Can't Be All

I daresay, if you can manage to make a perfect peach pie and drink some nice whiskey with a friend once in a great while, it can't be all bad.

That half that's missing we ate to celebrate the end of our first review and one quarter pie each was well-deserved.

Dilly PIckles

If flowering dill weren't so dern tasty when it's floating in a spicy brine, I'd put the stuff in vases all over my house. That yellow of the flowers is nearly the color of paint covering the walls of our living room and man, I cannot get enough.


Where was I? Oh yes, PICKLES. Usually I'm more of a refrigerator dills sort of a girl, thanks to the expert tutelage of my friend Gerik, but we really wanted to complete this trifecta of canning projects with something more savory. Tomato sauce seemed a bit risky and we'd heard mixed reviews of canned salsa, so with little hesitation we picked up this hefty bottle of vinegar at the store and mixed it up with several shades of carrot and bean.





Keeping with our habit of beer pairings, we sipped a dark porter whose name I can hardly recall. I swear that at the time the beverages were clouding our minds just enough to numb the swell of our ankles and dull our sense of time's passing, not enough to get sloppy in our sterilizing and incubate the makings of botulism. Promise.


In the end, this was probably our least successful of the three recipes, mostly because we lacked the foresight to anticipate how beautiful purple carrots when bathed in hot brine would turn the whole mess violet! Also, we should have erred on the side of stubby vegetables instead of tall ones because while processing them in boiling water, we lost some brine out of the jars. Now the tips of some of our vegetables protrude above their liquid, which is no way to craft a crunchy pickle. Worst case scenario, they'll grow mold. We were really too tired to worry much about it at the end of the day. Total cost for 8 quarts of pickles? $9. If they're inedible, we'll live.

From this insane project I believe we gleaned a few lessons:

1. Jam is best made in small batches to ensure you can get a nice pectinated result.
2. A dishwasher is not for chumps. It is one of modernity's conveniences and comes in handy for washing jars.
3. Refrigerator pickles are probably easier and just as tasty as canned ones. While living in California with year round produce, canning pickles may be actually unnecessary.
4. Three canning projects in one day is a bit of a stretch, but doable.
5. Holiday weekends are perfect settings for crazy projects.

{High Five!}

Strawberry Fig Jam, with break for Hot Dog

Phase two of what I have coined Canaganza ushered in the red period of our day: Strawberry Fig Jam cooked while sipping a Rogue dry hopped red ale.



We subbed figs for rhubarb in this stage when we failed to locate the rhubarb patch at Berkeley Bowl West, and the combination certainly made for some nice photo ops. Ruby red against plumesque purple was just a photo waiting to be taken. Then I had a little affair with the part of the recipe that instructed us to combine 10 cups of sugar with all that fruit to let it mellow for an hour. Sugar is rather photogenic, in my defense.



Cara's help was instrumental for this part because she not only chopped strawberries, but also juiced all the lemons. You may or may not know that the hero that juices the lemons is contributing the most important part to any jam making project. In the end, we maybe could have used a few more lemons for our monster batch of jam because it's a little on the saucey side. Then again, I don't really mind the saucey side.


After that we had to let it cook for what seemed an eternity, so we broke for a hot dog snack and a root beer float out back. It was exactly what the Preservation Doctor ordered, a Top Dog with everything.



And before we knew it, we were ladeling the hot jam into sterilized jars like professional jammers. Next up: Dilly Pickles.

June Potluck, in Style

Real cherries, in a kaleidoscope of gold and red, nestled here inside a vinegar-kissed butter crust. I'd almost forgotten how perfect cherry pie could be.

Treasures

I hit 5 estate sales and a thrift town on Saturday with Marianne and Chad. Last weekend's scores were almost unanimously kitchen oriented, are you shocked? These were the brightest stars by far:

A good old can that still smells faintly of laurel leaves. Very orientalist, as you can see faintly from the illustrations on the side panels.

And this little book, published 1960 by Harcourt Brace & World. The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken, drawings by Hilary Knight. Though written with sly sincerity, this book is chuckle-worthy from cover to cover and features such classics as "Bisque Quick", a bulked up version of the Campbell's original and "Homebody Beans" which boasts a handwritten notation deeming it fabulous! An excerpt for your dessert:

A parenthetical note here. It is understood that when you hate to cook, you buy already-prepared foods as often as you can. You buy frozen things and ready-mix things, as well as pizza from the pizza man and chicken pies from the chicken pie lady.

But let us amend that statement. Let us say, instead, that you buy these things as often as you dare, for right here you usually run into a problem with the basic male. The average man doesn't care much for the frozen-food department, nor for the pizza man, nor for the chicken-pie lady. He wants to see you knead that bread and tote that bale, before you go down cellar to make the soap. This is known as Woman's Burden.

But sometimes you can get around it. Say, for instance, that you are serving some good dinner rolls that you bought frozen and then merely put into the oven for a few minutes, as the directions said to. At dinner, you taste them critically. Then you say, "Darn it, I simply can't make decent rolls, and that's all there is to it!"

If you are lucky, and have been able to keep him out of the kitchen while you were removing the wrapping, he will probably say, "What's the matter with you? These taste swell."

Then you say, in a finicky sort of female voice, "I don't know--they just don't seem as light as they ought to, or something..." And the more stoutly he affirms that they're okay, the tighter the box you've got him in. Admittedly, this is underhanded, but, then, marriage is sometimes a rough game.

That Peg, sure knows how to tell it.

Achoo

I caught something out of thin air on Monday, a prickly throat and now stuffy nose. I'd gone jogging, you see, to the post office that morning to mail my taxes. A sure sign, I'm convinced, that I'm not put on this earth to run anywhere.

Then the next two days I was up at Fort Mason doing some more costuming. The gig includes a moderate bike ride up there from Embarcadero and with a tickle in my throat, nothing probably was worse. So today I've taken to mending and have little else to report.


Besides of course this big ceramic vessel. I bought it two years ago at Renegade in Brooklyn and I always use it when I need something bottomless. Say, for drinking lots of tea. It's perfect for cupping between two hands and soaking in steam.

Pickled Me This

What to do with a large quantity of seedless green grapes procured from the Berkeley Bowl Dent Shelf? I can never remember to eat grapes for snacking, but they are so cold and tasty when I do, that I couldn't very well leave them at the store. Especially because in truth, there was nothing very dented about this bundle of grapes. Sifting through the bunch and plucking each one from its stem, I found most to be perfectly in tact and deliciously sweet, too.


Seeing as how I had this new book of recipes just lying around, I figured I may as well go ahead and pickle the grapes with peppercorns and brown mustard seeds and cinnamon sticks as per Molly's instruction. I'm not sorry I did.


They made a nice little host gift yesterday at the Easter day party I attended. They stay nice and crisp, and pretty sweet, like little nuggets of high quality wine vinegar (even when you didn't start with any). I plan on eating my own jar with cheese and crackers and dumping generous spoonfuls into spinach salads.

You should definitely get your own copy of this book, but just to whet your whistle:

Pickled Grapes With Cinnamon and Black Pepper
Adapted from A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg

This rendition of the recipe reflects what I had on hand...

1 lb. red or black or green grapes, seedless
1 cup white vinegar
splash of white cooking wine
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 t brown mustard seeds
1 t whole black peppercorns
1 (2 1/2 inch) cinnamon stick
1/4 t salt.

Rinse and dry grapes and pull them carefully from their stems. Ideally, some of the skin comes away when you do this to expose some of the flesh. If your stemming seems to leave the "belly button" too intact, use a sharp knife to remove the very end of the grape. You just want the brine to come into contact with the inner flesh of the grape. Put finished grapes into a medium bowl and set aside.

In a medium saucepan, combine remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil over medium high heat, then pour over the grapes waiting in the bowl. Stir to evenly combine. Set aside and cool to room temperature.

In the meantime, wash 2 pint-sized canning jars and their lids in warm soapy water. When the grapes have cooled, ladle them into the jars. Store in the refrigerator and allow to chill at least 8 hours or overnight. Serve cold. Use within one month.