Remember Those Tomatoes?

The tomatoes are all harvested and Christmas is coming.  That mean plenty of preserving for holiday gifts and treats through the year. First up tomato jam. A tangy tasty better than ketchup accompaniment for roasted meats, grilled cheese sandwiches and the best ever BLTs. From the flavor no one will ever guess how simple these preserves can be.
For inspiration I turned, as I often do for food in jars, to Edon Waycott's Preserving The Taste, an invaluable compendium of jellies, fruit butters, pickles and more. Waycott's tomato jam uses peeled fruits. I opted instead to seed some, and chop them all allowing the skin to give texture to the final product. Searching the internet I found a host of recipes that start by rough chopping the whole tomatoes in the food processor. I gave a rough chop by hand and combined the tomatoes (Edon's recipe was based on 8 pounds but I doubled it) with 4 tsp salt, 1/4 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp of white pepper, 2 tsp of cinnamon and 2 tsp of crushed chile peppers. The whole mixture cooked down for almost an hour and after a taste I added in a heavy TB of honey and a rounded tsp of saffron threads. After almost another hour cooking the jam was shiny and sticky and ready for jars.
Nothing left to do but process the jars for five minutes in a hot water bath, top with homemade labels, and wait for Christmas gift giving opportunities to come my way.

303 And Counting

The stakes are high. Four dollars in our electoral college pool still unclaimed waiting on Florida.

Yesterday was such a busy day around here. James was out on the tractor digging in a new water tank. I was trying to get the house and dinner ready (not so easy given our muddy yard and 3 cheerful dogs) for friends coming over to watch the election returns all while ordering materials for our current landscape extravaganza and checking in on the early reports form the poles. No time to blog, but we did -- exhausted -- manage to get dinner on the table for our friends.

Oddly enough I don't have any pictures in the middle but here's where it started and how it finished. It's been a good long while since I delved into Jim Lahey's bread recipes. We so love the rosemary meyer lemon bread from nearby Della Fattoria I knew I could never compete. But I had a beautiful bag of stone ground flour I bought from a family farm in Washington state and there's no time like the present. I whipped up (if you can say that about a recipe that takes 2 days) a nice crusty loaf of whole wheat bread and set it out with delicious McClelland butter and homemade tomato bacon jam. There in the distance are our mini-appetizers -- a bowl of cayenne spiced pecans and Southern style cheese straws. I figured those were a good companion for the fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and kale salad that came later -- along with a neighborly pot of homegrown beans.

For dessert, since I still have apples on the tree, a brown sugar sweetened old-fashioned 3 layer apple cake from a recipe on marthastewart.com with a brown sugar buttercream. The frosting used egg white so I took that as a perfect excuse to make a quick batch of vanilla ice cream. James said it might be his favorite cake I'd ever made -- must be the apples right off the tree.

Another Peach Project

So many peaches.

What's a girl to do?

I gathered up our pinkish fruits for a quick batch of fallen fruit preserves. I combined the peeled chopped fruit with sugar and let the mixture sit in a bowl for a couple hours until a good quantity of juice came out. I strained the fruit and poured the sweetened juice into a pot, along with the juice of one lemon, and let it boil over high heat until reduced and the temperature reached 220º. I added the strained fruit into the pot and let the mixture cook until the fruit just was tender and barely caramelized on the edges. I ladled the cooked preserves into hot canning jars, sealed the tops and processed for 5 minutes in a hot water bath. Preserved summer, backyard fresh -- just waiting for a slice of homemade bread.

The Little Tree That Could

On our back porch, in an unlikely spot because we have no more room in the yard we have a Meyer lemon tree. Sweetly perfumed thin skinned Meyer lemons are a cross between lemons and, some say, tangerines and some say oranges. In either case they are fairly delicate and don't ship all that well so some parts of the country still may never get fresh Meyers.

In years past we've gotten maybe six lemons from this sturdy little potted tree. But this year we have a fruit explosion -- almost 4 dozen lemons on a tree barely four feet tall.

I had to come up with a worthy project to honor our faithful tree and settle on an old-fashioned lemon marmalade. I zested 16 lemons and painstakingly cut the zest into think strips. I then took a dozen completely peeled lemons and chopped the pulp in the food processor. I added the pulp and zest to a bowl with an equal amount (by measure) of water and let that sit overnight in the fridge. In the morning I added the mixture to a pot with a measure of sugar to equal the water I added the day before. I brought everything u to a boil and let the pot simmer for 30 minutes. I ladeled the marmalade into waiting jars sealed them in the canner and stored them on the shelf for special presents and James' toast.

Another Fruit Project

I guess some weeks I get over excited at the farmer's market and buy more fruit than we can possibly eat. I already whipped up an apple pear cake but what to do with the leftover stone fruit.

James is one of those people who, although he has a healthy sweet tooth, can walk by a cake on the counter without hearing it's siren call. He can, eat a bite or one slice a day and not tiptoe back for more. James is naturally skinny.

So, we certainly didn't need another cake around the house. The freezer already held breakfast breads and muffins, so what to do with this bowl of plums?

I decided on a quick batch of plum (actually a mix of plums, pluots, and even a nectarine) jam. Even if I was too lazy to get down the canning pot -- which I was, the jam would keep for a few months in the fridge, and we could always bring a jar to a friend as a hostess gift. Win win, jam it is.

I cut the fruit into wedges and covered them, in a heavy saucepan, with 3/4 cup of sugar (I used a mix of brown and white since I ran out of white and our cupboards for some reason are groaning with brown sugar) for each pound of fruit and let it sit for about an hour. I squeezed in half a lemon and dropped the rind into the pan which I brought to a boil and let simmer for about 35 minutes. Until a drop of the jam on a cold plate (I put a plate in the freezer for 10 minutes) held it's shape.

Presto. Leftover fruit becomes brand new jam.

After The Battle

Even though I can't declare battle squirrel 2010 an outright victory we had a large enough pile of small white peaches to share some with friends have a bowl in the fridge, and make a batch of this delicate white peach and lavender jam. I got the idea from Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard's Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving, a worthy kitchen companion. But, the ladies' recipe calls for pectin and I prefer a more cooked thick old-fashioned style jam. So I combined my usual recipe with some of Topp's and Howards' ideas and came up with this floral scented golden jam.

I pitted and coarsely chopped enough peaches to fill a 6 quart container and covered the fruit with 6 cups of sugar and let the fruit sit overnight in the refrigerator. The next day I covered 12 tablespoons of dried lavender flowers with about 1 1/2 cups boiling water and let sit for 20 minutes (the dogs got a quick walk while that was steeping). Into my largest pot went the fruit mixture, the lavender water (strained of the flowers), and 6 TBs of lemon juice. I brought the pot to a boil and let it simmer until the fruit was soft and a drop placed on a plate left in the freezer for 15 minutes firmed up to a consistency I liked for our latest batch of jam. I poured the mixture into sterilized jars and sealed as usual.

Preserving the taste of spring, one jar at a time.