The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

And the Madness Continues

And that was last week’s madness, all those jars of sauce.  I ended up with eleven quarts of spaghetti sauce with meat and eleven quarts of marinara.

And after that, I stopped.  For a while.  I felt exhausted from it all – the obsessive NEED to can every bit of produce in sight.  So I did other things…like work, take care of my family, do laundry…

And then, once I’d had a bit of relative rest, the urge began to creep back…

I will blame the tomatillos.

(Side note:  I took a break from typing just a few minutes ago to wash some of the bowls and pots in the sink from last night, and I was thinking – or wondering – just how much canning do I really NEED to do?  How much food should I have “put up” for the winter, or the year, or whatever.  And then I thought, well, I’ll keep going nuts through the end of this month…because then I’ll need to do all the cookie baking for Christmas anyway, and there’s only room for one kind of madness at a time…and all that was followed by the slightly kidding but not entirely thought:  I can stop any time I want to.  Um…okay.)

Anyway, back to blaming the tomatillos…

These are some of the purple ones.  As you can see, they’re not all entirely purple, and in fact some are barely purple at all.  I pick them when they release easily from the branch, though I know if I let them stay on longer, they’d grow more purpley.  And some fall off.  And some are taken before their time by overenthusiastic tomatillo-pickers who are both taller and shorter than I am.

So here they are. 

We also had lots of green ones – still do – but I didn’t take a picture of them.

I’d frozen some of our earlier tomatillo harvests, but the freezers have become crowded so I decided I should make salsa now.  There are still more tomatillos, both green and purple, out in the garden.  I’ll deal with them later.  This weekend, I’m canning what I’ve got.

So because we grew these purple tomatillos, I decided I’d make two separate salsas – the regular green one I’ve made before, and one with purple tomatillos and white tomatoes.  I thought that one would be gorgeous.

So last night I prepped everything for the purple salsa:

So that’s five cups of purple tomatillos (chopped via the food processor), white vinegar and lemon juice, six cups of white tomatoes AND some of the palest green tomatillos to get me to that six cups, and then in the back bowl there are onions, jalapenos, cilantro, garlic, salt, coriander, and cumin.

Look at this pretty purple puree:

I’m not even a big fan of the color purple – I leave that to Julia – but in food?  I love it.  Purple cabbage, purple onions, purple tomatillos.  So striking against the usual greens!

So I combined everything and cooked it for the requisite amount of time and ended up canning eight pints of this salsa.

Now, a while back in an earlier post featuring the purple tomatillo, someone asked in the comments section if the tomatillos would stay purple when cooked or would they turn gray.

I didn’t know, but now I do.

Sadly, the purple fades.

:(

They look just like the green tomatillo salsa.  I think.  I’m making that today, so maybe there will be a slight difference.

But still.

I had hoped.

Oh well.  It tastes good, and that’s the important thing.  Really it is.

And I can always make a fresh salsa with the next round of purple tomatillos, and we’ll just eat it that way.  One of those things that can’t be preserved and must be appreciated and enjoyed in the moment.

So that was that.

I also canned 7 quarts of beef stock last night, and am right this very minute (7:00am on the nose) canning another 3 quarts – I didn’t have time last night. 

In addition, I’ve got a double batch of baked beans slow cooking in the oven.  My plan is to save some of them for part of tonight’s dinner, and – you guessed it! – can the rest.  I’m particularly excited about that – this will be my first foray into canning solid food.

NO – wait, that’s not true!  At some point during the summer I canned clams. 

But still.  Canned, homemade baked beans!  I’m very excited.

My favorite part of making baked beans?  Besides the eating, I mean…the foam!

I pretty much follow Bill’s mom’s recipe, or at least the basic procedure.  After soaking the beans overnight, I drain them, put them in a pot, add fresh water and a little baking soda.  I assumed the soda helped soften the beans, but I’ve read that it also helps eliminate the gas-producing qualities.  In this house, I’ll take all the help I can get with THAT. 

Anyway, I bring the beans/soda/water mixture to a boil and then cook them until the skins peel away from the beans when you blow on them.  And I skim the foam off as it bubbles up.

But sometimes first I take pictures. 

It’s like a science experiment!

And if I’m distracted – like I usually am – the water will boil and the foam will rise and spill right over the pot.  Onto the stove.  And then I have to clean it up. 

I didn’t take a picture of that. 

Once the beans were ready, I drained and rinsed them and set them aside while I cooked some of the trimmings from our most recent batch of bacon…

Bill had thoughtfully diced them before he froze them.  Thanks, Bill!

Once they were browning a bit, I added some water, Dijon, salt and pepper, molasses, brown sugar, and a couple of peeled, halved onions. 

And the beans.  And a smidge more water.

Then I covered the pot, put it in the oven (250 degrees F), and I’ll take a look at them around noon or so.  Maybe a bit earlier.  I’ll also drop the temperature down a bit in another hour or so.  I just want the pot to be nice and warm.

So now, to recap, I’ve got jars of beef stock in the canner, baked beans baking in the oven, and my next move is to put together the green tomatillo salsa and can that once the beef stock is finished.

And I’m going to be roasting two chickens later today.  For dinner tonight and sandwiches and other concoctions through the week. 

And the bones – of course – will be for more stock.

Because it’s still October, and I can still can.

But I can stop any time I want.

~~~

I was going to end this post there, but I can’t seem to stop ANYTHING right now, so I will go on typing. 

I think part of my canning mania – or cannia – okay, Jayne, stop right there with THAT nonsense – comes from my increased familiarity and comfort level with the pressure canner.  It’s rather scary, with all the heavy duty locking mechanisms and the loud sputtering noise it makes as the jars are processing…and what if I did something wrong, what if the jars explode inside the canner? 

I’ve kind of passed that early stage of worry, and now it’s just about as no-big-deal to me as boiling water bath canning or cooking something or deep frying or whatever.

I’m comfortable.  My pressure canner and I are friends now, not strangers trying to be polite despite a high level of distrust (on my part). 

So that’s where I am.

What are you up to today?

Canathon

That’s how that corner of my kitchen looked this morning.

Yesterday I made two different great big batches of tomato salsa.  Both were from the Ball Complete Book of Canning – my usual launching pad for canning projects.  On the left, 23 pints and one half pint of Spicy Salsa (I quadrupled the recipe in the book because we liked this one last year), and to the right, 21 jars of what Ball calls Zesty Salsa and what we are calling Dragon Fire Salsa. 

Actually, Bill referred to it as Dragon Fumes, I think, when he tasted it last night.  But “fumes” just makes me think of putting gas in the car, and so I changed it. 

All the salsa was canned using the hot water bath – or, more accurately – the boiling water bath method.  I went three rounds with each salsa.  Finally got in bed at 11:15.  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing on my days off, but apparently THIS is what I do.  Relax?  Not so much.  Maybe later today.

Right now I have a few moments to type because I’ve had the last 5 quarts of spaghetti sauce with meat, or meat sauce, or whatever you want to call it, in the pressure canner.  The timer for that finally went off and now I’m waiting for the canner to depressurize so I can open it up and see if the jars survived their ordeal.

I’ll add them to the jars of meat sauce I canned the other day, and I’ll have eleven.  Yay!

Pressure canning reminded me, today, of what it’s like to have a newborn, sort of.  That sputtering noise the little weight gauge makes when the pressure’s correct…I find myself constantly listening, making sure it’s not sputtering too long or too often or, heaven forbid, not often enough.  It’s like that new mother feeling when the baby is asleep IN THE OTHER ROOM.  Is he breathing?  Was that a cry?  (Holding breath and listening to the monitor….)  Yes, he’s breathing!  (Great sigh of relief for one second until it starts over.)

Okay, it’s not EXACTLY like having a newborn.  I wouldn’t pick up and hug my pressure canner.  At least…not while it was still really really hot….

What else is going on here….

I do like ellipses……..……

Oh, yes, and in addition to the jars in the canner, I’ve got a great big vat of meatless tomato sauce bubbling on the stove.  I’ll can that next – water bath version – and then I think I might be done for today.  I was thinking of making and canning apple pie filling, mostly because I’ve never done it and we’ve got some great apples we picked the other day…but I think it’ll depend on how long the tomato sauce takes.  I have a feeling there will be a lot of jars.

Oh!  And this is a new one – I’m just about out of pint jars, 8 oz jars, and I’ve got ONE empty 4 oz jar left.  I’ve got enough quart jars for today and beyond, but that’s IT.  In fact, yesterday I had to buy two cases of pint jars so I’d have enough for all the salsa.  Part of me wants to rush out and replenish the other sizes of jars, you know, JUST IN CASE THERE’S A CANNING EMERGENCY, but I am resisting.

Oh, and Julia’s home from school today.  Not feeling well – sniffly and, well, she woke up with “rusty boogers.”  If that isn’t cause to stay home, I don’t know what is. 

Actually it’s been nice having her around.  She helped me out by writing Spicy Salsa and Dragon Fire Salsa and the date on all those jars.  And she’s pretty entertaining.  Kept saying something about “now I’ll sign their heads!” as she wrote on all the salsa jars.  That, or racing to the tissue box mid-sneeze.  Yes, she washed her hands frequently.  And didn’t sneeze ON the jars.

Right now she’s “taking a nap,” which seems to mean “singing and playing” in her room. 

I don’t think she’s all that sick, really. 

But we all need an occasional day to sing and play in our rooms.

Crabby

Callinectes sapidus.

Isn’t it gorgeous?

Bill (the Hunter, the Great Provider, Farmer of the Bay and Gardener of the Back Yard) has been doing a bunch of crabbing lately.  We’re eating our fill and then packing the remaining meat in crab stock and freezing it. 

I’m looking forward to winter, when we’ll thaw one of those packages and make something yummy with locally caught crab meat…stuffed mushrooms, maybe.  Stuffed flounder.  Cheese and Crabmeat Fondue.  Crab Rangoon.  Who knows what else.

Candied Citrus Peel

I had two days off, back to back, last week, and figured I’d use them for a baking marathon.  That time of year, you know.  I try (really, I do) to get the German cookies made early enough so we can ship them off to various far-flung family members so they arrive BEFORE Christmas.  (Without having to overnight them, heh heh.)

Anyway, one of the cookies that’s part of that collection is Lebkuchen, a traditional German spiced cookie that includes candied citrus peel – what kind you use depends on the recipe you’re following.  Bill’s mom’s version has candied orange peel and candied citron, the kinds that come in those 4 oz. containers in the grocery store. 

I generally make more than one batch of these cookies, because they’re one of the favorites, so that means several containers of each kind of candied peel. 

Now, this year, for various reasons (including the Scratchy saga), money is tight.  And those candied peel containers are pricey, for the amount you get.  And they’re also probably loaded with preservatives and additives and other “-ives” that aren’t at all good for you…so I decided it would be both healthier and cheaper to make my own candied peel.  And it’s a cool thing to do.  And pretty.

I’ve thought of doing it in years past, but then I’d get lazy and just buy the containers.  This year, with two days off IN A ROW! I decided to candy some peel. 

So here we go…

As I Brush Damp Tendrils of Blond Hair from My Weary Brow

Okay, a bit dramatic.

I’ve been busy – work-busy and home-busy.  But it’s all good busy.  I love my job, so I’m perfectly happy when I’m there, and at home I’ve been canning up a storm, which isn’t always fun, but it’s satisfying and rewarding to look at the jars and jars of food on my pantry shelves.

Productive Chaos

My dining room, right this very minute.  And probably into tomorrow.

Those jars – marinara.  Two kinds – one with a lot of basil and oregano, one with a lot of garlic.  The rest of the table?  All sorts of stuff, most of it food related.  Scratch that – all of it food related.

Tomatillo Salsa

I’ve made a few batches of this salsa, first in 8 oz jars, and, later, after we realized how good it is, in pint jars.  It doesn’t have quite the same flavor as the Roasted Tomatillo Salsa I wrote about a while back, but it’s pretty similar and very, very good.

Watermelon Jelly

I thought it would be pink.

That’s why I decided to make it.  I thought little jars of pink sweetness would be so pretty…

But it’s yellow.

Not even a hint of pink.

Pretty strange, huh?

But how’s it taste, you ask?

In the words of my husband…

Roasted Garlic Jelly Two Ways

I wasn’t sure if I’d like this jelly. 

I love roasted garlic.  I roast big batches of garlic periodically, then puree the softened cloves with olive oil and freeze it all in ice cube trays.  So good added to pasta sauces, or gravies, or dips, or smeared on sliced baguettes and topped with thin wedges of brie….

I could go on and on.

So at first the idea of a roasted garlic jelly was very appealing.  But then I read that you have to strain the roasted garlic, so all you get is the juice (there are other ingredients – I’ll get to those).  Which makes sense – it’s a jelly, not a jam.  But I was trying to imagine a clear jelly smeared on a baguette, and it wasn’t happening for me.

But I figured I’d give it a try anyway.

And I’m glad I did.

A Look at My Morning, So Far

This was my dining room table at 6:55 this morning.

Please ignore the bags of potato chips.  In this house we only eat homemade potato chips, of course.  Those were…for………the neighbors.

Anyway. 

On the table I’ve got some canned crushed tomatoes, other canned stuff that’s buried and you can’t see it.  Bowls of basil, sage, and kale, a little plastic container of cookes, a bowl of tomatillows, some apples, peaches, garlic, tomatoes, a few jalapenos somewhere, 6 ears of corn, that bag of shredded coconut…which is also……for the neighbors, because of course we only travel to tropical islands, climb up trees, harvest our own coconuts, and shred the flesh ourselves….

Booger Jam

This isn’t something you’ll be able to make all the time, of course.  In fact, in order to make the project worth your time and effort, it helps if you gradually stock up on the ingredients over, say, a year.

It really helps if you’ve got small children and your whole family gets massive head colds throughout the winter.  Just, you know, save the bits and pieces in ziploc bags in the freezer so they’ll stay nice and almost-fresh.

Ah-choo!

Laugh and the World Laughs With You, Cry and Total Strangers Give You Limburger to Go With That Whine

I posted this picture the other day:

Now here’s the story that goes with it.

Tomato Sauce

This is the inside of my pressure canner right now at this very moment, which, in case you’re wondering, is 9:26 pm Eastern Standard Time.

I am taking this as a sign that there is nothing more for me to do in this BLEEPING kitchen tonight.

Pressure Canning Beef and Chicken Stock

Way back in May, as a combination Mother’s Day, Birthday, Christmas, and any other gift-receiving holiday you can think of, I got a pressure canner.  And I’ve been waiting to use it.  I knew that the first thing I wanted to can was homemade stock.  I make a lot of stock, chicken especially, and I’d wanted the pressure canner especially so I could put the stock in jars and give us more room in the freezer. 

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, the pressure canner made its canning debut….

Notes From Yesterday and Today So Far

Okra! 

We’ve never grown it before, so I had no idea what to look for in terms of the actual ripening fruit.  But here’s what it looks like.  Pretty interesting, no?

A Wee Sma’ Batch of Pickled Beets

Three 8 oz jars of pickled beets.

I’ve written before that as a child I was not a fan of beets.  I didn’t like how their pink juice bled into my mashed potatoes.  As an adult, though, I love them.  And if I don’t want pink food, I can just put my beets in a dish by themselves.  My favorite way to eat them – oven roasted and then tossed in a warm pasta salad with goat cheese and arugula, olive oil and a drizzle of balsamic, and salt and pepper.  Yum.

My grandfather loved pickled beets.  AND he liked to eat them in sandwich form, alongside thick slices of cheddar cheese.  Pickled beets were okay…but I didn’t want them in my sandwich.

But.  Again.  Now that I’m an adult…the thought of actually making my own pickled beets is definitely appealing.

So the other day Bill and I brought a bowl outside and started harvesting.

From above ground, it looked like we had larger beets than we really did.

Oh well.  That’s what math is for – to adjust recipes!

First, though, I had to prep the beets so that I’d know how to adjust the recipe.

I left about two inches of stalk on the beet, and left the roots alone. 

The book (Ball’s Complete Book of Home Canning) recommends doing that to keep the color from bleeding out of the beets. 

Next, I cleaned the beets, making sure to get all the bits of dirt out of the roots.

Hooray – clean beets.

I put them in a pot and added enough water to cover the beets completely.

Then I set the pot on the stove to boil.

While that was going on, I cleaned the leaves and sorted them, putting the worst ones in the compost bin and setting the nicest ones aside to use for something else.

The book says the beets will take between 20 and 40 minutes to cook, depending on the size, so you have to check each beet with a sharp knife in order to see if they’re tender.

When the beets are cooked through, rinse them under cold water (or drop them in an ice bath), and then peel off the outer skin and roots.  Trim off the stem and the tap root, and then slice or quarter.  The book said to leave the small ones whole, but I sliced those, too.

Pretty, aren’t they?

Oh, and the other thing I did (well, I probably did lots of things, but I’m just sharing the relevant stuff) was to chop up a few onions.  One of the recipes included onions, and that sounded like a lovely idea to me.  Especially since we didn’t have enough beets to make a full (10 cups of sliced beets) recipe.

These all came from our garden.  Top to bottom, there’s a red onion that never really…onionized.  A Cippolini, and a regular white onion.

I ended up getting another white onion as well.

So.  After all the slicing, I ended up with about 2 cups of beets. 

And after a bit of pencil chewing and counting on my fingers (which did no good, as this problem involved division) I calculated how much I’d need of all the other ingredients.

Time to pickle.

I chopped up onions…

I tied some pickling spices in a bit of cheesecloth…

And I washed my canning jars and lids and set them in pots of water to simmer.  I also put a large pot of water on the stove for the filled jars. 

And, in a fourth pot, I combined water, vinegar, sugar, the spices, and the onions. 

Brought them to a boil, let them simmer a while, and then removed the spice bag.

Next, I spooned the beets into the jars (I’d prepped 5 jars but only needed 3), layering them with some of the onions.  Then I poured the rest of the liquid from the pot into the jars, leaving 1/2” of head space.

I wiped off the jar rims, put the lids and bands on, and placed the jars in the large pot of water.

I brought the water to a rolling boil, covered the pot, and boiled the pickles – as directed – for 30 minutes.  Then I shut off the heat, removed the pot lid, and let the jars rest for five minutes before taking them out of the liquid.

Now, normally I hover over jars like a new mother, waiting for the lids to make that lovely little popping sound as the pressure inside the jars pulls the metal lids tight.  But I think Alex and Bill were both talking, and I missed the pops.  So I pressed on the lids, in the center, to see if there was any give, which would indicate improper sealing. 

No give.  Good seal.  Success.

Once the jars had cooled completely, I stuck one in the fridge to chill the beets before we tried them. 

The onions have absorbed the pink beet color, as you can see. 

The taste?  Very good, though I think I’ll increase the amount of spice for the next batch.  Maybe a little more vinegar, too.

But overall, pretty tasty.  Sweet and tangy, with an earthy but not overpowering hint of beet.

I don’t even mind the pink juice. 

Now I need to make some cheddar, so I can revisit that sandwich, now that I’m all grown up with mature taste buds….

For my tiny-batch recipe, see below.

Tiny Batch Pickled Beets and Onions

(makes about 3 8-ounce jars)

Ingredients:

2 cups prepared, sliced beets

3/4 cup sliced onion

1 tablespoon pickling spice

1 cup white vinegar

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup sugar

What to do:

1.  To prepare the beets, cut the stalks so about 2” remain on the beet, and leave the roots intact.  Scrub beets clean in cool water.  Place beets in a pot, largest on the bottom, smaller beets above, and fill with cold water until the beets are just covered.  Bring to a boil and cook anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes.  Smaller beets will cook faster than the bigger ones, so at the twenty minute mark, start checking beets by inserting a thin knife into the beet.  If the knife goes in easily, the beet is done.  Remove beets as they become tender.  Rinse in cold water and slip off the outer skin.  Trim off root and stalks, and slice about 1/4” thick.  Alternately, you could leave the small ones whole and quarter the larger beets.  The choice is yours.

2.  Prepare jars, lids and bands.  (If you’re new to canning, read here to see what you need to do.  It’s a jam recipe, but preparation of jars is the same.  Or buy a good canning book (Ball puts out a few of them) and follow their directions.)

3.  Make a spice bag for the pickling spices with a small, doubled square of cheesecloth and some string.

4.  Place the onions, vinegar, water, sugar, and spice bag in a small pot and bring to a boil.  Simmer for about 15 minutes, to infuse liquid with the spices.  Discard the bag when done.

5.  Spoon sliced beets into jars, layering with some of the onions, leaving a bit more than a 1/2” of head space.  Then pour the pickling liquid in to cover the beets and onions, leaving 1/2” of head space per jar.  Make sure there are no air pockets by tilting jars or gently inserting a knife into the jar along the side and pressing the vegetables back a bit to allow the liquid to redistribute.  Wipe the rims of the jars with damp paper towel, place lids on jars, then bands.  Tighten bands to “fingertip tight” (just tight, not so tight that your muscles bulge and your face goes red with effort.

6.  Place jars in canning pot, put the lid on the pot and bring to a rolling boil.  Starting when the water reaches the rolling boil, process the jars for 30 minutes.  Yes, 30.  When that’s done, shut off the heat, remove the lid, and leave jars in water for another 5 minutes.  Then remove jars, let them cool, and store.  You’ll want to listen for the little “pop” sound as the lids complete their seal, but if you don’t hear it, you can check by pressing on the center of the lid with your finger.  It should be slightly concave, and there shouldn’t be any give when you press.  If the jar hasn’t sealed properly, store in the fridge and consume within a couple weeks.  If the jar has sealed properly, label the jars and add them to your pantry.

Enjoy!

Lemon Ginger Marmalade

I’ve never been a fan of marmalade.  I think maybe I’d tried some when I was a kid and the slight bitterness of it turned me off.  I probably had it at my maternal grandparents’ house.  They were English, so, you know, they were required by law to have at least one jar of marmalade (MAAHHM-uh-lade) in the house at all times.  I think I tried orange.

But last month, when I was scrambling to make Christmas gifts for people, I came upon a recipe for Lemon-Ginger Marmalade, and it sounded really interesting.  I’ve got an English cousin living nearby, and I figured he and his family (the rest of whom are Yanks), might like it…maybe my mother…and I forget who else I gave a jar to. 

So I made it.  And this morning, just before I started typing this post, I opened the one remaining jar, made some toast, and tried it.

Know what?

It’s good stuff!

Cranberry Mustard

 

One of the goodies I gave out for Christmas this year was a Cranberry Mustard. 

My sister had a TON of frozen cranberries – someone gave them to her – and she gave me a huge bagful around Thanksgiving time.  I figured I could find good uses for them, and this mustard was one of them.

Mixed Hot Pepper Jelly

I was thinking ahead to Christmas with this one.  Thinking of making festively-colored jelly to give (if we can bear to part with any) to some family and friends.

I’d already made two batches of Habanero Gold, which is a very pretty gold (of course) color with flecks of red pepper in it.

There was also a recipe for Jalapeno jelly, which would be pretty with the flecks of green…but I’d used up a lot of our jalapenos when I made hot sauce.

What to do?

Habanero Gold

Hot Paper Lantern Habanero Peppers, ripening in our garden.

We grew a variety of hot peppers this year and, amazingly, they’ve all done really well.  We’ve made fresh salsa with them, and recently I canned some Jalapeno salsa and will probably make another batch of that when more of the peppers have reached maturity.

A couple of years ago our friend, John, made some sort of hot pepper jam or marmalade and gave us a jar.  I don’t remember all the details, just that it was hot and sweet and completely addictive. 

With our lovely selection of peppers this year, I really wanted to make a jam or jelly myself.  Over the winter I’d gone through various canning books and recipes, and marked the pages of the jellies I wanted to try.  And finally, with our peppers ripening, and some of them turning brilliant shades of red, it was time.

Jalapeño Salsa

This recipe comes from Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving.  The book says you'll get about six 8-ounce jars or three pints.  I got five 8-ounce jars plus a little (maybe a quarter cup) left over, which was nice because I got to taste it.  The rest of the jars will sit for at least 3 more weeks, as the book recommends letting the salsa mature "to mellow and round out the outstanding flavor."

Here are the ingredients (and some pictures and my commentary):

Beef Jerky

 

So what did you do over the weekend?

On Sunday, we made jerky.

Blueberry Lime Jam

Oh, how I love blueberries.

Strawberry Freezer Jam

If you've never made jam, and are feeling hesitant about going through the whole cooking and canning process, and you just want to maybe dip your toe into the jam-making pool and see what temperature the water is, then this is the way to do that.

Rhubarb Ginger Jam

It's thick and rhubarb- tart and cooked-sugar-sweet and has a little heat from the fresh ginger and a little something friendly from the vanilla.

It's terrific.  I'm already thinking of ways to use this, and I'm also already thinking I should have made more.

Guess I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed when I go to the Farmers' Market on Friday.

But back to the beginning....

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam - The First Two Batches

Alex - the jam afficianado in our house - has pronounced this jam "Not bad...it's actually pretty good."  With two approving nods of his head.  So I'm thinking I got about an A-.

As I'd mentioned after my trip to the Farmers' Market on Friday, I bought a total of 4 quarts of strawberries:  6 individual pints of berries from one farm, one quart from another farm.  All were gorgeously ripe and red all the way through.  I also bought 2 lbs of rhubarb from the Honey Stick Man.  So I figured I'd have enough for a batch of jam and a pie.  Happily, I was wrong - I got two batches of jam and a pie out of the deal.  Well, nearly two batches.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.