Goldenrod

September is a golden month.   Most of the fall blooming flowers are yellow, the trees are just starting to think about turning...and

...it's goldenrod season.  

We have acres of goldenrod.   It's beautiful!

There are dozens of varieties of goldenrod and we have many of them here.  They bloom at different times and are different heights.  It makes things interesting. 

I dry goldenrod just before the flowers open and then I can save it for dyeing later in the winter. 

It dyes beautiful golds and yellows on pretty much every fiber, except linen, which resists most dyes. 

Alum is the best mordant for yellows and golds.   The olives in the pic here were the result of using iron and copper as mordants. 

The bees also love goldenrod.   It's a valuable late season nectar source and the bee yard smells distinctly of goldenrod honey this year.    I love that smell.  

Autumn Olive Ginger Orange Jam

Our Elaeagnus [autumn olive] trees held on to their fruit for a while this year.  Or maybe we just have more trees now, but at any rate, I had a lot of berries for several weeks this year.    The ducks finally found them and spent days vacuuming up the windfalls.   Hilarious!

Here's the thing about autumn olive berries - they're sour.    Unless you wait for them to get soft.  When they're soft, they're much sweeter inside, but that spotty outside skin is still pretty astringent.

OK - it's very astringent. 

And the new red berries are pretty sour.

It doesn't matter.   You get a delicious product no matter when you pick them.    I made this jam with these early sour ones and people loved it.

Loved. It. 

My point is this - pick the red berries when you can.   Cook them up and run them through a sieve or chinois to separate the seeds and skins.   Then make something delicious with them.   Like this jam.

This jam can be a no pectin jam.   The early red berries have loads of pectin in them and make sure you include some orange or greenish berries.   But remember!  they also require quite a bit of sugar to tame the sour.    Use the full amount.  This is not an overly sweet jam.  

I've also included a recipe for jam with pectin for when your berries are really good and ripe [and less pectin]

Elaeagnus [Autumn Olive] Ginger Orange Jam without pectin

from www.rurification.com

• 4 cups elaeagnus sauce [from about 8 cups of berries]
• zest and juice of 2 oranges
• 1/4 cup fresh grated ginger
• 4 cups sugar

Combine ingredients and bring to hard boil.   Boil a minute or so.   Turn off heat, ladle into jars.  Process for canning. 


Elaeagnus [Autumn Olive] Ginger Orange Jam with pectin

from www.rurification.com

• 4 cups elaeagnus sauce [from about 8 cups of berries]
• zest and juice of 2 oranges
• 1/4 cup fresh grated ginger
• 3 Tablespoons low sugar pectin
• 4 cups sugar

Combine elaeagnus, orange zest and juice, ginger and pectin in a large pot. Bring to a hard boil [one that you can't stir down.] Boil one minute, stirring constantly.   Add sugar and stir well.  Bring to hard boil again stirring constantly.  Boil one minute.   Ladle into jars and cover with clean lids and rings.  Process for canning. 


Want the recipe for this jam and a whole lot of other terrific jam recipes?   Check out my ebook:  A Simple Jar of Jam  at www.rurification.etsy.com.   You can preview the book by clicking the link on the sidebar.  Every purchase helps support this site.  Thank you!

High Altitude Jam

I live in southern Indiana - the highest part of the state - topping out at a lofty 800 ft above sea level!

Stop rolling your eyes.

For those of you who live in actual mountains, here's a little guide for the temperature you need to achieve jell in your jelly.



Jelling temps at different altitudes

• Sea level: 220 degrees
• 1000 ft above: 218 degrees
• 2000 ft above: 216
• 3000 ft above: 214
• 4000 ft above: 212

For more general info on High Altitude canning, here are two good sites.

• http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/general/selecting_correct_process_time.html
• http://foodpreservation.about.com/od/Canning/a/High-Altitude-Canning.htm 

Also, if you haven't checked out my new Jam page, then take a sec to check out the tab at the top of the blog.  The Jam page has a bunch of basic information about making jam and includes all of the info I've posted lately to help get you going on making great jam!

Happy Preserving!

Acidity in Jam

I've seen a lot of stuff on the web lately where some people are very worried about the acidity level of jam and other food that is being canned for long tern storage.   There's a lot of unnecessary drama and hysteria.

Here is the FDA document that discusses acidity: http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformation/AcidifiedLow-AcidCannedFoods/default.htm

Shoot for a pH of lower than 4.6.

How do you measure pH? Canning Across America recommends against using pH strips to gauge pH. Use a meter like one of these: pH meters. You'll see a wide variety of prices and reviews, so do your research before you buy.

For more information on acidity, check out the sources at the bottom of the post. 

Here are lists of high acid and low acid fruits. High acid fruit can usually be made into jam without adding extra lemon juice. Low acid fruits need the lemon juice or can be mixed with high acid fruit to lower the pH.

High Acid Fruits

• crabapples
• green apples, tart apples
• cranberries
• currants
• gooseberries
• tart plums
• grapes
• strawberries
• cherries
• rhubarb
• pineapple
• raspberries

Low Acid Fruits should be canned with extra acid added for shelf stability and food safety, according to the FDA.

• sweet apples
• quince
• peaches
• pears
• blueberries

Here's another site with a lot of great info on fruit acidity: http://foodpreservation.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=foodpreservation&cdn=food&tm=211&f=10&su=p284.13.342.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/askext/jamjelly/4341.htm

*********

Other sources: 

• http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformation/AcidifiedLow-AcidCannedFoods/default.htm
• http://www.kraftcanada.com/en/cooking-tips/tipstechniques/jammaking/roleofpectinandacid.aspx
• http://foodpreservation.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=foodpreservation&cdn=food&tm=211&f=10&su=p284.13.342.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.ext.nodak.edu/extnews/askext/jamjelly/4341.htm
• http://www.livestrong.com/article/497197-list-of-foods-low-in-pectin-and-white-flour/
• http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_07/prep_jam_jelly.html
• http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/food-ph-d_403.html
• http://www.herbstreith-fox.de/fileadmin/tmpl/pdf/broschueren/Konfituere_englisch.pdf
• http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/jams/jam2/best-strawberry-preserves2.asp
• http://www.canningacrossamerica.com/canning-faqs/

Pectin 101

Pectin is what makes your jam and jelly jell.  It occurs naturally in a lot of fruit [see below], but as fruit ripens, it loses the pectin and if you want to make a jam that jells, then you need to add pectin to it.

There are a lot of different brands of pectin out there and each brand may have different types of pectin for different types of jam: Instant pectin for freezer jam, regular pectin which requires a lot of sugar, low/no sugar pectin, liquid pectin.

In the past few years, pectin has widely become available in bulk packaging, making it easier than ever to make small batches of jam requiring less pectin than contained in the traditional, three-tablespoon envelopes of pectin. Bulk pectin is also handy for recipes with low-pectin fruit like strawberries and nectarines. Instead of splitting a new envelope, you can just add an extra tablespoon or two of pectin from the jar.

Be aware that not all pectin brands are alike. Each company has its own formula and they cannot be substituted blindly for each other. If you switch brands, watch your first batch carefully and note whether it jells as well at that amount as your other pectin did. In addition, liquid pectin and dry pectin cannot be substituted without changing the whole jam procedure.

I regularly switch between Ball and Dutch Jell low sugar brands. For four cups of fruit, the Ball Low Sugar recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of pectin; the Dutch Jell Lite recipe calls for 1/3 cup rounded of pectin. That’s between 5 and 6 tablespoons and quite a difference from the amount of pectin Ball calls for. In practice, I have found that I can use much less Dutch Jell than they recommend, but I usually need a bit more Ball pectin than they recommend.

How do you know how much to use? Follow the guidelines in the recipes included with your pectin. If you like a softer jell, then use less pectin next time. If you like a harder jell, then use more. Take notes or write them on the side of your pectin container with a pen or marker.

Robin's Rule of Thumb for Pectin: Use 1 Tablespoon of pectin for every cup of fruit in the recipe. Don't use more than 6 cups of fruit in a batch. This generally works for even lower pectin fruit like pears. If you aren't sure, then make a small batch, see what happens and adjust accordingly for your next batches. Use more pectin for low pectin fruit. Use less pectin for high pectin fruit.

Low Pectin Fruits require the addition of a full measure of pectin or a very long cooking time. Don't skimp on pectin when you're using these fruits for jam.

• apricots
• blueberries
• cherries
• elderberries
• figs
• guava
• nectarines
• peaches
• pears
• Italian plums
• pomegranates
• raspberries
• rhubarb
• strawberries 

High Pectin Fruits can often be turned into jam or jelly without adding extra pectin. Note: the riper the fruit, the less pectin in it. Use 20-25% under-ripe fruit if you want to make jam with no added pectin.

• apples
• citrus peels: limes, lemons, etc. with the white pith and seeds. [You can put the pith and seeds in a tea ball or bag during cooking so you can remove them from the finished jam.]
• cranberries
• currants
• elaeagnus [autumn olive]
• Eastern Concord grapes
• loganberries
• plums, not Italian
• quince 

Here's another site with a lot of great info on pectin: http://www.pickyourown.org/pectin.htm

Jam 101

I know it's late in the season to be posting this stuff, but there's still a lot of fruit out there to make jam with and if you're lucky enough to have tucked some fruit away in the freezer, then you can make great jam all year long.    We do. 

Basic ways to make jam
You’ll find that the vast majority of fruit can be turned into jam in several ways: freezer jam with pectin; regular cooked jam with pectin in a pot, jam without pectin in a pot, and baked jam. All you have to do is decide which type of jam you want to make before you start, then make sure you have the right kind of pectin if you need it.

Freezer Jam is made with fresh, uncooked fruit and instant pectin. Make sure the fruit is clean. This jam has the freshest taste and is great for strawberries and mangoes and other fruit that changes flavor significantly when cooked.

The traditional way of making jam is to cook it. You can cook it in a pot on the stove top, or in a crock pot, or in the oven. Often, the fruit is cooked with pectin and then sugar added later. If no pectin is used, then the jam is cooked down until it jells. This means that in order to jell, it might lose a lot of volume. A lot, I tell you. Cooked jams can have a lot of sugar or no sugar at all. If they are canned appropriately, they will store well for a year or more. Just put them in a jar with a new canning lid and process them for canning while they’re still hot.

Simple Fruit Jam Recipes
For those of you who are new to the whole jam-making game, you’ll find that it is easier than you expect and I’ll start you with a few easy recipes to get you going.

The process is pretty much the same regardless of the fruit you use.

Step 1: Choose your fruit.

Step 2: Choose the method of jam you want to use.

Step 3: Get the right kind of pectin if you need it.

Step 4: Collect and wash your jars and lids.

Step 5: Make your jam, put it in the jars.

Step 6: Process the jars for canning, if necessary.

Below, you will find a description of the process I use for each type of jam recipe that I typically use. Following each description, I've given you a simple recipe for each type of jam. 

Freezer Jam

• Mix the pectin and sugar together well in a bowl.
• Chop or crush your fruit – a potato masher or pastry blender works fine.
• Mix the pectin/sugar in with the fruit and stir, stir, stir for at least 3 minutes.
• Put jam into freezer safe containers.
• Let sit out for at least 30 minutes.
• Freeze.

Strawberry Freezer Jam

3 1/3 cups sliced, crushed strawberries
1 1/3 cups sugar
4 tablespoons Ball Instant Pectin for freezer jam Mix the pectin and sugar well in a bowl. Set aside. Finish crushing the berries. Add the pectin/sugar mix to the berries and stir for three minutes. Spoon into freezer safe containers and let sit out for a half hour. Label containers and freeze.  

Cooked Jam with pectin

• Chop the fruit and put it in a pot. Don’t heat it yet.
• Add the pectin to the fruit.
• Add a bit of water if the fruit is dry. You don’t want it to burn.
• Bring the fruit to a hard, rolling boil. Stir, stir, stir.
• Boil one full minute.
• Add the sugar and stir, stir, stir.
• Bring to a hard, rolling boil. Boil one full minute.
• Ladle into jars.
• Wipe rims. Put lids on.

Plum Jam

• 4 cups chopped plums
• 4 Tablespoons Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin
• 2 cups sugar

Chop the fruit well and put them into a pot with the pectin. Stir the pectin in well before you turn on the burner. Add a little water (1/2 – 1 cup) if the fruit needs it so it won’t stick to the pot. Heat the fruit mixture stirring frequently until it reaches a full, hard rolling boil that you can’t stir down. Boil hard for 1 minute. Add sugar. Stir well and return to boil. Stir continuously until it reaches a hard rolling boil. Boil for one minute. Check to make sure the jam is coming off the spoon in sheets or double drops. Ladle into hot jars. Cover and process for canning.


Cooked Jam without pectin

• Chop the fruit and put it in a pot with the sugar.
• Add a bit of water if the fruit is dry. You don’t want it to burn.
• Bring the mixture to a boil.
• Cook until the jam reaches 220 degrees, sheets or double drips off a spoon.
• Ladle into jars.
• Wipe rims. Put lids on.

Black Raspberry Jam

• 4 cups black raspberries
• 2 cups sugar

Wash berries. Put berries in a pot and crush them with a potato masher. Add sugar and heat to a low boil. Simmer until the jam reaches the desired consistency – or until temperature reaches 220 degrees. Stir frequently as the jam thickens. Unwatched pots boil over and burn very quickly.

Runny Jam
The worst thing that could happen when you are making the recipes in this book is that your jam might not set. [One thing to note is that sometimes runny jam sets on its own if you leave it alone for a few weeks. If you have the option of waiting before you try to ‘fix’ it, then wait. It might surprise you.]

Runny jam is not a crisis.

Really. There are no jam police who are going to show up at your house and take your children away because you made runny jam. It really doesn’t matter if your jam doesn’t set.

At our house, we call runny jam ‘syrup’. You can use syrup on pancakes and ice cream and as cake topping and as meat glaze.

If you decide you want to turn your syrup into jam that sets, then there are a couple of ways you can do it.

1. Boil it down: The simplest is to put the jam back into the pot and boil it down until it’s as thick as you want. When it comes off a spoon or spatula in sheets or double drips, then it’s going to set.

2. The two pot fix. In a larger pan, heat up all of the jam you want to fix. In a small pan, mix another tablespoon or two of dry pectin in a cup of cold water – it must be cold. Dissolve the pectin in the water and bring it to a boil. Boil the pectin hard for one full minute. Pour the pectin into the jam and stir it well. Bring to a boil and boil hard for one full minute. You should see a noticeable thickening of the jam and it should come off the spoon or spatula in sheets or double drips. Keep boiling until you do.

Hive Drapes

The bees are making a lot of goldenrod honey these days.   I love it. 

In our last inspection, we found a whole lot of frames that looked like this one.   It's mostly capped honey on both sides and hopefully in a week or so the whole thing will be capped,  and we'll be able to pull off a few frames and harvest a few jars of honey for us.  

This inspection, we tried something new.  Over on Linda's Bees blog, Linda posted a piece that talked about using hive drapes instead of smoke to keep the bees calm when doing an inspection. 

I'd never heard of that, but the smoker is the bane of my existence, so I was happy to give it a try.  Seriously.    Keeping that smoker smoking right through the entire inspection is the hardest part about keeping bees.   [Tip:  If you're thinking of getting bees, then buy a smoker now and start practicing keeping it lighted.   Smoke your shrubs for an hour or so and see if stays lit.] 

This is how the hive drape thing works.  When you open the hive, you put a cloth over it to cover the bees and then you fold it back to work on only the area you need.  If you pull a frame out, you replace the drape so the hive stays covered.  The bees are supposed to stay calm.   You can use a couple of old pillowcases. 

It's brilliant. 

It's also a bit harder than we expected.  

For one thing, the breeze kept blowing it off.   And I'm serious about it being only a breeze.    It wasn't windy, but every breath of air popped the drape up.    We had to use the extra tools along the edges to keep it down. 

Also, our inspections take a while.   It's best not to hurry around the bees, and though they were fine for the first 5 minutes or so, they got a little testy after that.   They came right after the chisel I use to clean the propolis off from between the frames.   After that, every time the drape popped up, bees poured out.  

The bees were not calm.  It was lucky that neither of us got stung this time because those bees were unhappy.

We lit the smoker.  

After we smoked them, they calmed right down and we proceeded as usual.   

I'm thinking either we didn't do something right, or the drapes are best used for quick inspections.   Either way,  I'm sticking to the smoker. 

The smoker, by the way, stayed lighted this time for 4 hours after we were done.    Geez. 

Red Okra

We had a couple of really late bloomers in the veg garden this year.   It took forever for the red okra and the green long beans to hit their stride.  






Here are the green long beans.   The vines are now easily a third again as big as the red ones, but it only bears a few beans.  It took an extra two months to get this big before it started bearing well.  And after all of that,  I've gotten easily two or three times as many red long beans as green long beans.   This means that we're approaching the 'I don't think we'll do this one again' stage.    I'm thinking I'll stick to the red long beans and let these go.   Since I'm not ready to decide right now, I've let some of the pods ripen and when they're hard and crispy, I'll harvest a bit of seed just in case I want to give it a second chance next year.





Another late bloomer was the red okra.   We've planted okra for years and usually it zooms out of the ground no matter what color it is.    This year, it sat and sat and waited and finally only four seeds sprouted.   It was seed that I saved last year, which might explain the low germination rate, but then the plants took forever to get going.    Usually our okra gets to five or six feet tall in no time.   These plants are still only three feet tall and slow to bear.    You'd think in all that heat it would have zoomed out of the ground, but no, it sat.   The flowers are really pretty, though.    That's one at the top of the post.   And the okra pod itself is pretty.   They don't stay red when you cook them.  They go green.    Pick them smallish - the size of your thumb.  The point should be bendy and soft.  Steam them and serve with melted butter and lemon juice. 

Enchilada Sauce

Our tomatoes have been weird.

Really weird.

I'm sure it was the heat and drought.    The heat and drought toughened up their skins.

Then it rained and rained and those tomatoes grew, but the tough skins didn't grow - they split.   The vast majority of tomatoes we've gotten have split skins.

And the damp from all that rain encouraged the romularia spot and it flourished and all the leaves turned yellow and brown and  then died.   It was pathetic.   

Then there was the bird from hell that would land on a vine and just take random bites out of the very best and most beautiful tomatoes.  I probably lost 1/3 to 1/2 of my tomatoes that way.    We finally had to net the whole tomato bed to keep the blasted thing out.

But every once in a while, I'd bring in a bunch of tomatoes - mostly grape tomatoes and damaged bigger ones, and we'd chop them up and can them.    Ugly tomatoes are tasty, too.

The last batch we didn't have time to watch, so Eric put the whole bunch in our big new oval crock pot.  It was filled to the top and we cooked it for two days -  cooking it down, down, down until we had just over a half a gallon of tomato goo left.   Then I sieved the whole mess through my chinois so that there wouldn't be any skins because the kids hate skins.

[I rolled my eyes the whole time, but I did it.   Because I'm a good Mom.   And because Eric suggested that it was the nice thing to do.  And I needed the brownie points.

It occurs to me that I probably lost brownie points with every eye roll, huh.  Rats.]

And I made enchilada sauce to put up in jars.   Because I love enchiladas.  But I don't love making stuff like that at the last minute.    At the last minute, I just want to throw it all together.

So, here is the basic recipe for Enchilada Sauce by the quart.   Just multiply this by the number of quarts of cooked tomatoes or tomato sauce you have.  I adapted this recipe from the one in America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.  

Enchilada Sauce

• 1 quart tomato sauce
• 3-4 Tablespoons chili powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced

I cooked up the onion and garlic and then added the spices to that.  After that had heated through,  I added the tomato sauce at the end, heated it all to a boil and then put it in jars to seal up.   I ended up with exactly four pints.   I"m so happy!

For more recipes as easy as this one, check out my ebook on the sidebar.  It's full of recipes for savory glazes, chutneys and sauces, too!  Want to see a preview?   Check out the link on my sidebar.   A Simple Jar of Jam: 180+ recipes & variations for jam using low sugar pectin.  Every purchase goes a long way toward supporting the blog.   Thank you!

Winter Squash on Purpose

These are the winter squash that I grew on purpose.     Definitely ones to do again.

Queensland Blue.  I only got the one.  They are long vines and the young fruit does not seem to like damp.   I got this one because I let it grow out of the bed into the path where it got more air and sun.  It's about 10-12 inches in diameter.  The vines scarred around the vine borer and just kept growing.   Harvest when it turns blue, then grey.  Leave a bit of stem on.    It has a dry flesh that is wonderful baked.   I'd do these again.  

This is supposed to be Omaha Pumpkin.   I've grown Omahas before and these are not they.    Some seed contamination, I guess.   They're usually just a smaller, elongated version of your basic jack-o-lantern pumpkin.  These are a bit wrinkled and very yellow instead of orange.  

Golden Hubbard.   Easy.   Large.  Screaming orange.   Very long vines that wander.  There is no doubt when the fruit is ready.   They start out yellow, then turn orange-red.  Try to take the stem off for long term storage.    This is the only squash that does better without the stem.  I can't get the stems off, so we'll be eating these soon.  Protect them from rodents if you can.  Our voles loved them.   I'd do these again.  

Greek Sweet Red.   I love these.   They're large and they are fast growing. These are about 16 inches tall.   The flesh is dry and delicious.    They come on late, but fast so don't despair if you don't see any for a while.   I've had several show up in the past month and they're ready in just a few weeks.   There are two more that showed up a couple of weeks ago and I expect they'll be turning in the next couple of weeks.    The vines will go everywhere and they're pretty hardy against vine borers.   Let them go.  You'll find fruit in weird places, but it's pretty tough and can handle some movement if you need to get a vine out of the way.  Just support the fruit as you move the vine to where you want it.  These will continue to change color after you harvest them.   Protect these from rabbits if you can.   I harvested the greener one a bit early to get it away from a curious rabbit. 

Volunteer Squash - Ripe

We throw all of our veg type kitchen scraps to the chickens, who eat them and churn them up into black gold for the garden.    Chicken dirt is a miracle.

But loaded in that chicken dirt are a lot of seeds and so we get some volunteers.   This year we got a lot of tomato volunteers and squash volunteers.    I kept four of the squash volunteers and this is what they finally turned into.

This is a regular old butternut squash.  The regular color, the regular size.   Easy to identify.  

And these started out as tiny white pumpkins - only as they aged they turned a creamy yellow.   Very pretty. 

And this is a beautiful little white pumpkin.  I started out with half a dozen, but they were really susceptible to rot and the rest of them rotted.   Darn.   They were really cute. 

Then there are these.    This warty thing is about the same size as the white pumpkin.  I got four of them.   They were distinctly striped on the plant, then the stripes disappeared and they turned beige.   After I harvested them and they sat for a while curing, the stripes came back.   Weird.   They grew in full sun and I'm curing them under a tree - maybe the sun vs. shade has something to do with it.   I hope they taste good because even though they're really kind of strange looking, I find them entirely enchanting.  

Winter Squash

Here is a selection of the winter squash I grew this year.    It's a wild and crazy bunch and there are still a few in the garden growing.    The Greek Sweet Red just won't slow down.   I have two more in the bed that keep getting bigger and bigger. alongside a few more Omaha pumpkins and another small golden hubbard.

This is what I can definitely say about winter squash.   They love the bees and they love a lot of chicken dirt.   This is the best year for winter squash that I've ever had. 

Here's what I grew:  

• The three screaming orange ones are Golden Hubbard
• Two tall on the far right and one tall on the far left are Greek Sweet Red
• Three skinny beige in the back and one on its side in the front are volunteer butternut.
• The big fluted blue grey thing on the left is a  Queensland Blue.  I only got the one.
• The shorter greenish warty pumpkiny things at the back are volunteers.
• The two yellow pumpkins at the right are supposed to be Omaha pumpkins, but that's not what they looked like last year.    
• The tiny white pumpkins are volunteers
• The single white pumpkin in front is a volunteer.   Very susceptible to rot.   That's the only one that didn't succumb.

 I'll be showing you close ups and giving some details of each kind in the next few days.  

Pear Vanilla Nutmeg Jam

With more of my lovely cooked pears, I whipped up a batch of this delicious jam.   The vanilla and nutmeg don't overwhelm the pear flavor.    That's important in a jam.     You don't want the embellishments to take over.

If the embellishments take over the substance then you end up with something akin to Lady Gaga and though that's entertaining and all, it's not something you want to sit down to the table with.

Substance before embellishment.

And in this jam, the embellishments embellish and the substance shines through.   

Jam as a metaphor for life.

Because this is an all purpose blog.

Pear Vanilla Nutmeg Jam

• 4 cups cooked pears
• 1 vanilla bean split lengthwise [or 2 tablespoons vanilla extract]
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 4 tablespoons Dutch Jell All Natural Lite pectin
• 2 cups sugar

Combine the pears, nutmeg, vanilla and pectin in a pot.   Add some extra cold water if your pears are too dry and you're afraid they'll burn.  Stir constantly.  Bring to a hard rolling boil that you can't stir down.   Boil one minute. Add sugar and return to hard rolling boil.   Take out vanilla bean.  Boil one minute.   Ladle into jars.

This jam was a huge hit with with my kid who only eats ''normal' jam, Mom'.   She licked the spoon and the spatula and the funnel and the pot.  Clean. 

Note:   Remember, pears in a can are cooked pears.  You can use them if you don't have 'fresh' ones.   Use unsweetened ones. 

Early Fall Wildflowers

It's beautiful this time of year.  

 We found this colony of Great Lobelia [Lobelia syphilitica] with some Missouri Primroses [Oenothera missouriensis] along a wet spot on one of our back roads.   It's glorious.  

These plants are about 24 inches high.   They like calm damp places and the blue fades right into the green.   It's hard to get a pic that captures how beautiful a whole stand is.  


I love that blue.

 And I love, love, love this fuchsia.  This is Vernonia altissima - Tall Ironweed.   It's called ironweed because the stems are like iron.  Almost impossible to pull up and you have to cut the stems to collect them.    We have this everywhere out here.  Cows and horses won't eat it, but they do fertilize it.   Which is why we have fields full of it.  

Glorious fuchsia fields. 

The bugs love it, too.  

Each of those little petals becomes a seed.   They spread like crazy. 


These plants are 4' - 5' high.  If you try to mow them, they'll just come back.   Shorter.   It's kind of not worth the effort. 

Nestled low in the grass, like pools of floral liquid, are large colonies of Blue Mist Flower.   It's one of many Eupatoria that are native here.  This is Eupatorium coeruleum.   It gets about 12 inches high.   I like it because it volunteers in nice places, but is easy enough to pull out where you don't want it. 

Fall Gardening

It's time to plant the fall garden.    Mostly I plant things that I can surround with a cold frame later, but this year I wanted some extra cilantro so in August I planted two rows of it.

And it sat.

And sat.

And never came up. 

And then in rained.

And rained.

And rained.

And this is what happened. 

Finally.   

Route 67 Diner - Worthington, Indiana

The last time we went to Worthington, we noticed the addition of a brand new diner right on the main drag.    The Route 67 Diner opened a couple of weeks ago and on our last girls' day out, we stopped to check it out.

I am very pleased to say that it is delightful.

And delicious. 

And fun.

The hours are 10:30am to 9pm Monday through Saturday and 10:30am to 8pm on Sunday.    There is seating outside, at tables inside and at the counter.   Service is fast and friendly.

Here's a write-up from the local paper.  Bert Clark is passionate about boosting the local economy and he's got a great thing going here.   Here's the link to their facebook page. 

The place is bright and clean and the food is fantastic.    It was a burger kind of day for us, so we all got burgers with sides.  

Burger and fries.

Burger and onion rings.    My favorite.

Burger and homemade potato chips.   You have to try them.  They're amazing.

And then, then we had the ice cream. 

O. M. G.  

This is a great place to bring the family for a nice meal and great atmosphere.  

As a bonus, it's located right between a bunch of antiques stores, including one that's attached to the diner.    We had a great time walking off the ice cream while we explored the local shops.  

I hope you get a chance to check them out.   Soon!

Elderberry Jelly

Elderberry flowers, June.

I have always loved finding wild things and making useful stuff with them.   I've had a love affair with elderberries forever and they grow wild around here, just not on our place.   And somehow we're always so busy this time of year that I miss it when they finally ripen and by the time I remember to scavenge from the roadside bushes, they're gone.

This year, I remembered.

I got to my neighbor's bushes right after they were ripe enough for the birds, but I still got some.

I had only a few berries and I ended up with less than a cup of juice.    I added water to make a full cup, then added 1 Tablespoon of pectin and brought it to a boil.  I boiled it hard for 1 minute.   Then I added 1/2 cup of sugar and returned it to a hard boil.   I got only one jar of jelly, but it is the most beautiful jelly in the world. 

In.  The. World.

This is the color of enlightenment and wisdom.  Eat this stuff and your IQ goes up.   Really.   I'm not exaggerating.   

OK - I know some of you think that jelly is scary and hard.   It's no harder than making spaghetti.   Boil it, drain it, mix it with stuff, eat it.    Only with jelly, you keep the stuff you drain off and toss the rest. 

Jelly is easy to make.  This is what you do for any fruit that you want to make jelly with.

• Gather the berries.  
• Gently wash them and put them in a pan with some water so they don't burn when you forget them.  Bring to a boil.   
• Put them in a fine mesh strainer or in some cheesecloth and squeeze the juice out.  
• Keep the juice and throw the skins and seeds to the chickens.  They love it. 
• Measure the juice.
• For every cup of juice, use 1 tablespoon pectin and 1/2 cup sugar

Don't use more than 6 cups of juice at a time.   I like to use 4 cups per batch.  Put the juice and pectin in a pot and bring to a hard rolling boil that you can't stir down.  Boil hard for 1 minute.  Add sugar and return to hard boil.  Boil 1 minute.  Ladle into jars.

Want all of my jam, jelly, glaze, chutney and sauce recipes in one handy-dandy document that you can keep on any of your devices that can read PDFs?    Check out the preview of my book A Simple Jar of Jam in the sidebar.  You'll love it!

September Harvest

Yellow tomatoes 'Beauty King', Japanese pickling eggplant, cukes, and grape tomatoes.  

Pretty, aren't they.

Baking with Natural Yeast

Here's a loaf of plain whole wheat with my pear plum vanilla jam.     De-lish.
 
Warning.  This is a brag post.  I made all of this bread.

I. Made. It. 

Which is kind of a Christmas Miracle.  In August and September, but whatever.   Just ask Eric.   He keeps grinning and patting me on the head like a toddler who just tied her shoes for the first time.   

It took us a couple of months to balance out the yeast start we got from Melissa Richardson and Caleb Warnock from their new book The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast.   As soon as I got it in July, I followed the directions to activate it.   We totally took advantage of the natural moldiness yeastiness of Indiana plus the freak summer weather - hot as an oven.   I spent days proofing jars and ice cream buckets full of yeasty stuff outside.   I learned a lot and eventually we got two great starts going and we're figuring out how to make good bread with it.

This is not your store-bought yeast.

I am not a bread maker normally.   I make bread once a year, at Christmas.  The rest of the time, I leave the bread baking to Eric.  And Eric is really good with bread.  

But there's something about this natural yeast that makes me want to play.    I feel like an alchemist mixing up some magic.  Here's a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread I made.  K2 likes it toasted and then dipped in melted honey butter.    Oh. My. Gosh.

The thing that I like about this yeast is that the dough tastes good.   None of that weird aftertaste.   And none of the gas you get if you eat a wad of dough made with store yeast.   This is good stuff.

One of our starts got really sour and I made this loaf of white sourdough bread. It was wonderful with lasagna.

I've learned a few things as we've worked with this dough.    For us, it takes a loooong proof [first rise] and a long rise again after you shape the loaves.    It takes all day or overnight to proof it and give it a first rise.    Then you shape the loaves and let it rise again.   It takes us another 3-4 hours to get it to double in size.

It's totally worth the wait.

This means that I have to plan ahead a bit, and that I absolutely positively cannot rush.   Which is really good for me because normally I rush, rush, rush all the time.  It's nice to have something that needs me to wait, wait, wait.    Every time we've waited, we've gotten really great bread.  

Here's pic of some cinnamon rolls just starting the second rise.   They were delicious.   

Want your own start?    Get a copy of the book The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast and contact the authors.  They'll send you a start for free and you can start making your own magic.   

Here's a link to the hardbound copy: 

and here's a link to the Kindle version: 

If you like to make bread, or if you want to learn how, or if you're trying to put a little less synthetic and a little more natural in your life, you'll love it.