What We Made Yesterday

I've been in a regular canning frenzy lately, trying recipes to justify spending $9.99 on this "special interest publication," a recent impulse buy at the market.

Day before yesterday I made two batches of the Lemon-Honey Jelly, which turned out to be delicious  and lovely to look at. Like my grandmother, I like to set up jars in the window and enjoy the way the light, even on an overcast day, comes through them, as through a stained glass window.

You can see thin strips of lemon zest floating in the jars; the recipe said to strain them out but I like the way it looks - and tastes. I made 2 batches, 10 jars. Here's the recipe:

Lemon-Honey Jelly (makes 5 half-pints)
2 to 3 medium lemons
1 1/2 cups water
3 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup honey
1/2 of a 6-ounce package (1 foil pouch) liquid fruit pectin

1. Using a vegetable peeler, remove the colored part of the peel from one of the lemons. (Avoid removing the bitter white portion.) Cut the peel into thin strips; set aside. Cut the remaining lemons in half; squeeze lemons for juice. Measure 1/2 cup lemon juice. (Reserve any remaining juice for another use.)
2. In a 5- to 6-quart heavy pot, combine the lemon peel strips, the 1/2 cup lemon juice, water, and sugar. Cook and stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Stir in honey. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Quickly stir in the pectin. Return to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Quickly skim off the foam with a metal spoon. Use spoon to remove lemon peel strips and discard peel strips.
3. Ladle hot jelly into hot, sterilized half-pint canning jars, leaving a 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.
4. Process filled jars in a boiling-water bath canner for 5 minutes (start timing when water returns to boiling). Remove jars from canner; cool on wire racks.
Per Tablespoon: 44 cal., 12 g carb., 0 g anything else.
Note (i.e., what I did differently): You really don't need more than one lemon if you have good bottled lemon juice, like the organic Italian Volcano lemon juice they sell at Costco. I have a citrus zester that gives lovely thin shreds without messing with the vegetable peeler, but I think that if you're going to leave the peel strips in the jelly as I did, you could also grate it directly using the fine-shred side of a box grater, to save an extra step.

     Yesterday, however, was spent in a much more ambitious undertaking, the Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce on page 32. Roma tomatoes were on sale for 3 pounds for 99¢ last week so I bought 18 pounds and spread them out on one end of the long dining room table to ripen. Well, they didn't, not really, not the way we hope tomatoes will ripen, gently and predictably, but by yesterday they were probably as good as they were going to get, and since it seems like tomatoes, Romas especially, can go from ripening to softening and rotting almost overnight (as Shakespeare says, ". . . from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour, we rot and rot; and thereby hangs a tale"), it was time to put up the sauce.
     If Joe hadn't helped me peel the @#$%^ things I might still be standing at the sink, sweating and swearing. Those skins just didn't want to come off, no matter how long we left them in the blanching kettle. The TV was on - it was Globe Trekker, visiting east Texas, and as we peeled we listened to Zai's interview with a former warden of the state prison at Hunstville, talking about the executions he'd overseen. It seemed somehow grimly appropriate, since standing there trying to peel those stubborn tomatoes was beginning to feel like a prison sentence.
     I love our food processor, which made quick work of chopping everything and finally getting it into the biggest kettle we own, which almost wasn't big enough, since I'd decided to make 1 and 1/2 times the recipe to make use of some 24-ounce canning jars that originally had Classico brand pasta sauce in them. They're marked "Mason" as well as Atlas brand. Don't try canning in jars that aren't clearly marked as canning jars. You won't want to clean up the mess that can ensue. I like the 24-ounce size, though if you're going to buy Ball or Kerr jars you won't find them. Standard jars come in 8, 16, and 32 ounce sizes. Each of these recycled 24 ounce jars holds enough for at least 2 meals for the two of us or one meal when we have a few guests. Here's what we wound up with:

Because Romas are meatier and less watery than other tomatoes, we lost less in the more-than-an-hour-long cooking process (the recipe said we'd only get 6 jars but we got 7) and had enough left over for dinner last night and something, maybe some bruschetta, today. Here's what it looked like on the dinner pasta,

and here's the original recipe:

Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce (makes 6 pints)
6 bulbs garlic
3 T. olive oil
4 medium bell peppers, any color (I used a combination of red and green), halved and seeded
12 pounds ripe tomatoes, blanched and peeled
3 T. packed brown sugar
2 T. kosher salt or 4 tsp. regular (non-iodized) salt
1 T. balsamic vinegar
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 cups lightly packed fresh basil leaves, snipped
1 cup lightly packed assorted fresh herbs (such as oregano, thyme, Italian flat-leaf parsley, and/or more basil), snipped
6 T. lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 400. Peel away the dry outer layers of skin from garlic bulbs, leaving other skin and bulbs intact. Cut about 1/2" (or maybe less) off the pointed top portions, leaving bulbs intact but exposing the individual cloves. Place the garlic bulbs, cut sides up, in a 1- to 1 1/2 quart casserole. Drizzle with 1 T. of the oil. Cover casserole. Arrange peppers, cut sides down, on a foil-lined baking sheet; brush with remaining oil.
2. Roast garlic and peppers for 40 to 50 minutes or until pepper halves are charred and garlic cloves are soft. Cool garlic on a wire rack until cool enough to handle. Pull up sides of foil and pinch together to fully enclose peppers. Let peppers stand 15 to 20 minutes or until cool enough to handle; peel off skins and discard. Chop peppers; set aside.
3. Remove garlic cloves from paper skins by squeezing the bottoms of the bulbs. Place garlic cloves in a food processor. Cut tomatoes into chunks; add some of the chunks to the garlic in the food processor. Cover and process until chopped.
4. Transfer chopped garlic garlic and tomatoes to a 7- to 8-quart stainless steel, enamel, or nonstick heavy pot. Repeat chopping the remaining tomatoes, in batches, in the food processor. Add all the tomatoes to the pot.
5. Add brown sugar, salt, vinegar, and black pepper to the tomato mixture. Bring to boiling (stir often). Boil steadily, uncovered, for 50 minutes, stirring often. Add chopped peppers to tomato mixture. Boil 10 to 20 minutes more or until mixture is reduced to about 11 cups and reaches desired consistency, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and stir in basil and assorted herbs.
6. Spoon 1 T. lemon juice into each of six hot, sterilized pint canning jars. Ladle hot sauce into jars with lemon juice, leaving a 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.
7. Process filled jars in a boiling-water canner for 35 minutes (start timing when water returns to boiling). Remove jars from canner; cool on wire racks.
Per 1/2 cup: 87 cal., 2 g. fat, 0 mg chol., 497 mg. sodium, 16 g carb., 3 g. fiber, 3 g. protein

We peeled the tomatoes over a couple of large kettles so we wouldn't lose any juices, and I saved that juice just in case I needed to add more liquid to the sauce as it cooked, but as it turns out, I didn't, so now I have this nice jar of juice to use as liquid in soup, or any number of other possible cooking projects.
     I'm a total believer in recycling and repurposing, for example, saving jars for storage, like these on the shelf above our kitchen window. I can tell at a glance if I have rice or raisins or lentils or oat bran, for example, and I like the way they look - I guess it appeals to my inner hippie and I know that looking up there makes me happy.

So there you have it, the fruits of our labors, which were (except maybe for peeling the tomatoes) also pleasure, and which will give pleasure in the weeks and months to come. I know I'll be making more recipes from "Canning," since everything I've tried so far has turned out very well.

Flower Power

Several days ago my friend Graciela came over and brought this gorgeous bunch of gladiolus (gladioli? gladioluses?).

The long stems loaded with buds promised many more amazing blossoms. But as the blossoms on the bottom began to fade, the weight of the buds bent the stems. So I stripped off the faded blooms and cut about a foot off the bottom of each stem, and here's what we have now, five days later, bent by the weight of their own beauty.

 Still show-stoppers, aren't they?
       Outdoors it's pretty dramatic in the back yard, where, as I think I mentioned before, we let the wild sunflowers grow because the goldfinches love them and we love watching the goldfinches. Some of them are 10 feet tall now (the sunflowers, not the goldfinches). Here's one with a bee in it. I wish we had more bees. Hand pollinating just got to be too much work for too little result, and of course the water bill was ridiculous for a summer vegetable garden that wasn't producing much, so we finally gave up on the squash, melons, and cucumbers. Now I can begin planning and daydreaming about the winter garden.

In addition to the wild sunflowers that are trying to take over a small part of our little world, we planted two varieties of Hopi sunflowers from seeds we got at Native Seed Search. The picture below is the first blossom we've gotten. It's maybe just a wee bit bigger than the wild ones, with narrower petals and more of them.

And that's the news from our little patch of the Sonoran desert, where the high temperature yesterday broke the previous record of 106, and where if we're really lucky and hold our mouths just right, we just may get some rain.

Fruits of the Desert

As I mentioned in my last post, we've had relatives visiting. Early one morning Joe and I took the kids to a nearby wash (just across the road and down a little slope) to pick prickly pears. This is the perfect time, with most fruits at the ideal stage of deep, blood-red ripeness. Using tongs to avoid getting stabbed, we half-filled each of two paper grocery bags. That was enough to make about 3 dozen 8-ounce jars of jelly.
      When we got back to the kitchen, the first thing to do was wash the prickly pears well. We ran them through 3 changes of water, as they collect a lot of dust out there in the desert. They can also have a sort of waxy coating that may not all come off, even with the most vigorous rinsing, but it's nothing to worry about.

Next, I like to cut them in half so the juices will release more quickly. Hold them with tongs while you do this, to protect your fingers; those little stickers are annoying.

Here's what they look like cut and ready for the kettle. You can carefully scoop out the delicious fresh pulp from the center to eat, but it's pretty seedy, so there's a lot to spit out.

 Add a little water - just a cup or two for a large kettle like this one - to get them started cooking down (some recipes say water to cover, but the fruits are really quite juicy and I don't want to dilute the flavor any more than necessary), bring to a boil, and let simmer till the fruits are very soft and have released much of their juice.

 Using a big slotted spoon, lift the cooked fruits into a colander set over a large bowl and mash the heck out of them to get out as much juice as possible.

Then strain what's in the bowl through a finer mesh strainer - look at all those little black seeds! You don't want them in your jelly.

 So here's what you'll have at this stage. I did say blood-red, remember?

In the picture below, the jelly on the left was made from less-ripe fruit. It tastes good but doesn't have quite the richness of flavor of the spoonful on the right, made from perfectly ripe fruit.

I strain the juice one more time through a few layers of cheesecloth to get the clearest possible juice before beginning the actual jelly-making.

Here's the recipe I've used for years, from the Pima County Agricultural Extension office. The ingredients, as with most jams and jellies, are quite simple. The jar with the green lid is a new variety of pectin (at least new to me) from the Ball company, which works quite well. You just measure out the amount you need for the recipe; 6 Tablespoons are equal to one box of regular powdered pectin. Unfortunately, this jar didn't contain multiples of 6 T., but rather 16 T., enough for 2 2/3 batches of jelly. I wasn't happy about that and so I hunted down old-fashioned boxes of Sure-Jell for subsequent batches.

IMPORTANT: Do not double this recipe; it won't set up properly.

Prickly Pear Jelly - makes about 5 cups
2 1/2 cups prickly pear juice
1 package powdered pectin (they say it sets more successfully than liquid)
3 1/2 cups sugar
3 Tablespoons lemon or lime juice

Combine pectin and juice in a medium saucepan. I like to whisk them together to ensure the pectin dissolves quickly and evenly.

Stirring constantly, bring to a fast boil and add the lemon or lime juice and sugar.  Bring to a hard boil and boil for exactly 3 minutes. Timing is important for getting a good jell. Remove from heat; stir and skim off any foam (I always collect that in a little cup; my grandma used to let me have the foam skimmings from her jelly-making on bread and butter). Pour at once into sterilized jelly jars and wipe the edges of the jars with a clean, damp cloth. Seal immediately with 2-part metal lids, screwing the metal bands on firmly. Let cool on a rack and store in a cool, dry place.

Note: you can process the jars in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes if you wish.

 If for some reason the jelly doesn't all set up, don't worry. You'll have a few jars of Prickly Pear Syrup, which is a lovely ingredient to have on hand, to use on pancakes, French toast, or over ice cream. I usually put up a few jars of syrup on purpose, leaving out the pectin and using equal parts sugar and juice. It's great in Prickly Pear Margaritas, which I make by throwing everything in the blender with about a cup of ice per person (or you can mix all the liquid ingredients and serve on the rocks). Here's what you need to serve 4:

Prickly Pear Margaritas
6 ounces good quality gold tequila
4 ounces triple sec
4 ounces lime juice
2 ounces prickly pear syrup
1 ounce orange juice

If you're in a place where you have access to these fruits of the desert, please consider taking advantage of them. If you don't have time to make jelly right away (and this applies to any fruit, not just prickly pears), you can freeze the juice to use later, when you do have time. Plastic water bottles work well for that; just remember not to overfill them as liquids expand when they freeze.

Chantilly Lace

We have family here from northern California this week (they must be most devoted, since they're willing to visit Tucson in high summer) and we've been having a wonderful time. A few years ago the female contingent of the family established the tradition of visiting the Chantilly Tea Room - my mother, our daughter-in-law and granddaughter, and of course, me - and this year we allowed the males - Joe, his son, and our 7-year-old grandson to come along. It's a lovely place, very ruffly and lacy but also quite cozy and comfortable, and the food's excellent, as is the service.

One of the nicest things is the way each person who's having hot tea gets to choose her or his own teacup from the shelves on the wall.

My grandmother had a lovely collection of porcelain cups and saucers in a custom-built corner cupboard. I'm not sure what happened to them, but these are a lovely reminder.
     You can order a few different types of high tea, with 24-hours notice, and that's what we've done in the past, but this time we just went for lunch, and the soup (a cold watercress soup very like a vichyssoise but much greener), a couple of different salads (the chef's special chicken, nectarine, and feta salad and a curried turkey salad) and a bacon and bleu cheese quiche were all great, as was the carrot cake trifle for dessert - we were all so full that we just ordered two of those and shared them.

Such a pretty place, filled with beautiful things, a place to be pampered and well-fed: I think we really should go there more than once a year! And I really should have taken pictures of the food - please forgive me.

I'm ready for my closeup, Mr DeMille

No, it's not Gloria Swanson, but this guy sitting in the fig tree is at least as much a prima donna as her character in Sunset Boulevard ("primo donno"?). My last post had a picture of his mate on the hummingbird feeder, and he's around a lot, but he won't hold still long enough for me to get a picture. Yesterday and this morning, however, he did! We've never had hooded orioles stay around - usually spotted them passing through once or twice per summer, but this year they settled in and have raised two chicks who are as big as their parents now. Here's dad again, on the hummingbird feeder. He's a bit bigger than the birds it's designed for, to say the least! See how it tips . . . .

We're having a good time watching the finches at the feeders I picked up at the 99¢ Only store. I'd been missing house finches - don't miss them any more. They're here in droves now and I'm doubly glad I let all the wild sunflowers grow, because the house finches are bigger than the goldfinches and often take over the feeders and keep the goldfinches away. The goldfinches are getting more assertive, however. Here's a typical scene, with two house finches on the perches and one (not so patiently) waiting her turn:

I guess the biggest news is that Joe finished the shade house! Here it is the first night; the porch light is inside the structure so we can sit out there and read by it.

 It opens off the master bath. As you can see, we haven't really furnished it yet (the chair and metal table were put out by neighbors for the brush-and-bulky pickup; they will be painted. The chair is incredibly comfortable! One person's trash is indeed another's treasure!).

I'm not rushing to finish furnishing it, though we have put up a few things that you'll see in the next post. Part of the thrill is in the seeking, and the joy of serendipity (like finding that chair!).

Roots and Wings

While we're "waiting for the miracle" of rain, the additional plants we've put in the back yard, plus the "use what you've got" birdbaths and the hummingbird feeders, mean that for entertainment, often all we need to do for entertainment is stand at the kitchen window! I haven't been able to get a good picture of the hummingbirds that visit the feeders, but other birds like it as well, it seems.

 This female oriole's mate has visited as well, but I wasn't fast enough to get his picture. I'll keep trying. Now I keep the camera on the counter by the window!

A couple of these tiny finches - young goldfinches, maybe? - like to hang out there, and although hummingbirds will chase other hummers away, they'll feed right alongside these little guys.

 This large glazed plant saucer on a currently unused plant stand makes a fine birdbath. The lesser goldfinches (I wonder if that name hurts their feelings?) like it very much, as do all the other birds that hang out in our yard. In this heat it's good to provide water for the wildlife, so we have a few of these around the yard.

Lots of lizards this year, like this one perched on the rocks of one of the wonderful terraces Joe built on our hillside. The rocks of the terraces give them places to hide and the plants, like these new salvia Greggii, provide cooling shade.

Quite a lot of lizard love going on lately too. These two chase each other up and down this mesquite tree and crawl all over each other - I feel like such a voyeur watching them, but it's so much fun. That tree is a bit of a miracle itself: ten or eleven years ago, when it was much smaller, a windstorm pulled it up by the roots. We dug out the hole some more, put it back in place with a pole to prop it up and rocks around the base to hold it down, and it's been just fine (and is much bigger now). The same thing happened in a neighbor's front yard but they didn't try to save their tree - they just left it there and a few months later cut it up for firewood. Probably they didn't realize how simple it would have been. I read, probably 15 years or so ago, that every mature tree adds, on average, $10,000 to the value of a property, and even without that incentive, in the desert we need all the trees, all the shade we can get.
     So, having moved from birds to lizards to the roots of trees, we'll move to the roots I had in mind when I chose this title, parsnips.

Parsnips are among the less commonly grown and eaten vegetables in the U.S., at least it seems so to me. I only remember having them a couple of times growing up, and I liked them very much. They look like white carrots, and are indeed such close relatives that in Roman times they were called by the same name, pastinaca. Interestingly, in those days carrots were white and/or purple, not the orange we know. Today parsnips are much more expensive at the market than carrots, which may be one reason they don't get used much. They're also much sweeter than carrots, with a taste that's been described as rather like honey, butterscotch, or cardamom (I think nutmeg might belong in that list) - some folks might not like that in a vegetable, but we love them. In addition, they're rather slow growers and require good, fairly loose, deep soil. I've read of people growing them in long concrete drain pipes filled with potting soil to provide the depth they need. I didn't do that, but I did plant them in a half wine barrel, where they did well, though they never got as big as the ones in the market - or else I wasn't patient enough to wait that long. We didn't have a huge crop, just enough for three or four meals, the last of which was this soup, which began looking like this in the pot:

 and looked like this for lunch half an hour or so later (mostly unattended, very easy, very tasty).

Here's the recipe, from Recipes from the Night Kitchen by Sally Nirenberg, a wonderful cookbook of just soups (with a few chili and stew recipes). Don't be put off if the ingredients in the title sound strange - it's absolutely delicious.

PARSNIP SOUP WITH SOUR CREAM AND MUSTARD
1 T. butter
1 Spanish (brown) onion, coarsely chopped
1 pound parsnips, peeled and sliced (I didn't peel, just scrubbed well with the vegetable brush)
5 cups chicken stock
1/2 - 3/4 tsp. Dijon mustard (be bold, use the 3/4)
1/2 cup sour cream (I used nonfat and it was just fine)
Sour cream or plain yogurt for garnish (optional)

Melt butter over medium heat in a heavy bottomed soup pot or large saucepan. Add onion and cook, covered, until golden, about 10 minutes (turn heat down if it seems to be browning too quickly).
    Add parsnips, chicken stock, and mustard and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook until parsnips are very soft, about 20-25 minutes.
    Remove solids with a slotted spoon and place in a food processor or blender (add some liquid if using a blender, and be sure to take out the clear center thing from the lid and hold a folded towel over it, to avoid explosions). Process until very smooth, gradually adding the sour cream and more broth. Pour it all back into the pan to stir in whatever broth remains there.
    Garnish each serving with a dollop of sour cream or yogurt, if you like. As you can see, I forgot that part and didn't miss it at all.
Yield: 7 cups

Now how easy is that? I may not grow parsnips again, but I will definitely buy them, and I definitely will make this soup again!

A Bit of This and That

I was listening to Leonard Cohen the other day - always a good way to set one's head straight, in my opinion - and the song "Waiting for the Miracle" came around. That's how a lot of us feel here in Tucson, right now, waiting for the miracle of the monsoon. We've had a couple of teaser trailers, the best one about a week and a half ago, which I missed because I was indoors at a museum with a friend and her granddaughter. We caught the tail end as we came out, and it was a good one. I had never seen water running like this is the washes near our house and I had to pull the car over to document it. My friend's 6 1/2 year-old granddaughter thought the adults were really strange, but then, she lives in Portland, Oregon, where rain is not such a rare and precious thing.

Greasewood Road at Ironwood

Greasewood at Speedway

Nameless wash by our house where we walk most days. I've been trying to get Joe to relocate that big green rock to our yard, but he says no, and he has a point; it must weigh over 400 pounds (bigger than it looks in the picture).

We've had a good deal of sunshine since then, with temperatures in the mid-100s, so whatever we do in the yard and garden gets done in the early morning. I even got ambitious inside the house, at least a little. I cleaned and organized the linen closet, which had become a rather scary place, and in the process made some happy discoveries, like finding out all the extra pillowcases hadn't run away together to Mexico.

It won't compare to Martha Stewart's but now I know where everything is and I have a nice full box to take to Goodwill.

I've also had time to do more knitting, etc., though this isn't mine. I received these two potholders as part of a knitting swap and they are so pretty, so big, and so thick that they're currently living on the table, ready to protect it from hot dishes.

I'd been going to give away this little shelf, but instead I hung it over the bookcase between the living room and kitchen, and got the egg cups out of the cupboard so I could enjoy looking at them.

 The green glass owl on the upper left (holding incense sticks and a woodpecker feather) belonged to my grandmother - it's actually a toothpick holder - and most of the rest I've found at antique shops and thrift stores. The tiny pomegranates on the upper shelf hardened before they could get any bigger, but I couldn't throw them away. And the glass cup on the top right holds a cardinal's feather and butterfly wings I found in the garden. Someday I'll find just the right way to use them in some kind of art piece.

 This little shelf I found for a dollar or two at a yard sale. I know I want to paint it, but haven't decided on a color, so I hung it up where I could see it, to help me make up my mind.

Both sets of chicken salt and peppers (more thrift store finds) have the pouring holes in the front, which seems very silly. Apparently they weren't intended for use!

This little pitcher and cup belonged to my grandmother, who would be 118 if she were still with us, so they're quite old. I don't have too many family heirlooms, but those I have, I treasure. These are what's left of a children's tea set and I just love them.

And now it's time for a cup of tea (in a bigger cup) and since the weather forecast does give us a chance of rain (though much more in a couple of days, in time to wash out 4th of July barbecues and picnics) I'll go back to optimistically "waiting for the miracle."