My friend, and online mentor, L, has convinced me that a move to Wordpress is important for my online career to blossom, or mature as they say in the canning world. After today you can find all this and more at Plan to Can (my own - and very first - domain).
See you there!
Monday, June 27, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tuesday's Tomatoes
All of this did a lot to lift my spirits.
But sadly, that also means that I didn't get to tell you about the mango butter I have planned, with the mango's currently cooling their heels in my fridge. Anon!
Until then, here's a photo of my beautiful Early Girl tomato plant that's already put out two juicy (albeit green) tomatoes to ripen in the sunny weather we've been enjoying. Ooo, and can you see my little baby pea shoots sticking up their heads in anticipation?
Personally, I think if you're going to can, you should at least make some of the food that you're planning to put up. Or be familiar with all the hard work that went into growing it. So we've put in a few beds in our new place, one out front, two in the back, and a few pots of tomatoes just to see what we can produce for ourselves. Here's hoping this summer is sunny and warm and all our vegetables have a chance to grow, grow, grow.
Check back this week for more on mango butter glory!
Monday, June 20, 2011
Bread & Butter Pickles
On Saturday, after an evening of dancing and a morning of carbohydrate overload, I convinced T he wanted to go to the Trout Lake farmers market for the 15 minutes before it closed. It's not that it's hard to convince him to do these things, but considering how we were feeling, I felt it was a sacrifice on his part to not just go home and lie in bed. Anyhoo - off we trotted to the farmer's market and while T parked the car I started exploring. Lo and behold, I found the first of the seasons cucumbers! Not pickling cukes these, no no. These were perfectly shaped bread and butter pickle sized cucumbers. I quickly loaded up a bag of 6 pounds worth, feeling like I was making off with the prize jewels and carted the beauties off home (wondering when I would have a chance to pickle them).The next morning, H and I were supposed to go hiking, but she had to cancel, and T was going out on a motorcycle ride, so suddenly hours of the day were open to me. What better to do then start pickling at 9am? Very soon my kitchen looked like this.
Again, I took a page out of Tart and Sweet, which I continue to love. Kelly and Jessie's voices remind me so much of Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones & Butter. This may mean it's just a very New York flavour - but you can't get enough of a good thing.
This recipe was really easy to follow, and I appreciated how much less sugar it had then many others. I fear too much of my vinegar evaporated while it was boiling, because I ended up having to do another half batch of the apple cider/rice vinegar/salt/sugar mixture. Also, I couldn't for the life of me find brown rice vinegar, so I had to go with the run of the mill kind. But from what googling tells me, this should turn out okay. Fortunately I remembered to check for air bubbles, but I'm a bit surprised that my pickles are floating in my jars with about a half inch of space underneath them. I assume that this is related to some kind of scientific thingy that I didn't study enough in high school and trust that all is well (I seem to do a lot of that).
I'm going to let these pickle for about a month, but I'm not even sure I can wait that long. For those who are like me, and from time to time need a quick fix: check out Jessie's recently posted recipe for quick pickles. They're not bread and butter, but in a pinch they look delish.
Anyway, T ended up coming home early and I convinced him to go hiking with me, so in the end I got to do both. We went and explored Pacific Spirit Regional Park, which is super accessible from downtown and beautiful to boot. All in all we had a really lovely day!
Asparagi, Caesar
About a month ago, T and I went to visit his family in Kelowna for the May long weekend. In Ontario, we call this weekend May 2-4, because it's a chance to buy a 2-4 of beer, go to the cottage, and get rip-roaring drunk on a dock. While this may not be the wisest or safest of decisions, it's tradition. I have to say, however, that I'm really enjoying this new tradition. This was our second time going up to Kelowna for the long weekend and this year we went a bit earlier so we could really enjoy the drive up.
We stopped in at some truly beautiful wineries, including enjoying a marvelous lunch at Quail's Gate. I'd been told by some co-workers, that it's one of the best places to eat in the Okanagan, and neither T nor I were disappointed. We sat on the patio with a beautiful view out over Lake Okanagan, a soft breeze (literally!) blowing through our hair, and 6 bottles of wine in the boot of our car. It was spectacular.
Our drive back from Kelowna, three days later, didn't disappoint either. We stopped at a few more vineyards in OK Falls, a few hours south of Kelowna, and even encountered a doe and her fawn as we passed by Stag's Hollow. Now, I should admit, I am a terrible passenger seat driver. I'm always shouting for T to stop at the last minute and begging him to pull over for fawns and fruit stands alike. Our drive back was no exception. As we were driving en route to OK Falls, I noticed a delicious looking fruit stand right beside the lake that said "fresh Thompson asparagus," and louldy shouted Stop! Because T is a charming fellow he obliged. Soon, nestled into our cooler bag beside a bag of ice, we had three pounds of delicious looking asparagus just wrested from the ground that morning.
A few days later, I turned that fresh asparagus into delicious pickled spears for the Caesars we both so enjoy. We chose a recipe from Tart & Sweet a new canning book out from Kelly Geary and Jessie Knadler. This was my first recipe of theirs and I was excited to get started with this new book. Overall it was really easy to accomplish. The Canadian in me was a little confused as I kept thinking their "quart" jars were larger than my 1L jars, but in the end they weren't. Now I know that a quart is the same as 1L, and a pint is the same as 500 ml, and so on. Thanks go out to T and his skills.
My only other complaint, and this is mostly about my own skills, was that the level of the vinegar solution looked much higher before I boiled the jars. I think I must have forgotten to really check for air bubbles and a few of the spears are sticking out into the open jar. However, I'm going to just believe in the bower of vinegar and have decided to accept this minor imperfection.
As we did these a few weeks ago, we actually just popped our jars open this evening and I have to tell you - these asparagus spears do not disappoint! They are crunchy, sour, and though they could be a little spicier it's mostly my fault for using the wrong pepper. Even T approves, and he's a hard man to impress!
I can't wait to get started on more exciting recipes from this book. From what I hear, the strawberries are almost ready!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Why I Can
When I was growing up people didn't talk about sustainability; they didn't talk about eating local, or 100 mile diets, or how important it is to support your local farmers. People didn't think like that. On the street where I lived, everyone had beautifully manicured lawns, with small collections of flowers that were mostly curated by over-paid under-acknowledged landscapers. Everyone, that, is except my father.
My father has always had an amazing sense of what makes a garden beautiful. As I grew up, the amount of grass encroached less and less on the bounds of his garden. The front yard was all flowers, day lilies, impatients, a cherry tree, iris, 100s of beautiful flowers all grown cherished and raised in our basement under high powered lamps (my father grows everything from seed to this day). While my brother and I were young the backyard had the trappings of youth: a little lawn for us to play on, a sandbox. But shortly after my twelfth birthday, that sandbox became a green house, the lawn a huge roaming English garden. In the summer, almost all the vegetables we ate came from our backyard: tomatoes, beans, peas, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, even asparagus. We always had strawberries, black raspberries, and two kinds of currants. One summer has become infamous as the year my father's tomatoes caught blight and he can be quoted as having said that that "was a year of his life he wasted."
In my generation, having a father who gardened was unusual. Mostly it was mothers who could be found in the garden, or the kitchen (probably my father's two favourite places). But in my family, it was the men who gardened. My grandfather, until he became blind, ran a 350 acre farm in Alexandria, Ontario, and later (even though he was blind) kept two huge gardens. It was on my grandparents farm that I learned of the milky sweetness of raw corn, the ungainliness of pumpkins, of hundreds of zucchini made into chocolate cake. I was fortunate enough to be raised knowing the taste of real food, fresh from the ground.
But how does this bring us to canning? Well, in part, canning is a logical solution to long, cold, Canadian winters. If you can't have a fresh tomato, better have one whose source you know, then the one from Chile. But more then that, I remember being carted off, as a small child, to pick hundreds of strawberries to turn into jam. Likewise with raspberries, currants, and cucumbers that we turned into bread and butter pickles. For me, canning is not only a way of putting up, but also a way of staying in touch with my roots. A tip of the hat, if you will, to my father and grandfather before me.
I hope you enjoy this journey of blogging and canning. Please ask questions, discuss, share your own stories. The more we all know about preserving our food in healthy useful ways, the richer all our lives will be.
mxo
My father has always had an amazing sense of what makes a garden beautiful. As I grew up, the amount of grass encroached less and less on the bounds of his garden. The front yard was all flowers, day lilies, impatients, a cherry tree, iris, 100s of beautiful flowers all grown cherished and raised in our basement under high powered lamps (my father grows everything from seed to this day). While my brother and I were young the backyard had the trappings of youth: a little lawn for us to play on, a sandbox. But shortly after my twelfth birthday, that sandbox became a green house, the lawn a huge roaming English garden. In the summer, almost all the vegetables we ate came from our backyard: tomatoes, beans, peas, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, even asparagus. We always had strawberries, black raspberries, and two kinds of currants. One summer has become infamous as the year my father's tomatoes caught blight and he can be quoted as having said that that "was a year of his life he wasted."
In my generation, having a father who gardened was unusual. Mostly it was mothers who could be found in the garden, or the kitchen (probably my father's two favourite places). But in my family, it was the men who gardened. My grandfather, until he became blind, ran a 350 acre farm in Alexandria, Ontario, and later (even though he was blind) kept two huge gardens. It was on my grandparents farm that I learned of the milky sweetness of raw corn, the ungainliness of pumpkins, of hundreds of zucchini made into chocolate cake. I was fortunate enough to be raised knowing the taste of real food, fresh from the ground.
But how does this bring us to canning? Well, in part, canning is a logical solution to long, cold, Canadian winters. If you can't have a fresh tomato, better have one whose source you know, then the one from Chile. But more then that, I remember being carted off, as a small child, to pick hundreds of strawberries to turn into jam. Likewise with raspberries, currants, and cucumbers that we turned into bread and butter pickles. For me, canning is not only a way of putting up, but also a way of staying in touch with my roots. A tip of the hat, if you will, to my father and grandfather before me.
I hope you enjoy this journey of blogging and canning. Please ask questions, discuss, share your own stories. The more we all know about preserving our food in healthy useful ways, the richer all our lives will be.
mxo
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