Strawberry Season Is Back!

Hopefully, this year strawberry season won't last three days, but I wasn't taking any chances. The fields opened two days ago and this is my first day not working since then. There was a thunderstorm coming the afternoon so I made a plan to go early this morning and get enough strawberries for all my needs - we've been out of strawberry jam for a while. 

First batch was strawberries, sugar, and a little vanilla paste. This made eight cups. I've stopped adding pectin to my jams whenever possible so it means a slightly lower yield per batch. 

Second batch was strawberry rhubarb. I had two cups of rhubarb in the freezer, which I let sit with four cups of sugar for an hour to macerate, and then added seven cups of halved strawberries and 1/4 cup lemon juice. This made six cups. 

I have set aside strawberries sliced and mixed with sugar to make strawberry shortcake tonight, and another quart of berries for strawberry soup for dinner. That still leaves about three quarts of berries left for... another project, maybe?

Green Tomato....Jam?

Yes, really.

I found a recipe for green tomato jam with ginger and vanilla, and it sounded really interesting, and I had to try it! I didn't have a vanilla bean, so I just used vanilla extract, and since I only had 2 pounds of tomatoes once they were diced, I used half the amount of ginger and lemon juice. It smells really gingery. And vanilla-y. The tomatoes seem to just be the vehicle to carry the ginger and the vanilla. I ended up with 5 half-cup jars and I'm hoping they all seal.

Now, what to do with a bushel of apples? Does anyone have a recipe for pickled apple slices?

Unusual Flavor Day

We've already canned mulberries with rhubarb and vanilla today, what other weirdness can we come up with? Well...

My in-laws had left 3 grapefruits in my fridge. Now, I like grapefruit, in theory. I like those little Sunkist fruit gels and, of those, my favorite flavor is grapefruit. I like the smell. I don't like eating them; the membranes are too tough, and they splash in my face when I try to eat them by halves. Not to mention, eating them in halves makes me feel as though I'm on a diet. (Maybe it's a learned aversion?)

So here are these grapefruits, metaphorically burning a hole in my fridge. And I hate wasting food. And if I'm not going to eat them, I highly doubt anyone else in the family is going to. I set about looking for something to do. I came across this recipe but, as I have probably previously mentioned, I'm not a big fan of marmalade. Then I found this recipe for grapefruit jelly. Those wheels in my brain started up again. I have another vanilla bean and I have rosewater. I even have a rose in the backyard from which I can grab a few petals to put in the jars. Voila!

Rose-Vanilla Grapefruit Jelly
3 cups grapefruit juice*
4 cups sugar
1 package powdered pectin
1 vanilla bean
2 drops red food coloring
2 T. rosewater

*I simmered the grapefruit with 1 and a half cups of water and then strained them through a cheesecloth to get the juice. The food coloring and the rosewater were added after the boiling step. This yielded 4 half-pint jars; I put 1/4 of the vanilla bean and 1 rose petal into each one.

Mulberry Time

This time of year, my whole family keeps an eye out for mulberry trees for me. There is one around the corner from me which has the largest and sweetest mulberries I've ever seen. We found another one at the local elementary school and picked some berries there before we were chased away by a thunderstorm. I froze those berries in anticipation of getting enough to make some sort of jam but, I must say, they are not as good as those from the tree around the corner. We made two trips to that tree, freezing each small haul, until I felt I had enough berries.

Today I did an experiment, sort of, and I hope it works out. I had a total of 4 cups of crushed mulberries and 2 heaping cups of chopped rhubarb (this is the last of the rhubarb for this year. Honest.). Certo recipes seem to use 1 package of Certo to 4 cups of fruit, so I could either use 1 or 2 packages or try to use 1.5 packages, I chose 1 package. My thought was that the mulberries and rhubarb, being less sweet than other fruits, might have more pectin in them. That's the gamble here; maybe it won't be as gelled as I'd like. Anyhow, here's today's recipe:

Mulberry-Rhubarb-Vanilla Jam
4 cups crushed mulberries
2 cups chopped rhubarb
7 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean, cut in half, sliced open
1 package Certo

This made 9 half-pints, almost exactly. Processed in the boiling water canner for 10 minutes. It has a very strong vanilla taste and smell. Mmm.

Mango Madness!

So, I was at Whole Foods yesterday, ("Uh, oh!" you say...) and they were selling crates of mangoes. A crate only holds 8, and it was not a huge savings but enough that I could finally put my plan of canning mangoes into action. The reason we were at the Whole Foods was we were looking for something for dinner. We ended up with chicken thighs, marinated and then grilled in the zesty peach BBQ sauce. Yum! A success!

Anyways, I had saved some halves of uneaten bananas in the freezer so I thawed them and used them for this: Exotic Mango Banana Jam Delite. When I added the lemon juice to the bananas, it actually perked up the color, as they were pretty brown after being frozen and thawed. However, since I only had 1 cup of mashed banana, I used a cup of chopped golden kiwis. I also used a whole vanilla bean rather than a half. This made 6 half-pints and a little extra. And it smells wonderful!

After that, I made a variation of mango jam using nectarines. "Mangorine Jam," I'm calling it.
3 c. chopped mango
1 1/2 c. chopped nectarines (skin on)
2 T. lemon juice
1 package powdered pectin
5 1/2 c. sugar

This resulted in 7 half-pints. I'm done for the day, since I have to work overnight tonight. While I was working on these, the kids were entertained by those little peg board bead things. I would like to thank the inventor of those things - they kept the kids busy for hours!

Vanilla and Pears

I should never go to Whole Foods.

In addition to yesterday's Muscat grapes, I have been thinking about doing something with the Bartlett pears every time I go in there and see the great big display of them. So I bought a bunch yesterday. Then I went on line and found a recipe for vanilla pear jelly. However, the jelly requires Anjou pears. OK. So I went out this morning to the store (not the Whole Foods) and bought 8 Anjou pears and proceeded to caramelize them. I am not sure that was the intended method, maybe I cooked them too long? I was gardening at the same time. Anyway - I got about 1/4 cup of juice. So I tried a trick from one of my cookbooks and steeped the pears with boiling water. I had to do that twice to get the 3.5 cups of juice needed. Also, I added an extra teaspoon or 2 of vanilla. The vanilla is from Penzey's. It smells glorious! The rest of the recipe went fairly smoothly. I ended up with 5 half-pint jars and some in a tupperware container. The family is busy dipping 'Nilla wafers in it.