canning and garden update

I wanted to make a batch of bread and butter pickles and some relish, but didn't have enough small cucumbers from my garden.    We went to the local "farm market", which is a shop which brings in local produce, rather than a farmers market because it's only open on Saturday morning, and the timing was wrong.   It was $8 for a small basket of pickling cucumbers and I'd need 4 baskets for the 2 recipes.  There was a half bushel for $30, which was less than the 4 baskets so of course being frugal, I got the half bushel.   

I made dill pickles.

I made cucumber relish

I made a second batch of dill pickles, these ones sliced into rounds instead of spears.

I made bread and butter pickles, my favourite!

I gave 3 lbs of cucumbers to my daughter so she could make pickles.

I still have enough pickles in the fridge to make another batch!

We have more pickles in the pantry than we can eat in a year!  I even started canning some in small jars as give aways!

Last week the blackberries started ripening. They don't all ripen at once, so it's not an onerous task.   If you leave 3 days between picking, or sometimes 4, then it's worth the effort.   This is including the fact that I neglected to weed out the nettles earlier in the season, and keep forgetting to wear long pants and sleeves, resulting in tingling legs and arms.   Anyway, I've got just over 1 kg of blackberries frozen, for use later in the season, when the weather cools down a bit for more comfortable processing.  There are still quite a lot of berries left on the brambles though, so I'm guessing several more pickings before I give up and leave the rest to go to seed.

I also pruned the tomatoes back to get rid of a lot of excess leaves and hopefully aid the fruit in ripening.   I'm not sure I cut away enough of the excess leaves though.  They are still pretty full. The plants have quite a lot of fruit on them, but it's all still very green, due to another summer of less than adequate sunshine.    I may have to buy some tomatoes just to make sure there are some canned in the pantry for the winter.   I use all of the 1/2 bushel that I put up when I have to buy them, but could easily use more.

I have herbs to dry, mainly oregano, basil and parsley this year, and potatoes to harvest.  The tomatoes are wait and see.   The cucumbers are still producing and I'm getting one or two pickling cucumbers a day, which I generally eat for lunch, along with whatever cherry tomatoes are ripe.  The zucchini is still producing, but they are just starting to get a bit of mildew on them, so they'll be done soon.   Peppers, hot Hungarian banana peppers are growing fast and furiously this year.   I will need to harvest soon and I'll likely have to pickle them for winter use too.   They are pretty delicious.  

Quick Trip to PEI

 

View from take off 

It was a quick holiday, with a few travel glitches but full of family and fun.  First there was a power failure, so no elevators which left all of us scrambling to find a place for us to sleep the night before we left.  Since it was an early flight, it made more sense to be safely ensconced close to the airport, rather than several hours away.   The power came back on and all was good.   The plane we were supposed to take was delayed on their departure, so we had a leisurely morning rather than a rushed one.    We didn't have to worry about missing our connecting flight as it was on the same plane we flew in on.   Regardless of a bit more airport time than one would like, for things outside of anyone's control, the service from Porter Airlines was excellent, friendly and professional.  

We landed at the Charlottetown airport in drizzle.   It drizzled all afternoon and evening.   We tried to find a restaurant for supper but there was nothing available.  It was high tourist season after all.  Finally we found a totally empty restaurant, with tons of seating and people coming in and out for take out.   It was a Chinese food restaurant and after talking with the owner, we found out that after a 4 week closure for renovations, this was their first night open.   The food ranged from good to excellent.  Their schezwan noodles were really, really good!   When the guys asked if they were licensed, they were, had no beer, but the owner said just a minute, and rushed to the liquor/beer store half a block away and brought back a shopping cart full of different beers to stock his cooler.  All because two guys wanted a beer with supper, on their opening night.  Partway through dinner the sun broke out, and it was like every glitch suddenly disappeared.

Red boat in harbour was unloading gravel

Charlottetown is a lovely little city.  With a large area set up for tourism, there are lots of restaurants and little shops.  The waterfront is lovely with a great board walk and lots of things to see.   We had rooms in a boutique hotel very close to downtown, so we could walk down regularly.   

We had rented a car so we got to see much of the island.   We did a day of museums, the L.M. Montgomery birthplace, the Green Gables museum, the Potato museum, which had the Agriculture museum attached.   The L.M. Montgomery museum came highly recommended and it was interesting and full of the authors scrap books and some other documents.   The Green Gables museum though was full of "scope for the imagination".   It was a home that was owned by Montgomery's aunt and in it were various items that she'd incorporated into her books, like the blue chest, the china cabinet from Emily of New Moon?, and the view from the window to the lake of shining waters!   It enjoyed it very much.

We had a late lunch at the potato museum, which mainly served potatoes.   The servings were massive and one of the meals was a stuffed baked potato with a side of potatoes!   I bucked the trend and had a bowl of chilli.   None of us were ready for supper yet, so we took a sunset boat tour of the harbour.  It advertised seeing seals and lobsters.   We'd looked for whale watching but hadn't found an available tour, so this one was instead of that.   The evening tour didn't go to the seals, but we were treated to love music, a lot of island information and a very educational program on lobsters.  This included being able to pet a lobster, fresh from the trap.  I will admit that I didn't pet the lobster as it was passed around from passenger to passenger before it was put back into the sea.  The captain had a special permit allowing him to have one trap for educational purposes.   

We went swimming the next day at a provincial park and got to play in the water and a unique white sand beach, on an island with mostly red sand and clay.   We left once it got busy and realised as we drove back to the hotel that we'd seen most of the island.   DH really enjoyed the rental car which was a sub compact SUV.   Even after another delay on the way home due for reasons that apparently included a broken loo door, we got home.   I will say that the landing on a short runway surrounded by water showed me how very much I'm not good with plane landings.   The only downside of the trip was the ride home on the GO train, packed beyond capacity with people from the Jays game and the Toronto Indy races.  

All in all it was a fabulous trip.   We had a blast.   The cats were happy to see us when we got home and the chooks were happy to be let out to free range, as we'd told our son to keep them in, so he had less work.  The only thing I didn't do was find a special skein of sock yarn to have as a souvenir.   Otherwise the trip was perfect and the first time we'd been away for anything at all in over 4 years!

Strawberry Jam Fairy

starting point

 Today I was told that I was the Strawberry Jam fairy by a guest at Westfield, as I was delivering some samples of jam that we'd made at Westfield, to some nearby busy staff members.   

I was working with Ryan today, who is great fun to be with.  He doesn't mind helping out with things, including talking with people, any cleaning chores etc.   Today, he helped with the strawberry jam, which I'd planned to make on the Happy Thoughts Wood cook stove.  

Most jam recipes in historical cookery books call for a 1:1 ratio in weight of

Almost done

fruit to sugar.   The Wife's Own Book of Cookery, 1856, has recipes which call for 1 to .75 ratio of fruit to sugar.  This makes an amazingly flavourful jam.   Today I used 1 kg of strawberries to 750g of sugar.   It was cooked on a wood stove, using a cast iron pot.   I used frozen berries for convenience.  They were still frozen when the jam was started, so they we took turns manually chopping them with a wooden spatula we had to stir with.   It worked well.   The spatula was about 4 inches wide and had small holes in it, which worked a treat at keeping the jam from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Jam and tea

We cooked it until it started to thicken up and the bubbles blooped appropriately.   When the jam is starting to thicken, the boiling changes and you can tell when it is done.  We were given little paper cups for handing out samples.  We had about 1/4 of the cast iron pot of jam when done, and used most of it up for samples.    It took about an hour to make the jam and for most of that hour, the house smelled awesomely of strawberries.  We also took turns stirring as the jam needed to be constantly stirred for the whole hour.

You don't need to add any water to the fruit in the beginning.  The sugar quickly draws out the moisture from the fruit creating all the liquid that is needed to make the jam.   Early recipes don't add lemon like modern recipes.  This drops the ph to help keep the bacteria away.   Since there was no intention to keep this jam for months, because we were eating it fresh, it wasn't needed anyway.   If I were to make this jam to eat over the winter, I might add a tbsp of lemon juice.  I'd also pre-heat the jars to add the hot jam once it was made, and water bath can the filled jam jars for 10 minutes.  This length of time changes with different altitudes.    

Also, the tea is gingerale.   It looks quite proper in the cups and hides the modern drink well.  I didn't bring enough water with me for both clean up and tea, so this made an acceptable drink with our taste test of the jam.

1839 chocolate ice cream

I made a chocolate ice cream recipe from The Kentucky Housewife cookbook, published in 1839.  I did a bit of research on 18th and 19th century ice creams before I settled on this particular recipe.  It's not completely authentic though I followed the receipt, but chocolate as we know it, be it bar chocolate or even processed cocoa is not the same product as it was in earlier times.   Also, not having a sorbetiere, or even a manual ice cream maker, I ended up using my electric ice cream maker, which I will admit is very enjoyable to use.

Several cookery books have very specific instructions on how to make ice cream, but no, or few actual recipes.   However the 1830 The Cooks Dictionary tells us not only how to make ice cream, but how to adjust recipes for "creams" to make ice cream, as well as having a number of different ice cream recipes.   Most of the cookbooks have recipes for creams, which are custardy, mousse, pudding-like desserts.  Apparently you just make the cream recipe a little less thick and then use it to make ice cream.  

Because I didn't have enough cocoa on hand, and wasn't going to town for a few days, I used baker's chocolate.  I know a number of the recipes call for mixing the chocolate with water, which would be a cocoa product, not bar chocolate as it would seize.   I grated it and it made this lovely pile of soft, tiny chocolate flakes which melted easily into the milk mixture.    Because the chocolate was semi-sweet, I cut the amount of sugar in the ice cream as well.   I used a 10% cream mixture because we only had 1% milk and even our whole milk doesn't have enough fat content to qualify for "rich, sweet milk".   Also because a litre of that mixture was cheaper than purchasing a litre of whole milk and a container of double or whipping cream.   I also only used 4 eggs because my chooks are laying very large eggs, with large yolks.    I followed the directions, melting the chocolate in the milk mixture and then letting it cool a bit.  Then I added the yolks and the sugar  and brought the mixture up to just a boil.   This is pretty important as it cooks the eggs.   I stirred it constantly.   When the custard had boiled just a tad, I removed it from the heat.   I let it cool a bit, then transferred it to a bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and put it into the fridge overnight.  While this step is obviously modern, it is one of the procedures that is suggested in the instructions of the modern ice cream maker.

The next morning, I put the now fairly thick and cold custard into the ice cream maker and in about 15 minutes the ice cream was quite thick.   The instructions say to freeze twice.   In reality this means to pack the ice cream into a mould and re-freeze by setting it in the ice and salt mixture.   I didn't have a suitable mould, so instead I packed it into a lined loaf pan and set it into the freezer.   This second freezing allows the semi-soft frozen ice cream to harden up nicely.  

The ice cream scooped up nicely.  It was so creamy and rich.   It had a great mouth feel and felt very decadent.   I would use less chocolate next time, and try it with a mixture of cocoa and chocolate, which might replicate the actual period chocolate available.   

Would I make this again?   Indeed.  It was well worth the effort.   There is a recipe for peach ice cream in this book and there are tinned peaches left in my cupboard.   That will be the next recipe to try.
 

An Interesting Evening

Yesterday was busy.   In the morning we had a Weavers guild dye day.  We used acid dyes to paint warps and skeins.   It was fun and busy.   I'd thought more people had signed up, so made a bit too much dye.  Luckily it will last several months made up, so hopefully it won't go to waste.   

, in the evening we had tickets to see Romeo and Juliet at Stratford Festival.   I hadn't realised it was a 3 hour production though, so we had a very late night.  The show was fine.  It's early in the season so maybe a little rough on the edges yet.   It was enjoyable with excellent performances by Juliet, Romeo, the Friar and Nurse.   I'm pretty much done for tragedies for a while though.

The best part that we went early so we could find a parking spot along the river.   Parking was $25, but riverside parking was only a few meters away farther and was free!  Who doesn't like free!  There is a nice paved walkway beside the river and took advantage of that.

We had a lovely wander along the river because we had time to kill.  We'd thought we'd see the swans, but instead there were geese, a few ducks and a lone blue heron.  Weirdly, the heron was quite accustomed to people and  let me get quite close for photos in a couple of different places.   The final shot, when he took off in flight, was because someone decided to see what I was doing and tromped noisily down towards the shore, startling the bird.  Still it was an experience that I don't imagine I'll get to experience again.

A much needed update

 Along with crazy busy for the SCA event FOOL, Fruits of our Labours, that I've helped run for 16 years, my old computer decided to get crankier than normal.  After trying to work out its issues, I got it back up and running a bit.  Now though, thanks to a son who handed me a new computer for Mother's Day, I'm moving all my files over, and having to learn a new suite of apps, which work differently on this one.

The lilacs had just started blooming before the Victoria Day weekend and sadly, due to a huge amount of rain and then some ridiculously warm days, when I got home on Monday, they had turned brown and sad.  I missed them completely.    I was drinking my tea outside on Tuesday though, and I got to watch two baby birds fledging.  The parent birds were nearby and kept showing them what to do.  The one chick tried to go back into the nest, but the parent stopped them from entering.  Then suddenly they both took off.  I've been watching them on and off all week and they keep practicing short runs.   It took them the better part of the week.  I didn't see them yesterday so maybe they've moved on.

We spent a morning last weekend cleaning and seasoning cast iron at Westfield.   A lot of the cookware

was in desperate need of cleaning.  It had been sitting all winter and had been in use all last summer.   We scrubbed the inside and outside with steel wool.   Then we rinsed it well and set it on the huge gas stove to dry over the burner pilot lights.   Then we applied a thin layer of oil or shortening and they were baked in the oven to season.  That took over an hour, so while that was happening we went to 3 of the houses with cookstoves and learning how to apply blacking.  The blacking is a liquid with metal particles suspended, which when rubbed on and then heated, hardens on the stove top.  This protects the metal and makes it look less worn.  

It's raining again.  There are 16 bags of triple mix, 3 bags of manure and a bale of straw waiting for me to finish up the third raised bed.  We've put a thick layer of sticks, small limbs and other wood stuff from our scrap pile in the bottom.  Then a layer of composting straw was put on top of that and it was mixed with some older manure from the chicken pen.   We didn't have any green stuff, grass clippings etc, so this will have to do.   Now I need to layer on the triple mix to top it off.   The straw will go to mulch the tops of the beds once they are planted. I need to also top up the planters because they need a bit of new soil or compost each year and as well, the chooks have been having fun digging through them and they aren't very neat.

My garden is going in late this year.   Usually it's mainly in by now, but with the weather and the new bed, it's delayed, not only because of the new bed, but because instead of getting some of my seeds locally, I had my daughter pick up some specialty seeds from a seed nursery closer to her.  I'm trying the self pollinating zucchini and cucumbers this year, as well as a new variety of green beens which is supposed to have a longer season.  My son in law has grown some extra grape tomato plants and a couple of unique slicing styles.  I'm only planting Roma tomatoes.  I couldn't find Amish plum tomatoes, so I ended up with a generic Roma tomato with a short season.  Hopefully these will ripen up earlier than last year's tomatoes.

While I missed the lilacs, the poppies are strong this year and looking lovely.

Nothing on the loom except some mug rugs from a warping demo.   A couple of pairs of summer socks knitted on the CSM, and a shawl, almost finished from hand spun yarn.   Photos to come!

Crazy busy times post

I've been trying to sit down at the computer and post an update. Between other computer things taking up my time, some weird updates at the most inopportune times,  crazy amount of meetings and events, it didn't happen.  I had it all figured out. It was some sort of poetic drivel about the early spring greening up, with the trees showing a green haze.   It's actually amazing to see, with the green just showing on the trees, especially in the neighbour's bush lot.   The colours are so bright and fresh!  However, we have baby leaves now, and it doesn't seem quite so appropriate.   Instead....

This is a Mock Angel Food cake from a cookery book dated 1914.   It looks great!   It tasted exactly like an Angel Food cake but only used 2 eggs.  I deemed it a failure in the end though, despite the taste and the look.   The texture was off.  It was almost sticky and wet.  I tasted it and couldn't eat it.  My men folk didn't like it.  In the end I tried to feed it to the chooks, but they weren't impressed either and left half my offering untouched.    I'm not posting the recipe since I don't think it would be worth really trying.

There's been some rumour of the Trilliums being out early this year.  We went for a walk looking for them.  I found a single red trillium in bloom and only 2 very tiny clumps of trillium leaves with no blooms.  Still, it was a nice walk. The weather was fresh and cool, but there was some sunshine which made a difference.  The folks who look after that trail had been in and took down most of the dead ash trees, so it was looking a bit apocalyptic in places.  The trail was clean and easy to walk though and with the early spring, it was very pretty.

 The hyacinths are looking a little bedraggled this year.   We've had a wild mixture of weather this spring with so much rain, wind, frosts, snow and even a few days of sunshine.   The hyacinths came up looking  a little worse for wear.  It's not been a still enough day to enjoy their scent but I've been able to sit out with my tea, and a book or my banjo and soak in the good weather.   The nice thing about having no neighbours is that I can practice the banjo outside and nobody complains at all!

I made a thing!  It's a Circular Sock Machine novelty item which has been going around the csm community the past couple of weeks.  It's a Yip Yip, like the Muppet aliens from so long ago.  It was definitely fun to make, although a bit fussy.  I wish I had some solid coloured yarn for the inside of the mouth and lining, which would give a bit more contrast and a better look, but this was from scraps.