Marmalade Season

I knew about marmalade long before I tasted it. My mother used the word "marmalade" to explain to her piano students how to count out triplets in 6/8 time signature. 

"Mar-ma-lade, mar-ma-lade, mar-ma-lade."

But never having heard very nice things about the taste of marmalade (it was bitter, they told me) I stuck with my sweet, fruity, Sure-Jell thickened jams for years after learning its existence. Occasionally, I'd glance at the Smuckers Orange marmalade on the grocery store shelves and wonder what the heck jam made out of citrus tasted like.

I found out at a London breakfast table where, in the basement dining room of a bed and breakfast, I discovered orange marmalade was the only preserve available to spread on my toast. I spread a tentative blob on a corner of toast and apprehensively took a bite. It was bitter, but then sweet, and actually quite refreshing. There was something very nice about how the bitter citrus peel in the marmalade blended with the creamy, sweet butter spread across a crispy, nearly room temperature piece of whole grain toast.

I stopped fearing marmalade after that first taste and actually came to look forward to finding it at the breakfast table for the rest of that week. But back Stateside, I felt no desire to keep a jar of marmalade in the fridge. There was something awfully romantic about smearing orange marmalade on your toast to start off a day of touring London and honestly, I wasn't sure it would taste as good back home.    

I never thought of making my own marmalade until last year when I noticed a recipe for orange marmalade on the Sure-Jell packet. Then I discovered Marisa McCellan's recipe for three citrus marmalade last January and I knew I had to try it.

In the midst of January, when I'm pretty sure nothing will ever grow again, it's lovely to fill your home with the smell of citrus. It reminds me of far off places - both places where the sun shines and citrus trees grow, and also the orangeries of England where the well-to-do kept potted citrus plants centuries ago. (Fyi: the orangery at Kensington Palace is now a lovely little tea house if you're ever in Kensington and fancying a pot of tea and slice of Victoria Sponge Cake.) I highly recommend making marmalade on days where the temperature's not predicted to rise past zero. It's a wonderful escape.

Three-Citrus Marmalade made with lemons, navel oranges, and white grapefruit

Making marmalade's quite the process - plan on it taking more time then seems humanly possible. It's best to use organic fruit since you use the peels and you really don't want nasty chemicals (or wax) in your marmalade. First you wash your fruit and peel it. The peeled fruit must be supremed (where you remove all of the fruit from its membranes) and the seeds removed. The diced peels get simmered for a half hour or so until they're tender and then peels get combined with sugar, the citrus fruit and juice, and some of the water  from cooking the peels. Then just boil that all until it reaches the gelling point and can it. Simple enough, but last Wednesday I started making marmalade at noon and didn't finish up until 8 at night. (There were some interruptions, I'll admit, such as climbing on top of the roof to melt out the bathroom vent.)

I've been anticipating this year's marmalade for a while now because the marmalade I made last January was gone by May and because I had a beautiful new maslin pan to test out. The maslin pan is specially designed for making jam and marmalade. It has a handle, a pour spout, and a thick bottom to evenly distribute the heat.

My lucky marmalade got to take two trips through the maslin pan because someone wasn't patient enough when waiting for the marmalade to hit the set point and the first go around I canned what was essentially citrus syrup. (Lesson learned.)

Speaking of which, does anyone have any tips about when to stop cooking marmalade to achieve the proper set? Last year's batch was most definitely overcooked (as in it was a couple steps away from being hard candy) but still edible. This year's did end up setting quite nicely, but I feel like my marmalade doesn't reach a set I like until it's sustaining 224 F. (It should set at 220F.) Anyone? Anyone? The saucer test doesn't seem to work for me. I feel like I could drop little dabs of the cooked marmalade onto frozen saucers until the cows come home and I still can't tell exactly what the marmalade's consistency will be once it's completely cooled.

Despite the frustrations, I'm so happy to have marmalade back in my pantry. I still like it best on buttered (but slightly cooled) toast, but you can also throw a dollop in with sauteed chicken, soy sauce, ginger and Sriracha to make an orange chicken stir-fry. If I can find tangerines, I may be trying out a tangerine vanilla marmalade in the near future from Elizabeth Field's Marmalade book. Apparently I've become something of a marmalade nut.

Do you like the taste of marmalade?

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The January Tipping Point

Because I've been in a constant state of coming and going this past month, I've been feeling a little out of touch with my kitchen. While I normally spend a fair amount of my free time in the kitchen, I find it surprisingly easy to break the home cooking habit. If I spend several nights eating out of the home, I often find the thought of actually having to cook my own dinner a little horrifying when I return home.

But after returning from my latest out of town jaunt, it was clear that I couldn't ignore the calls of the kitchen any longer. When I made a lazy dinner of spaghetti on Sunday night, I realized we were down to a single container of marinara sauce in the freezer. We'd been limping along without any bread since sometime shortly after Christmas. It was time to replenish.

So yesterday, while the wind whistled past the cabin windows, I got a batch of marinara burbling in the crockpot, prepared some make-ahead pizza dough, and baked three loaves of "our daily bread." This morning I pulled a loaf of crusty bread (Andy's favorite) out of the oven. Not only do these kitchen projects make the cabin smell great, they also help me re-ground myself in home life and reclaim my kitchen mojo.     
 

I always notice an interesting shift in my kitchen mentality each January. I don't mind really putzing in the kitchen this time of year and during deep winter days, I'm most likely to try out new recipes - probably a mixed result stemming from Christmas gifted cookbooks, the new year, and dark evenings. It's also the time of year when I decide all of that food I worked to preserve over the past summer and autumn, really ought to be eaten up. Although the gardens provide us with plenty of instant-ish gratification during the summer, now is when I'm most grateful for the hard work we put in to growing our own food the summer before.

And so we start slowly eating our way through the pantry and freezer, enjoying the tastes of far-off seasons. Oatmeal with a dollop of blueberry butter or breakfast bars that use a jar of jam to start off blustery January mornings. A pot of green bean soup burbling on the stove top. Blueberry pie or apple crisp hot out of the oven. Cabbage thrown in with a venison roast. Snacks of peach salsa on a tortilla chip, applesauce straight out of the jar, or bread and butter pickles paired with a grilled cheese sandwich. There's such abundance in our pantry this year; so many flavors to play with. What to do with all of those pickled jalapenos? Or all of those pickled cranberries for that matter . . . .

Every season is a pretty tasty one around these parts, but there's something about January that makes the homemade flavors of the kitchen even more satisfying and reassuring. The jars I pop open while the snow blows and drifts outside remind me that the seasons do change and the abundant goodness of this life.

What do you cook this time of year?
 

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Reaping What You Sew

In a happy twist of timing, our garden produce started to come in just as berry season was ending, so I've been able to work at a slow but steady pace when it comes to putting up this year's harvest. (Thankfully, it appears that the love/hate relationship with zucchinis will hold off for another week or two.) I've spent much of my free time in the last few weeks whipping up batches of jam, chopping and blanching vegetables, and rearranging the freezer to hold our new onslaught of berries and produce. To date, this year's "putting up" has involved:

• 2 gallons of frozen blueberries 
• 1 batch of blueberry butter (8 cups)
• 2 batches of infused blueberry vinegar 
• 1 batch of blueberry pie filling (4 quarts)
• 2 pounds of frozen green beans 
• 1 batch of peach salsa (8 pints)  
• 1 batch of raspberry jam (4 pints) 

And that's just the beginning. The tomatoes are beginning to ripen, in a month+ there will be potatoes to harvest (see below!) and soon, very soon, there will be a big batch of pole beans to content with. Not to mention ubiquitous cucumbers which are currently yielding a never-ending batch of fridge pickles.

It's no secret that I'm a rather large proponent of the homemade lifestyle, but the truth is, I've never put much thought in why I prefer "from scratch" living as opposed to a store-bought lifestyle. I always assumed part of my infinity for DIY in the kitchen was merely an appeal to tradition.

Growing up, my mother feed my brother and me homemade bread, homemade jam, and homemade cookies, etc. If you could make it from scratch, then we weren't buying the store version. While I'm sure when I set off on my own as a young adult, I really did have a choice to leave the homemade lifestyle behind me, but instead I fell right into making things from scratch because, really, it was the only way I knew.

I mean, one simply does not buy a lug of peaches for preserving when they come on sale in August unless the idea that peaches and August preserving are as much a pair as peaches n' cream has been instilled in you at a very early age. 

Ah, look at those pints of peach salsa all lined up. Aren't they pretty? They're the result of about 2.5 hours of peeling, seeding, chopping, boiling, and canning. Whew!

After the marathon session of peach salsa making on Monday, I decided to look at my homemade tendencies from a purely economic viewpoint. (Because, you guys, 2.5 hours is quite a lot of time to invest in something, you know.)

After some rudimentary calculations, not factoring in the worth of my time, I figured out that each jar of salsa had cost me approximately $2.30. Yes, when you figure that the cheapest I can buy a 16 oz. jar of a salsa in town is about $2.99, there are slight savings involved with going the homemade route, but as soon as you factor in the assumed monetary value of my time, the store-bought version suddenly triumphs as the better value. Granted, if I'd had homemade tomatoes on hand (our first red tomatoes are just about ready for picking) and if we're actually capable of growing garlic and onions, the cost of each jar would have dropped drastically, although if I factored in the time I spent growing all of the ingredients . . . you get where I'm going.

So why bother with the homemade lifestyle, other than the fact that I know no other way?

1. Money can't buy you love . . . or homegrown tomatoes. I found this quote on Diane's Crave Cute blog recently, and while technically, I suppose you could buy homegrown tomatoes, nothing quite matches the feeling of transforming something raw and unfinished into something delicious and/or beautiful.
2. Control. I've always had control issues. When it comes to homemade stuff, I have total control over how the finished product turns out, which I love. Don't like an ingredient in a recipe? I don't have to use it. This consequently means that the finished product tastes better to me than the store version.
3. When I make it myself, I can avoid preservatives and other less desirable ingredients in pre-made food products. 
4. Reduce, reuse, recycle. When you buy products from the store, you buy a new jar every time. By canning things myself, I can reuse my Mason jars for years. 
5. It's fun. I was shocked last year when Andy implied that my canning obsession was really just a hobby. "But," I stammered. "I'm just trying to feed us through the winter." That and, well, I just wouldn't spend that much time slaving over a steamy stove top in August if it was satisfying and fun.

In other news, look what we found in the potato patch:

Yep, a real, live potato.

I have a feeling there are more of them down there too. This one got bumped off the root when Andy and I went snooping in the straw for potatoes on Tuesday, so we scrubbed it off and threw it into a pot of lamb stew (probably the most delicious and least economical stew to ever grace the inside of a crockpot.) And let me say, the potato and the stew were both delicious.

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The Feast Nearby

I did it. I bought and read another book about owning chickens. Andy better watch out because a chicken coop is totally going up in the backyard, sooner or later.

I think Amazon recommended The Feat Nearby to me a while back; probably late last summer when I was busy searching It's the memoir of an out of work food editor (and as a pretty loyal reader of Fine Cooking and Cooking Light, I'm all over that) who moves to her small cabin in southwest Michigan to reorganize her life. With her poodle and parrot as her companions, she lives frugally, but focused on eating locally.  

While Mather's essays, which follow a full year of life in her 650 square ft. cabin (where the nearest stoplight is *gasp!* eight miles away. . .  cynical Ada feels the need to point out that she lives 53-ish miles from the nearest stoplight) are written in lovely prose, the essays are just that: essays. This is no how-to book, this is a chance to wax poetic on chickens, raspberry jam, and the single life.

One thing I was disappointed by was the lack of concrete detail about how exactly she got by on a $40 a week food budget. And frankly, $40 a week for food . . . for one person? As someone who capped her weekly food budget at $30 immediately after college, I'm just not that impressed. Despite what we're lead to believe, it is not that hard to both eat cheaply and well, just buy lots of dried goods - lentils, rice, pasta and peanut butter are your friend - and make sure you eat everything (i.e. produce) before it goes bad. Now, if Mather was living on $40 a week, full stop, then we'd truly have a "hold the presses" sort of thing going on. Hrumph! 

What was I saying?

Right, details. . .

While, I fully enjoyed the book for what it was, with a tagline like "how I lost my job, buried a marriage, and found my way by keeping chickens, foraging, preserving, bartering, and eating locally," I wanted some details. I didn't just want to hear in passing that you set up some strawberry preserves for fresh produce swapping system with your neighbor.

She talks a lot about carefully planning her yearly food supply (which included canning 50 pints of diced tomatoes!), but never gives many specifics. Call me crazy, but I want to see an appendix with information about exact amounts you canned, dehydrated, froze, etc. to get yourself through 12 months.

At the end of the essay she includes a set of recipes related to the essay's topics. We've tried out a couple of the recipes and they are yummy.  I made the lamb and apricot tagine to use up the leg of lamb I picked up on sale after Easter last year and just the other night I followed her directions for stuffing a squash. They're both winners and they make me anxious to try out her other recipes. That said, her directions for yogurt proved disappointing, but then I'm just not sure you're supposed to make yogurt when it's -3F outside. So I'm stalking up that failure to me and not her.

If you're looking for a homey, comforting read (the woman knits, how can you not love her?) for long winter evenings, this is a great choice . . . especially if you have a penchant for reading cooking magazines anyway.


 
Full disclosure: I did not pay for this book because my fabulous brother gave me a B&N gift certificate for Christmas. (Score!) The opinions expressed in this review are my own and I received no compensation for this review. 

P.S. Happy Groundhog's Day! 6 more weeks of winter where you are? We *always* have six more weeks of winter after February 2, so this day's a total cop-out in northern Minnesota. 

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My Hot, Steamy Love Affair

Andy looked me in the eyes. He'd cornered me by the pantry.

"Are you having an affair?" he asked.

I gulped. I hadn't thought he'd noticed how distant I'd become or how my evenings have been spent focused on matters other than him.  But I had to tell him the truth. I was having an affair. One that was hot and steamy, with just a tinge of danger.

"Yes," I fessed up. "With my hot water bath canner."

It's true.

What started out as a single batch of jam, quickly turned into an obsession. Things have only escalated since the "putting up" post. The last four weeks have been a frenetic flurry of food preservation. If I wasn't out picking berries, I was buying a lug of peaches. I've spent so much time standing at the kitchen counter, chopping, stirring, scooping that I developed shin splints this week.

Here's the damage:

From left to right:5 pints wild blueberry/raspberry jam
4.5 pints raspberry jam (tame raspberries, from Mom's garden)
7 pints peach salsa
4 quarts blueberry pie filling
3 quarts peach slices
3 quarts sauerkraut
4 pints peach jam
3 pints blueberry jam

Like any affair, I feel a little shame about the whole thing. When did I get so stinkin' domestic and focused on home economics? What 26-year-old in her right mind can't wait to get home so she can stand in front of boiling vat "canning things for winter?" I've been known to cackle in delight when I hear the "click" of the can lids sealing. It's all disconcerting.

But while I might wish from the bottom of my heart that I could quit the whole thing, by this point, things are too complicated for that. Anymore, it's hard to relax if I don't have a spoon or knife in my hands. I feel a little lost if my face isn't flushed from the steam of the burbling canner.

Still, at some point, it has to end. (Doesn't it?) Andy's tired of sharing me. Heck, there are even times when I want the life I had before back. I have to promise Andy (and myself) that it will all end soon  . . . right after I make another batch of salsa . . . and pickle some jalapenos . . . and . . . .

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The Dog Days

I've recently stumbled across a couple quotes about August.

The first one was shared with me by an Of Woods and Words fan: 

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color." — Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting 

The second quote I found while leafing through the latest issue of Minnesota Monthly:

"If the calendar were a family, August would be the great, bosomy aunt who turned down her first proposal and never again had the chance to marry. Here she comes, all smothering warmth, smelling of Aqua Net, and accompanied by a slight sense of sadness for opportunities missed." -- Shannon Olson.

I found the second quote last night when I'd finally put my feet up after an afternoon and evening of what some people might call homesteading and what I prefer to refer to as "fridge damage control."  It all started when I went out to survey the gardens and came back with four more large zucchinis in my hands. Which brought our total of harvested zucchinis and yellow summer squash that had not been transformed into anything edible and delicious up to eight. EIGHT. 

Too much zucchini

"Okay," I said to Andy, holding up the latest zucchini harvest, "who can we plant bomb?" It's that awful time of year when everyone has zucchinis (too many zucchinis) and there's no one out there to accept the (gracious, selfless) gifts of zucchini. And so, instead of setting up a "free zucchini (!!!)" stand on the side of the road, I turned on the oven, and got busy. I cranked out a double batch of both zucchini lemon muffins and chocolate zucchini bread, and chopped up two of the larger zucchini to dehydrate for later use in soups and chilis. Before I dealt with the zucchini, I had to do some reorganizing in the fridge, which resulted in a vat of fruit salad and another cold savory salad. 

"Congratulations," Andy said as I worked to get the water bath canner up to a boil to seal four quarts of blueberry pie filling. "You've successfully made it 20 degrees warmer in the cabin than it is outside."  

At the time, the thermometer in the kitchen said the indoor temp was 87, while the outdoor temp was down to 73. (Thanks for exaggerating, Andy.)

Steamy stuff

I'm not going to lie. When I looked at all those zucchinis piled on my counter, my first thought wasn't a prideful "we totally grew that." Nope, it was a feeling of sheer, body-surging horror: "What the heck am I going to do with all of these." By the time I got around to the blueberry pie filling (which had really been my sole ambition for the day), I stood over the pot, stirring the 25 cups of steaming berries and muttering under my breath "just fucking boil already." I think I lost points off my "happy homemaker ala1950s image" for the profanity. C'est la vie. 

So yes, the first week of August is certainly hanging hot and heavy in these parts. Thank goodness there's a lake 20 paces or so from the sweltering stove to provide instant heat relief.

As for the sense of missed opportunities, already Andy and I are heading out to the gardens to survey both the successes and failures and saying those fateful words: "Next year . . ."

Next year? Already the kohlrabi and broccoli have had their time in the sun. The evenings are becoming noticeably shorter. The first load of winter firewood has been ordered. It won't be long until that autumn crispness starts to sneak into the air.

But for now I'm planning to enjoy this first week of August, with all its warmth, all its sunshine, and all its zucchini.

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