one that I probably wouldn't make it through for a year). I also didn't have the vanilla bean it called for, but I figured the coconut flavor would more than make up for it.

Of course, I only had two bananas in the house. So as Sunday evening was approaching, and I was putting off running to the store to buy the remaining 3 lbs of bananas I needed, my friend Kayla called and asked out the blue if I had any use for 12 very ripe bananas - the result of her first ever frantic 2 am Amazon fresh order (for anyone who has an infant and a two-year-old, and whose husband is away at a conference for a week, you can probably imagine the situation). "You just made my day!" was my response. Ryan overheard the entire conversation and said "So, you posted something today on Facebook about making banana butter?" But I hadn't! Kayla somehow read my canning vibes from three miles away and knew I needed 3 lbs of browning bananas.

I've never really made fruit butter before, at least not on purpose (I think the applesauce I made last fall is probably more of a fruit butter than a sauce), but it turns out bananas are great because they don't seep juice and as a result they cook down quickly. I somewhat followed the recipe from Tart and Sweet, using about 4 lbs of bananas, about 1 1/3 cup brown sugar (I would probably use a little less next time), 1/4 cup lemon juice, and 1/2 cup coconut rum (the recipe called for dark rum), and 2 tsp vanilla extract. This recipe would be really easy to adjust for a very small batch if you are planning to eat it relatively soon, rather than canning it.

It was a big success. I'm not good at using adjectives to describe food, so I'll just say it's sweet and tasty. I love coconut and banana together. We ate it on [the last of a carton of] ice cream last night. Tomorrow I should go to the store for more...

Jars in the Rain

 

 

After coming down with the flu this weekend, or something like it, I decided it probably wasn't a good idea to go to school today. Luckily it didn't last very long and I'm quite a bit better than I was yesterday, but still not really feeling like myself. I had a fairly productive day at home nonetheless. I worked on preparing for my class for next quarter (from the couch) and made a batch of strawberry rhubarb jam.

I wanted to take advantage of being home during daylight hours (a rarity this time of year) to take some photos of canned goods. I've gotten some great inspiration from the Food in Jars Flickr Group - so many amazing photos and homemade canned foods that sound delicious. So here is my latest attempt at canned food photography. Raindrops and all.

Seattle Food Swap

Ryan's no-knead artisan bread

Making labels at the food swap

Sampling and food-swaping in action

Ryan's fresh bread and swapped butternut squash soup

Yesterday Ryan and I attended our first food swap in West Seattle. I read about food swaps first on Food in Jars. The idea is that a group of people get together with their homemade goodies and trade! It was a bit like being at a farmer's market, but instead of paying $8 for a jar of canned goodness, you could trade for something you'd brought. I found the Seattle Swappers by following a link on The Hip Girl's Guide to Homemaking which lists food swaps all over the country.

I brought a variety of canned stuff, mostly apple sauces, a couple of jams, Mrs. Wages Pasta Sauce, rhubarb BBQ sauce, and yellow squash relish and roasted red pepper ketchup from Put 'em Up. As I suspected, the roasted red pepper ketchup was a big hit and several swappers were disappointed they didn't end up with a jar. I was surprised though that the pasta sauce was so popular. After I made it, I wasn't particularly impressed, but maybe I'll make it again for the next swap! It was such a hot item that someone even went home with my open sample jar.

Ryan made FIFTEEN loaves of Artisan bread, all baked on the morning of the food swap! He made the regular white bread as well as thyme and rosemary and light whole wheat bread. The thyme and rosemary went the fastest (it's my first choice too). Ryan was the only one with bread at the swap, so he had some good bargaining power. And, it was still warm when we arrived.

We came home with two types of granola, salty oatmeal cookies, black bean brownies, macaroons, italian plum jam, concord grape jam, canned italian plums, butternut squash soup, pear ginger chutney, blackberry jam, several types of chocolates, and homegrown potatoes. We already ate one jar of the butternut squash soup for dinner last night with some of Ryan's leftover wheat bread (this is the first time he's made the wheat version and it was delicious) and some of the granola for breakfast.

Canning Fall Fruit

Nectarine Italian plum skillet jam from Food in Jars

Apple sauce with rhubarb preserves

Ryan's fresh bread

I've been going great guns on the fruit canning - jams, preserves, apple sauces. Even after five years of living in the Lower 48, I'm still overwhelmed by the variety and condition of delicious fruit that can be cheaply purchased here. I miss out on so much of it when I'm in the field in Alaska that I'm buying it now like there is no tomorrow.

I've been experimenting with different apple sauces (with apples from our tree) this year. I made apple/pear sauce and then apple/pear/raspberry sauce. This weekend, three of my friends came over to help me chop the remaining 10 lbs of apples (thank you Amy, Hana, and Will!) which made the whole process go SO much faster! We used most of the apples to make regular apple sauce with a little cinnamon and the rest were flavored with rhubarb.

In addition to the apple tree, we have an Italian plum tree. It produced tons of fruit the first year we lived in the house and then none last year. I was thrilled that it had plums this summer. I read a recipe for Italian plum jam with star anise and (having no idea what star anise was) was excited to try it. Of course I found star anise for next to nothing in Malaysia, so I bought two packages of it. When I got back from Malaysia the tree was loaded, but they weren't falling off yet so I figured I had a couple of days to get my life (and sleep cycle) together before I had to deal with them.

Ryan and I finally went out to pick the plums and apples and all of the plums were GONE except for one, which was totally out of reach. I was devastated. I think they were destroyed by the crows. There weren't even any laying on the ground around the tree. There were only tiny little shreds of skin. Ryan tried to comfort me by saying we could buy some at the farmer's market. Which we did, but it's not the same. I'm mostly mad at myself for not picking them as soon as I got home, but how could I have known the crows would devour them? That did not happen the first year we lived here; they fell onto the ground and even though a few were picked at by birds, most were still good. In any case, we did buy plums at the market and I did make the star anise jam and it was delicious. But I'm still sad we lost a tree full of our very own (free) plums.

Fifteen Pounds of Apples

Our apple tree had another great year. It's still exciting to me to have a fruit tree. We ignore it all year long, do absolutely nothing, and it produces 15 lbs of fruit! In some years anyway. We picked the apples when we got back last week. This year's crop was not only bigger than last year's, but only ONE of the apples had worms! Last year about half of them did. Pretty impressive since we don't spray the tree or anything. Check out our blog post from last year to see how much more impressive the apples were this year.

So far we've made apple/pear sauce and apple/pear/raspberry sauce with more to come this weekend. The Vitamix (on loan from Ann Marie while she's in Malaysia) has been an awesome tool for pureeing canned goods - no need to peal the apples or pears! I could get used to that...