In Which Mira Catches Up On Farm Share and Canning Activities...

So, I've been back from our week on the Cape for oh, like 5 weeks now. So the "I'm still catching up from vacation" excuse is no longer valid. So here it is - the epic, ridunkulous, bad-blogger catch-up post.

Vacation week (June 28), my wise, wonderful, ever-giving friend C picked up my share, froze berries for me, and packed up the hardy veg, which was wonderful when we returned.

Quart Strawberries, Pint Raspberries, Garlic Scapes, Shelling Peas, Cucumbers, Lacticino Kale, Chard, Salad Turnips

July 5 - I ordered the last flat of strawberries, and also upgraded to a Large Vegetable share. With the strawberries I made more of the Strawberry-Mango-Chamomile syrup, Strawberry Butter, Strawberry-Lemon Preserves, and Classic Preserves.

Strawberries, raspberries, summer squash, fennel, red-leaf lettuce, kale, cucumber, focaccia, goat cheese

First attempt at pickles - pretty yummy!

July 12... More bulk berries, raspberries. Made raspberry jam, using apples for pectin, and raspberry preserves. Nom. A friend also organized getting peaches from the south - made some pretty amazing peach butter, and peach-mango-raspberry butter. Canning with friends is pretty fun. I do love my late night jam sessions - meditative.

Baguette, Focaccia, Raw Cheddar, Summer Squash, Cukes, a GORGEOUS tomato, Corn, shelling peas, carrots, kale, lettuce, raspberries, and the bulk flat of raspberries

Raspberry preserves

Peach butters before they became themselves

the color... blood and life and lovely

My sister's childhood best friend, and alternate-universe version of who I might have become had I taken different paths, came over to make cheese, and brought black trumpets she foraged herself. She gave me a great recipe for ravioli. Nom.

With sage butter

July 19... More bulk berries - a flat of raspberries, a flat of gooseberries, and a half flat of currants. I wasn't really sure about the currants, but was feeling adventureous. SO GLAD I did - raspberry-currant jam is a total MOUTHGASM. I can not stress this enough. Party in the mouth, a necessary item for all. I canned with Rebecca, and we discovered that 1) five flats of berries is an ALL DAY job 2) gooseberries in syrup is teh awezome.

Roasted Garlic Sourdough (makes awesome veggie bread pudding),  green beans,  summer squash, cukes,  onions, garlic, corn, gooseberries, raspberries, blueberries. Bulk raspberries, gooseberries & currants.

Raspberry-currant Epiphany

Part of the epic Rebecca & Mira cannapalooza day

 July 26... Bulk blueberries - blueberry lavender rhubarb jam is boss. It also makes not very much jam. And I have no more rhubarb frozen. Wah. 

Baguette, Burratta (YUM), blueberries, tomato, cucumbers, peppers, squash, eggplant, corn, kale, bulk blueberries

Pick-your-own

A midnight foray of  blueberry-lime jam, blueberry-lavender-rhubarb jam, and  kosher dill pickles

So there it is! Caught up. I've been busy :-) And full. And loving food. And loving the friends who I create a community with, who feed me with their love, so I can do the same.

Farm Share Week #3 - in which Mira makes (guess what?) more jam!

Good take this week - still the greenery of our cold wet spring, but that will soon change. And there were scapes! There will be pesto. Here's the mug shot of the goods:

4 scapes (i found more at market yesterday), head of lettuce, bunch of laticino kale, radishes, bok choi, 2 quarts ipm strawberries, and a pint of organic strawberries. The bread was lovely rye rolls.

What to do with the loot? The kids and I did eat that pint straight up, but I'm sitting here waiting for another batch of rhuberry jam to process, having licked a few spoons and spun around in the kitchen in full-on happy tummy dance. 4 half pints made, and just shy of a quart of strawberries frozen. I sliced a few strawberries to see how they do in the dehydrator. There's also 3 trays of last fall's cranapple sauce becoming fruit leather.

I have used my new Tattler Canning Lids for a few jars, with success. The lids are reusable, no-BPA plastic. Knowing that the traditional lids are single use, and are lined with BPA made me look for an alternative, and this is the best I could find. I don't love that they're plastic, but it seems a lesser evil. The only thing I really need to do is find rubber or silicon heat proof gloves - to ensure a good seal you have to tighten the metal band as soon as the jar comes out of the canner - we have pit mits, but they are cloth, and although I have a high tolerance for heat, the boiling water in the cloth mitt is burning my little fingers. So, friends, if I give you a jar of yummy goodness and it has a white plastic lid on it, it means 2 things. First, I hold you dear enough to share said yummy goodness. Secondly, I will hunt you down for that lid :)

Scape Pesto:

A large amount of scapes (10? 15? Eyeball it, find your inner Italian)

A large chunk of good grating cheese, like romano or parmesan - maybe a third of a wedge

A handful of pine nuts, or walnut

Salt & pepper, splash of good olive oil

Whirl in a food processor to make a paste. At this point you could freeze it, and add more olive oil upon thawing it, or add more oil until pesto is a smooth thick sauce. I love this with fresh pasta, or on crostini. You can also add basil for a more 'traditional' pesto. Just remember your garlic math if you plan to snuzzle a loved one - 2 people eating garlic equals no one bothered by garlic odor.

Nom nom. Next week is vacation on the Cape, so we'll miss a week. But upon our return, the berries will likely be a different variety, and the veggies a different hue.

Happy eating!

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Farm Share Week #2

Week 2, and we're still in the very green of early season. Today's take included a napa cabbage, head of (beautiful) lettuce, bunch of scallions, and fennel (squee!). The fruit share was 3 fragrant lovely quarts of strawberries. Bread and cheese this week too! And, I ordered a flat of strawberries - so 11 quarts in total.

3 of the quarts are in the freezer as we speak. I washed and hulled the berries, then put them in the freezer on baking sheets to firm up before transferring them to Ziploc bags. This way they freeze separately instead of in a big red mass.

 I'm canning on Thursday, so I'm still musing about what jams to make. Certainly a strawberry jam, possible one with lavender, and preserves. I'm also planning on breaking out the dehydrator for some fruit leather, and dried strawberries. 

Bella mugs with our goods:

A Couple of Recipes

I've had a couple of requests to share the recipe for that (EPIC) jam - as in, I had four jars last week, I think there's 1.5 left... must.make.more.

I found the Rhubarb-Strawberry Jam recipe in this book. I really like it - the chapters are organized by season, with recipes for fruits and vegetables for each. In addition to canning recipes, there are also ways to use the canned goods, and other food preservation ideas. Worth the money, in my humble opinion.

I did up the sugar amount slightly to taste - here's my version:

• Combine 6 cups (approx 2 lbs) diced rhubarb, 3 cups (about a quart) diced strawberries, 2.5 cups sugar, and a half-cup water in my big dutch oven, and cooked over medium heat until the juices just covered the fruit. Stir occasionally.
• Strained the juice from the fruit pulp, stirring the pulp to get as much juice as possible. Return the juice to the stove, boiling until the juice reduced by more than half.
• Add the pulp to the reduced juice, with the juice of two lemons. Cook over medium-low until thickened, and beginning to jell on a cold plate.
• Ladle into hot half-pint jars, and process in a boiling water canner for 5 minutes. Remove, and allow to sit for 12-24 hours before checking seal.

The recipe I followed said it would yield 5 half-pints, I got 4 with some to scrape off the ladle and stirring spoon, for consumption while dancing around my kitchen in mouth-ecstasy, waiting for the jars to process.

The other recipe I thought I'd share is my favorite preparation for salad turnips. If you've never had these, RUN, don't walk, to your farmer's market and look for white radish looking things. They are in season spring and fall. They taste like a mild radish raw, but cooked they are an entirely different creature. Divine. Love love love them. I use the greens in pasta.

Glazed Salad Turnips

Trim the tops and tails off one bunch of turnips, scrub them well, then slice thinly into disks - about a quarter inch thick. Heat 1-2 tbsp butter or olive oil, or both, in a large saute pan (enough to generously coat the pan), add the turnips, season with salt & pepper, and cook over medium heat until they begin to soften. Add a generous splash of apple-cider vinegar, and a large drizzle of honey, and cook until the resulting liquid thickens and glazes the turnips. Taste, add more vinegar and honey as you like, and serve. Yum yum, good lordie, yum. Guess what I'm having for lunch?

So I ordered a flat of strawberries for tomorrow's pick-up. If it comes in, I'll be freezing, jamming, and trying out my new dehydrator with fruit leather the intended product. Happy tummy dance!

Farm Share Season has Arrived!

This is our third season as members of  Farm Direct Coop, a local CSA (don't know what that is? click here). FDC is somewhat unique in that rather than using one farm, and picking up a box of pre-packed fruits and vegetables, we contract with more than one farm (within 100 mile radius, most within MA), and get to choose much of our take. I joined for many of the 'usual' reasons - supporting local agriculture, cost-effective way to buy organic produce, so fresh, yada yada. This winter though, I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle, and that book solidified for me the importance of biodiversity in our food supply, the importance of local food economies, and the importance of leaving the agro-industry without my hard earned dollars. I highly recommend her book, as well as any of Michael Pollan's if you are curious about these issues.

AVM chronicles a year of local eating in the Kingsolver family. Virtually all of the food they consumed was either home grown, home raised, or sourced from their own county. While I'm not intending to do anything that radical, I intend to put up, either can, freeze or dry, at least half of our produce for this winter. I'm not married to this goal, but I'm curious to see how much I can do. So for tonight, I have four 8 oz jars of (the most ridiculously delectable EVER) rhubarb-strawberry jam, and a quart of sliced rhubarb in the freezer.

Our first take of the season - large fruit, small vegetable:

A bunch of kale, a beautiful head of romaine, kohlrabi, brocoli (squee!), a quart of strawberries, and 2 pounds of rhubarb.

Making the jam: 

Reducing the juices into a syrup:

This picture does no justice to the color of this concoction.

The fruit pulp:

Ladling into jars:

The finished product!

10 Things I learned this week, Birthday Edition

1. Birthdays ought to be a celebration of a mother's Herculean efforts.

2. Cooking with microbes (think bread and cheese) feeds my inner mad scientist, opens a magical door of alchemy and adds unpredictable mystery to my kitchen, all at once.

3. I may not be able to control drama and ugliness around me, but I can keep it from inhabiting my body.

4. Consistently stepping on those around you to elevate your self-worth is the ugliest form of insecurity.

5. Words have power.

6. Freedom of speech is meaningless if that right is not exercised with responsibility.

7. Silence in a marriage can be toxic.

8. It becomes easy to disregard, hate and kill fellow human beings when they become a label, instead of a person.

9. Generally, everyone is putting forth the best they have to offer at any given moment. That may not be what I need at that moment, but that's my problem, isn't it.

10. Sometimes the best glass of wine is not how it's served, or what it tastes like, but who it is drank with.

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