a quest to find a pickle I will eat...

I really don't like pickles. At all. Being exposed to the nasty deli tray pickles at work pretty much all the time (and every time you open the office fridge door) doesn't help, but I can't recall liking pickles since I was little. I remember not minding dill pickles, and also the ones that my grandmother made. And she was famous for her pickles.

So when Mark and I got the chance to get a case of organic cucumbers at a really reasonable price, we jumped on the opportunity to can them in a few varieties. First up, dill pickles, made with dill from our own garden.

We also used canning salt (the additives in regular salt can make your brine cloudy), which the brand name for some reason I keep calling Mrs. Pickles instead of Mrs. Wages.

(As you can tell, we had a ton of cucumbers. The ones stacked on the island behind the bowl were only part of them. We still had a half a case that we hadn't touched yet.)

My spice bag had larger holes than was useful, so some of the spice got out, but it's okay if it ends up in the brine in the jars.

(Mark is using the blue stick to remove air bubbles from the inside of the jar. That tool doubles as a head space measurement tool, which lets you know if you have the proper amount of space between the lid and the contents to affect a good seal.)

We got 6 quarts out of this batch. Here's the shelf update!

Cherry jam, bread and butter pickles, and a garden update still to come!

more adventures in preservation

Mark and I have taken to canning and preservation like fish to water. I'm excited to continue to can each week as the harvest starts to appear in our CSA box and in the store/farmer's market. For various reasons including quality and the welfare of workers who pick our out of season tomatoes in this country, we are going to try to can as many fresh tomatoes as we can handle this year so as to try to not have to buy a fresh tomato in the store during the winter (and to give up eating fresh tomatoes on salads and sandwiches during that time as well). We also hope to can plenty of other veggies, sauces, salsas, and fruits as the season progresses.

Canning for us is a first step in trying to eat more locally, as well as a part of our continued efforts to give up chemically processed foods and eat organically. It also is special to me because I have a lot of memories of canning from growing up. I feel like in some small way I'm honoring my grandma's memory by canning like she would. (Come apple season I will be making some applesauce, mark my words.)

Anyway, we got more strawberries in our CSA this past week, so we made a half batch of strawberry lemon marmalade. (Recipe from the Ball Blue Book. Our copy is already sticky. Is that a good sign?)


Now that we're starting to have piles of jars in our dining room, we had to make a shelving area in our basement for the jars to be stored in a cool, dark place. Each time we can something, I'll take a photo of how the shelf is filling up to show our progress. Coming up later this week, cherry jam, dill pickles, and bread and butter pickles. (OK, the pickles aren't really sweet, and will be the first savory type thing I'll feature here, but as canning will be the name of the game in the summer, I'm going to include them.)

In the store so far, 9 half-pints of strawberry jam and 4 half-pints of strawberry lemon marmalade.

strawberry jam forever

Our CSA had flats of strawberries available this week, so we took advantage of them and filled our fridge with quarts of farm fresh berries. You just can't buy berries in the store that taste like berries straight from the farm. Tiny little buds filled with sweetness and ripened on the vine. Drool.

We had so many that we decided to try our hand at canning strawberry jam through the method we learned at a canning and preserving class we took at CCAC. (If only I would have paid attention as a child when my mom and grandma would can in the summers!) So we used the recipe in the Ball Blue Book for regular strawberry jam and got to it!

(Dutch oven of jam cooking down, stock pot of sterile jars, canning pot full of boiling water makes for a very full stovetop.)


So then what do you do when you have one leftover quart of ripe strawberries? You make shortcake.


There is a test in my family when someone is first given the family shortcake, to see if they are a Freeman or not. Mark is not a Freeman. Here is his non-Freeman shortcake. Notice the element that makes it "not Freeman."


I, on the other hand, am a Freeman. A strawberry shortcake purist who thinks the gift of the shortcake and fresh berry topping needs to be enjoyed unadulterated. Behold, the best summer dinner in the world.

foodie book roundup

I realized that it had been some time since I've talked about any of the food books I've read, and since this is one of my favorite genres of books, that list is always growing. Here are a few that I've read recently and would recommend.

The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love - by Kristin Kimball
This is a memoir by a woman who gave up her life as a journalist in NYC to start a farm from the ground up with her husband. It's beautifully written and tells the story of the nitty gritty reality of running a farm. Her descriptions of meals made lovingly from the fruits of the work of their own hands were captivating.

It also made me glad that we participate in a local CSA which helps small farms survive in the day and age of horrid factory farming and industrial agriculture.



Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms - by Nicolette Hahn Niman

Niman is ironically a vegetarian. She is an attorney who worked for Robert Kennedy's Waterkeeper project, and in her work began to discover the ugly truth of factory farming -- not only what it does to our food, but the animals, the water supply, and the environment in general, as well as the livelihood of farmers and industry workers. This book is partly a description of her own journey of discovery, but also gives practical advice on how we can make a difference and vote with our forks. Her husband was the founder of Niman Ranch, which raises animals in humane and sustainable conditions. This book is just one of the many voices that convincingly argue that we can choose to take back our knowledge of where our food comes from and how it is made, and make both practical and moral/ethical decisions we can live with based on that knowledge.


Fannie's Last Supper: Two Years, Twelve Courses, and Creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook - by Christopher Kimball

Christopher Kimball (of America's Test Kitchen and Cooks Illustrated fame) lives in Boston, and made it a project to discover as much as he could about Fannie Farmer and about how cooking and daily life would have been in her time. The book is devoted to the preparations for a 12 course, turn of the century meal that he and his staff prepared for a group of guests, in almost exactly the same way Fannie would have cooked such foods herself. His team even made their own gelatin from calves feet! Along the way Kimball discusses American culinary history, as it pertains to the different types of cuisine he was preparing and testing, using Farmer's famous cookbook as a reference. You would have to be really interested in food history and culinary arts to want to read the entire book, but it was truly fascinating, and I appreciated Kimball's dry wit. I'm glad that this book did not let me down, since I am such a devotee of ATK and Cooks. (The most foolproof recipes you will ever find, hands down.)

Also in my reading list since 2011 were two books about Julia Child. One, her memoir My Life in France by Julia Child, and the other, As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto edited by Joan Reardon. If you have any interest in Julia Child, these are both fantastic books. We sometimes forget that people who become celebrities (especially those that unlike the Kardashian sisters are deserving of their notoriety) had lives and relationships of their own. The book of letters was a fascinating glimpse into a friendship, and also a time where letter writing was important and something that people considered was a worthwhile expenditure of energy. I wish I had that patience. Of course Life in France is also a gem, describing her life and perceptions of living in France with her husband Paul while working on the manuscript for Mastering the Art of French Cooking. If you read and enjoyed or saw the movie Julie & Julia, these books are far superior. Definitely give them a try.

Next on my food-related book list is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver.