November Wrap Up

 November has been a busy month.  It's passed by in a whirl of activities and waiting.  It seemed to both speed by in a blink and be interminably long at the same time.  The waiting is almost over though and tomorrow we'll see if it was worth it.   The activities though have been pretty successful.  The weather has been weird to say the least.  We've had snow.  We've had more snow.  We've had rain.  We've had almost record breaking warmth and sunshine.  I hung laundry out the other day because it was so nice.  Yup, totally weird weather.

This year's Christmas cards are finished.   I made 10 of them.   Sadly the tape I used to hold the cards to
the workspace, ripped a bit of the paint off one of them, so only 9 survived.     I was going to make a few more, but these turned out to be fairly time consuming.  In the past, I taped up 3 at a time to paint in stages.  The process for these made it easier to do only 2 at a time.  It was 4 steps, with complete drying time in between the steps, so they weren't really able to be done assembly line fashion.  I liked them enough to inital them this year.  I did enjoy the process though and have already had some thoughts about next year's cards.

I warped up the rigid heddle loom with some kid mohair /silk yarn.   It was $3 tiny ball, of less than 50g and with 219 yards.     It's very fine and I struggled to figure out what reed to use.   I found a single article with actual details on weaving mohair on a rigid heddle loom.   There were lots of  "hey look what I did" articles, but not so much on the "here's how I did it" articles.    So I ran with the single article information and tried it at a sett of 7.5.  It wasn't perfect, but it worked nicely enough.

Mohair is fuzzy and has quite a halo.  If you don't take that into account when you dress the loom, those fuzzy bits catch on each other and are difficult to weave.   Then also can start stick up instead of laying flat, which makes for a scratchier fabric.   The idea is to use a sett which takes into account the extra width created by the mohair halo, and then this allows it to lay flatter and lock together, creating a stable, but light, gauzy fabric.  

The silk core made this a bit slippery but the sett allowed me to weave it easily.  I had to place each weft

shot into place, rather than push the reed to the fell line, or it became to thick and stiff.  The resulting fabric is not quite as stable as I'd hoped, but I only lightly wet finished it, due to days of wet weather.  I will redo it before it becomes a gift.  It's very pretty though, light and the colour is fun.  It's also fairly soft and very drapey. 

It took just under 2 balls of yarn for this scarf - 9 in x 76 in, plus 7 inch fringes.  I have 3 more in this colourway and 5 more in a second colourway.  Lots of yarn to experiment with!

After the Pumpkin Festival at Westfield, which was crazy busy and so much fun, I came home with 2 lovely pie pumpkins.  I recently processed them and ended up with 6 packets of pumpkin for the freezer.  There are 5 with 2 cups in them, perfect for pies and 1 with just over a cup of pumpkin, which works for a pumpkin loaf recipe.  

It was really nice pumpkin, better than I found around here.  The flesh was thick and dry, so it didn't need a lot of draining.  I do like having these ready to go packets in the freezer.   There is little waste when the quantity fits a single recipe, unlike commercial tins, which leave me making either double what I want, having to freeze the leftovers, which for some reason, doesn't work quite as well, or some of it ends up as waste.

Friday was cool, with a high of only 16C.   I used the cool weather as an excuse to make some black cherry jam.   I had frozen berries which needed to be used up.  I chopped them up in the food processor and used them for jam.  The jam is spectacular.   I love apricot and cherry jams.   I can't find them in the supermarkets, so I have to make them myself.  It's better jam albeit more work than purchasing a jar.  I can't decide which one I love better though.  It depends on which jam is on my toast at the time.  Last year there weren't any apricots available locally, so I hope I can find them this year.  Then I'll be set for favourite jam for the whole year, for me,  for gifts and then some.

 There are something like 7 trails or more within a half hour drive.  They aren't long and difficult trails but just small, local trails.  They are groomed, usually quite well groomed to make them easily accessible.  So while not challenging or difficult in any way, they are relaxing and fun to ramble over and through.  It's nice to get out of the house, even if it's a trail which is 12 minutes from your house and that's because they just graded the gravel road. We've been doing a different trail every weekend, though this weekend we did 2 of them.  This morning's ramble had some excitement.  It was through a hardwood bush and during the most recent storm a couple of trees had fallen.  They looked like ash trees, and since they are pretty much all dead, they are susceptible to the high winds.  Anyway, right after we parked our car, a guy pulled up in his truck and dragged out his chainsaw.   He told us that the ministry of whatever government agency which looks after the parkland, usually only deals with dead falls every few months.  When trees fall and he finds them, he just chops up the bit on the trail and moves that part of the log, to keep the trails open.  His daughter was pushing a stroller with a baby in it, accompanied by a very wet dog, so I can understand why he wanted to keep the trail open.

This however, has been the main time stealer.   Getting the sunset, cotton/wool yardage off the loom took much more time than anticipated.   I finally cut it off this afternoon.   I have 5 yards, 10 inches in length and 20 3/4 inches wide.   I still need to wet finish it.  I'll do that tomorrow since my son has his laundry on the clothes line today. It's soft and drapey.  It would have made lovely shawls.   I have it in my mind to make a sleeveless tunic, jumper or pinafore dress (the same garment with different names) with this, to go over winter t-shirts and jeans.    I will need to run to the fabric store, which is nice that's it's open now.  I'll need some lining fabric, a bit of interfacing, a zipper and some thread to make this into a garment.   I can also get the fabric for lining the bodices of the 1830 and 1860 gowns which are patiently waiting in the project queue.   I have everything I need for them except the bodice lining. 

A busy weekend and a full pantry

I'd planned to go to a local SCA demo called Middle Ages on the Green and life decided to intervene.   First, the menfolk decided to start shingling the garage.   I wasn't 100% comfortable about going off to play while they were slaving away on the roof and having to cook their own supper, but I thought I could toss something in the crock pot for them, or make sure I was home early enough to solve that problem.


 Then 50 lbs of tomatoes dropped into my lap on Friday.  I knew that my play day on Saturday was to be put on hold.   After running around doing errands in the morning, I spent the afternoon and part of the evening, canning.   That was blanching, chopping, heating, crushing, bottling and hot water processing all those tomatoes for hours and hours.   Thirty seven jars later, I considered that I didn't think I did quite so many tomatoes last year.    We'll be eating tomatoes all winter!

I also had some blue prune plums, the kind with the yellow flesh and dark purple skins.   I turned them into jam as they all ripened exactly at once.   I wish I had a photo of the before and after of this jam.  The before was this ugly yellow mush with dark flecks.   As it came to a boil though, the dark flecks of the peel, started to dissolve and the plum jam ended up a beautiful dark ruby red/purple colour.  Sooooo very pretty and incredibly tasty too.

I was at Westfield again today.  I was in the Misener house, which has an awesome wood cook stove.   I was going to make gooseberry jam but after all that canning, I was plumb tired of processing.  Instead, I dug up some carrots and beets from the Lockhart garden and tossed them in a pan with a piece of beef and some potatoes.  I brought them home for dinner so that the hardworking shingling menfolk had supper, but I still got to get out and play.   Those freshly dug carrots and beets were so delicious!  It was crazy busy today at the village though, with lots of interesting people out.  The day just flew by. 

Just sharing

 I've been taking a bit of a break from washing the new fleece.  Well, I took a few days off from washing.  I've been spinning it up.  It is lovely to spin.  I've processed it several ways including combing, hand carding, drum carding, and flick carding.  My favourite so far has been drum carding the flick carded locks.  Just opening the locks a bit manually, sort of fluffing them out a bit before drum carding is almost as nice.    

I have 2 weaving projects in the works.  One is some woven scarf blanks for a woven shibori dye day that the guild is having and the other is some yardage for a sacque coat or cloak.   However, I am not sure I have quite enough yarn for the latter.   I was sure I had calculated it when purchasing it but now, I am really uncertain that I have enough for the needed yardage.   I had planned a plaid pattern, so running out would indeed be a minor disaster, since I cannot get anymore of this particular yarn.

 We were driving to a nearby city the other day for an appointment and I noticed a roadside stand that said they had cucumbers.  Usually this time of year, it is only hot house cucumbers and a few field cucumbers left.  But I decided that we needed to stop by on our way home.   They had the last of the pickling cucumbers there, so I was able to whip up a batch of relish.  
They also had Russet apples!  Tart, green, with leathery skins, I haven't seen them in several years.  They had only tiny baskets but one came home.  If I could have gotten a much larger basket, I would have made applesauce.  They make the absolutely best applesauce!

 Knitting this beast of a sweater in August and September was very slow, sweaty work.  When it was really warm outside, it was just too uncomfortable to knit more than a few rows at a time.   I seem to be making much better time now that it is cooler outside.   I may have made it a size too large though.   I'm living with it, since I have absolutely no desire to rip it out and start again.  It is supposed to be a generously sized sweater anyway.

This is my son's hobby.   Every once in a while he brings home a shrub, buys some tree seeds or finds a seedling to dig up.   He trims roots, re-pots and prunes.   I daresay soon there will be a forest of Bonsai trees sitting on my deck during the summer and hibernating in the sunporch during the winter.  It is pretty cool though.

Preserving for winter

This week I've canned tomatoes.  I use the recommended hot pack method.  I only did up 1/2 bushel this year.   Canning is pretty easy, although time consuming.    A lot of time is spent blanching and peeling.

  I also did a single batch of peach jam. We don't eat a lot of jam so one batch will last us for the whole year.  I process the jars in a hot bath canner and the fruit starts to float.   I haven't found a way to stop that from happening yet. 


Last year I had been given a whole bunch of excess produce.  I tossed 5 cauliflowers and almost 10 lbs of carrots in the freezer.  Then carrots went on sale for super cheap, as they tend to do this time of year and I put another 20 lbs in the freezer.   I'd never bothered to freeze carrots before but found them incredibly convenient last winter after my hip replacement.   When they went on sale this week, I put 20 lbs in the freezer.  Not really a money saver but a huge time saver on those busy days.

 Beets were also on sale.  I didn't have many from my garden this year so I was happy to find them at the store for such a good price.  Nobody else in the family really like beets, so I froze a bunch in small packages and the rest I pickled, mostly in smaller jars.  This way, I can get my beet fix and not have to waste any.

I am almost out of freezer space!

Fall Bounty

I was at Westfield on Sunday and I was in a building instead of at the bake oven.   On the table was a huge array of veggies.  If I was smart, I'd have taken a photo as it looked so pretty.  There were carrots, onions, potatoes, squash, parsnips and cauliflower.  It turned out that a particular Canadian 19th C murder mystery show was filming there the week before and one of the scenes required fall veggies.  They left them behind for us to play with.  I made a pot of veggie soup for lunch and it was very tasty.   Afterward, we divided up the veggies and took them home so they wouldn't get tossed out.  I was sad because a 50 lb bag of onions was left. I couldn't carry it to the truck, and I didn't have a bag to take it in bunches.  However, I did get 5 cauliflowers, a whole bunch of carrots, potatoes, squash and whatever spare onions were rolling around. 

 I spent all day yesterday freezing produce!  There are now bags upon bags of frozen cauliflower and carrots.  I don't normally freeze carrots but these needed to be used up.  I also cooked some for dinner and made a bunch to puree for use in a Victorian carrot pie recipe that I will try out next Sunday.    Luckily the boxes that the 1/2 bushels of tomatoes came in were still in the house, waiting for recycling, so I repurposed them in the pantry cupboard, for onion and potato storage.

I'm spinning Angora right now, as in Angora bunny not Angora goat/mohair.  It's super soft, but the bits that I have to play with are a bit compacted, so I have to hand card all of it before use.  The fibre has a range of staple lengths, making it interesting and a bit challenging to spin.  As well there are lots of bits about 1/4 inch in length, which I'm presuming are short cuts, so this would be cut, rather than plucked Angora.  I had to experiment before I found a spinning method that actually worked for me.   I need to loosen up the fibre by carding it and pull it off the cards into as much of a rolag that I can get.  Most of the fibre is too short to make a rolag, so it just sort of curls up a bit.  Then I fold it up and it makes this light, fluffy pile, like a cloud and it will spin nicely with a short forward draw.  It takes forever though, but I imagine that it will make pretty yarn.  I am looking forward to blending some as I think it will be quite enjoyable to spin that way.

Tape trims, masking tape and sweet endings...

 The shelf is almost finished.  It's taken two coats of each colour, with drying time in between.  The edge between the yellow and blue shows that even with masking tape, I'm only adequate at painting straight lines.  Not bad, but not perfect.  Now, to get brave enough to sand it down and apply the glaze.  I took the leftover ivory paint from the livingroom walls and mixed it with the leftover very pale yellow paint from the bathroom.  It's not quite as yellow as the photo shows.  I didn't want the back of my shelf to blend in too much with the wall, but didn't want a large slab of blue on the wall either.

I'm teaching a couple of friends to tablet weave later this week.  I'm using a 10 card, simple backwards and forwards design, which accommodates the continuous warping or fast warping method.  I thought I should brush up on some skills and make sure my pattern draft was accurate.  There are 2 metres of the green and white trim here.  I used an inkle loom and it really isn't worth spending the time warping it up for a small sample.  It doesn't take all that long to weave off the whole length.  I could have done another 1/2 metre or so but broke a warp thread and it wasn't worth tying on a new one for that short extra bit.  I mean, it really is just a sample.

 The inkle loom is made of Walnut and is  quite heavy.  That means that it doesn't move at all when in use.  It's beautifully finished and works like a charm.  I've been playing with the two shuttles to see which I prefer.  I've a couple of other styles as well, which I'm hoping to have tested by the end of this length.  I didn't put as much warp on the loom, so the tape should be a tad shorter than the green one.  It's pretty though.    I'm also playing with arborite cards which Maureen's handy husband made.  They have a slight curve in there, but it's a non-issue.  They work beautifully.  I only have a few though, so I'll have to see if there are leftovers after the fact.  I'd hate to see them languishing in some drawer someplace, when they'd be awesome for wider project experiments.

Peach jam, with sadly floating fruit.   Since I've still not managed to replace my food processor, I chopped these peaches by hand.  I think the pieces were still larger than they should have been.  In hindsight, I'd have run the peaches through the grinder.  The good thing is that the jam tastes just fine.  It just looks a bit ugly.  For family use though, it will be fine.  If I go to make more jam this year though, stop me.  There is plenty in the pantry: apricot jam, peach jam, raspberry jelly, strawberry jam.  Plus, there is almost a kilo of currants in the freezer.  I really don't think I need more jam this year.

Garlic Harvest and more socks

 I harvested the garlic last week.  It took about 3 days to dig it all up, wash it and start it drying.  Most of the heads of garlic are a normal size, but there are a fair number of absolutely huge ones, with a very few overly small.  In all, it was a really good garlic harvest.   It seems to be one crop that does well, regardless of the weather conditions.  Being cooler and with regular rain seems to be a bonus for the garlic this year though.

After digging it up and rinsing it off with the hose (I did it at the base of the new apple tree, so it was watered in at the same time and I wasn't wasting water), I lay out the garlic on the deck table to start drying.   There is a fair chance of rain in the forecast for the next few days, so I tied it up into bunches and either hung them up or laid them out on the laundry rack to finish drying in the garage.

Not only is there enough to last us the winter, but I'll have lots to give away to my kids as well.  I should weigh the garlic because there is a lot and it's heavy.  Maybe over 5 lbs of it!  The string I used to tie the bunches and hang it up with is handspun rayon leftovers from my Master Spinner level 5 homework.

The potato chip socks I started to take on holidays are done.  The stripes match perfectly; another serendipitous striping sock yarn.   They're rather sedate socks but being made of Kroy, they should be hard wearing, even if that yarn is much lighter than it normally is.  This was some of that yarn which was on sale for super cheap, but even if it's a mill mistake, I think it's nicer than regular Kroy.   I'm trying to figure out what to put on the needles next.  I have yarn for a stranded  colourwork sock project set aside, plus some solids for undecided projects. 

This week's conquests

Finally finished this quilt top.  It's only taken 2 years, sheesh.  I can't pride myself on getting that one sewn up in a timely fashion.   It's a pattern called Bento Box and was easy and fun to assemble when I actually sat down to work on it.  Now, can I get it quilted up before Christmas?   I'll have to decide whether I'm going to quilt it on an electric machine or the treadle.  It's a bit smaller than I originally planned as the second border just didn't look right, so I left it off.  I'll use the fabric for the backing instead and the remaining black border fabric for the binding.

Ramie - rainbow dyed sliver.  This was hard to spin.  Every once in a while there was a blobby bit of fibre which wouldn't thin out.  While I was able to just rip off those inches of sliver in some places, others made it into this skein.   It sure won't be one of the bast fibres I'll spin a lot of, that's for sure.  I much prefer flax, hemp and cotton to the Ramie.  

My yearly batch of sweet relish.  This year it was really watery and yep, is orange instead of green/brown as it normally is.  I think I usually don't bother with adding the Tumeric but I did this time.  It's still tasty but took forever to reduce and even so, it's more watery than in past years.   Maybe due to all the rain we've been getting? 

Apricots were at the market last Saturday.   I had enough for one batch of jam, a pie and 5 apricots to eat out of hand, from a 3 litre basket.   I got almost 7 cups of jam from this batch, but since I'd only prepared 6 jars, that last jar ended up in the fridge for immediate use.  I don't really mind mis-planning when it works out that way.  It's pretty yummy jam.  I really can't decide whether Apricot, Peach or Currant jam is my favourite.  I think it depends on what I'm eating at the time.

Raspberry Jelly and Tattler Lids

It's just a bit early yet for raspberries here.  You can see them starting to form on the plants, but mine won't be ripe yet for another week or two.  I did have a bunch of raspberries left from last year in the freezer, which desperately needed to be used.  I put the frozen blocks of berries in a large saucepan, with just a little water, set it on the stove and turned it on very low.   A while later, the fruit was defrosting and the juice was starting to be released from the mushy raspberries.    I had looked for a period 19th century raspberry jelly recipe, but they seem to all require currants, which were not ripe yet.  After a bit of research which suggested raspberries are fairly low in pectin, I used a commercial pectin and the packet recipe.  I always use the liquid pectin if I'm using it, as it seems to set up better than the dry crystal stuff.

 I needed a new canning jar rack or a canner for smaller jars.  The jar rack I had, had wires spaced to far apart to support smaller jars.  I was tired of makeshift methods of keeping the small jars from touching the bottom of the pot, so I headed out to the hardware/department store to see what I could find.  I found a rack which would suit my purposes and was much less than a new canner would be.  What I also found were some packets of Tattler reuseable canning lids.  

I've read about these but never found them locally.  I didn't want to mail order these from the U.S., just for an experiment.  But, here they were, right in front of me at the store.   They were expensive.   The rings which hold the lids down are re-useable and until they get rusty, they don't need to be replaced.  The metal lids though, need to be replaced every year.   The ones I just bought before I found these, cost $2.88 for a dozen.  These plastic lids with rubber rings cost $9.99.  That is pretty steep for a product which seems to have mixed reviews, and a fair learning curve to get to work properly.  However, the re-useable nature of the item and the advertised BPA free made me want to try them.   I used two of the lids on the larger jars, since those are the ones I can guarantee I'll keep for home use.  The small jars may or may not end up as gifts, but I didn't want to give away the expensive experimental lids, just in case.


I had no issues getting the two lids to seal.   It will take over 3 years for them to start paying for themselves though and by then I imagine I'd have to start replacing the rubber rings.  So for a preparedness aspect (you know, for when the zombies eat the electrical grid and nobody makes metal canning lids anymore) and the less product in the landfill, they are an enticing product.  For the immediate financial outlay, I'm not so sure.  Plus living where we do, I may never be able to find them again, or replacement parts in the future, which would make them very expensive.

Will I use them?  Yes, sometimes but until I know that I can purchase them regularly locally, it will have to be the very once in a while extravagant purchase.   Besides, they are hard to label.  I can't just write on them with a Sharpie, like I do the metal lids... and they're a tad on the ugly side, but that may just be because I am not used to the look yet.   You know though, if a case fell off a truck and landed at my feet, I'd use them for sure because the possibilities for environmental benefits would work for me, even if the economics don't.

Strawberry jam, 1832 style

The Cooks Own Book from 1832 is set up a little differently than many cookery books.  It has an alphabetical listing of different dishes and ingredients, with the recipes after each heading.  Thus the  section on Jam, starts with Jam, Apricot, goes trough a variety of fruits ending with Jam, White or Red Currant.  The Jelly listings start with a plain jelly, which is wine based ending with Jelly, Strawberry with everything from Rum Jelly to Calf's Feet jelly in between.  It seemed like a good time to try the strawberry jam recipe since I had some strawberries which needed to be used up.

I'd love to know where all my  250 ml or 1 cup jelly jars go every winter.  I could find only 5 jars and only 1 of the 125 ml jars too!   There should be more of those but nope, they've probably gone off to party with my iPod, which is also currently in hiding.    However, I was pretty sure I had enough for the quantity of berries I had in the fridge and besides, jams need to be made in small amounts as well.

Strawberries an sugar just starting to mix together.

I weighed out my berries and I had 2 pounds of them - well, 900.6 grams.   The recipe calls for equal parts of sugar and fruit, so I weighed out 2 pounds of sugar, which was just under 4 1/2 cups.   When I mixed the two together, the strawberries quickly started become juicy.  I changed up the recipe a little bit, by adding the juice of one lemon.   While the recipe calls for more juice of strawberries, I didn't have any but some of the berries were a bit on the very ripe side and some were imported, rather than Ontario berries.  Those just don't work the same way for me when I use them to make jam, so I don't normally but I didn't want these to go to waste.  Higher acid levels will help the pectin set and help cut the sweetness a bit.

Syrup is starting to become more transparent as sugar dissolves.

Once the sugar started dissolving properly, I turned the heat on under my big jam pot and  kept it on low, stirring constantly, until the sugar completely dissolved.  Then I turned up the heat a bit more in increments, until I was someplace between medium and high heat and my jam was starting to boil.  

 DO NOT STOP STIRRING!   'cause if you do, the jam will burn.  I stirred for about 15 minutes when a candy thermometer said it was at 220° F.   This is supposed to be the temperature at which jelly will set.   I pulled it off the stove, skimmed the foam off the top of it and ladled it into jars, wiped the rims and popped the sealer lids and rings on.

Then I went to put them in the water bath and realized that the canner was still under the kitchen table and it sure wasn't full of hot water, waiting for me.   Luckily that is a mistake that I will only make once a year and there are only a few jars of jam to worry about.

The jam is tasty but it didn't quite set as much as I'd like.   Next time, a bit longer of a boil.   The aim is to get it to 66% sugar content which should be 220° F.   Perhaps my thermometer needs to be recalibrated.   Interestingly, the 1 : 1 ratio of fruit to sugar still seems to be an accepted standard for regular jam making today.

Random Project updates

 The linsey woolsey is off the loom.  It's been wet finished and heavily pressed.  It's an okay fabric and will make a decent apron.  The reed marks didn't disappear which is a little disappointing.  It makes the fabric look like it has more inconsistencies than it really does.   It's a pretty fabric though and the stripes are fairly even.

I need to cut it up and sew up the apron to be able to tell if I'm really happy with it.

More proof of Kevin's loom antics.  I caught him in the act, again.  I'd meant to cover the warp before I went to bed, but forgot.  This is how I found him in the morning.   I've never seen him do this when there was a project on the loom before, so who knows why he chose this particular one, when it being well executed meant more to me than any of the others I've done since he  "enriched" our lives.  Silly cat!

 We've pulled the spiles from the Maple trees and ended our syrup season.  We might have gotten a few more boilings done, but it's a lot of work.   The melting snow has flooded the fire pit, so boiling the sap down, is a wet, muddy and not such a nice experience.   We've gotten 4 litres and a bit,  so not too bad a haul for our first try.   The syrup is pretty tasty and will likely last most of the year, depending on how much ends up in my daughter's pantry.
 Maple syrup drizzled on oatmeal makes an awesome breakfast!

Gluten free chocolate angel food cake, with chocolate drizzle was today's way to use up excess eggs.  It was pretty delicious, as well as pretty to look at.  I just took my regular angle food cake recipe and substituted 1/4 cup cocoa for an equal amount of gluten free flour.  Instead of lemon flavouring, I used vanilla, so it has a really interesting depth of flavour.   This one was a huge success.

Labour Day accomplishments

On the Friday of Labour Day weekend, I picked up a bushel of tomatoes, some extra lemons and a couple of dozen jars.   I spent two days canning tomatoes.  I misjudged on the jars though.  I needed to send someone on a jar run as I just didn't have enough with all the jams and pickles I'd made this year.    I had thought 2 dozen would do it, but needed what I figured would be an extra dozen jars.  We picked up an extra 2 dozen just in case and it's a good thing as I needed one jar out of that carton for the tomatoes.   Since the tomato harvest is down this year according to the news reports, I'm glad to have at least some in the pantry.    

On the Monday, I stripped the garden of all the cucumbers and made more pickles, both garlic dills and bread and butter pickles.  We should have enough for most of the winter now.  The dills I did in spears instead of chunks.   The bread and butters have red pepper, lots of onions and some cauliflower in them to make up for the fact that I was just a bit short of cucumbers.   Several older recipes I found called for the addition of cauliflower, so I decided to try it.  We sampled some from the first batch and they were pretty darned good.  Not nearly as sweet as commercial bread and butter pickles and definitely hotter, due to the addition of a nice little shot of chili pepper flakes.  The second batch doesn't have the hot pepper in it.  I figure we can compare and decide which we want next year but it sure was an easy way to get that "heat" fix without having to whip up a whole meal.

When we shipped the meaties, I moved the new layers into a larger, brighter pen in the coop.  This one has nice roosts and layer boxes and would make a nice home for the girls.  However they had other ideas.  One night I found one of them  out of the pen, in with the older girls.  After shooing her back into her pen every morning, there were two out with the old girls.  Of course, 3 nights later, 3 of the 4 were out with the older girls and I was still scratching my head trying to figure out how they were getting out.   They were staying in the pen all day though so I wasn't horribly worried.  Then a day or two later, I went to feed the chooks and collect eggs and two of them were outside.  Sigh.. I opened the door and let them all out that night and merged the two flocks instead of keeping them separate.  I think I've figured out how they got out but it's too late.   The good thing is that they tend to feed themselves and hardly eat any grain at all.  The bad thing is that the girls were still skittish and one of them won't roost in the barn.  She's chosen a lilac bush just outside the barn door.  However, she'll either get eaten by a predator one night or freeze if I can't get her inside before winter sets in.     I'm not sure how to fix this since she's still pretty wild.  The others come up to me, hang out with the rest of the flock and do the normal chicken flock behavior thing, but this one keeps her distance, spends time alone and doesn't seem to mind being caught out at night in stormy weather.

18th - 19th century Red Currant Jelly

I'd done some reading up on early Currant jelly recipes.   Several different books have almost the exact same recipe and the others are very similar. 

The exact recipe I used came from The Frugal Housewife or Complete Woman Cook.  This edition is dated 1796 out of Philadelphia.  I've also seen an edition dated 1803.

 

It takes a little bit of interpretation to read this volume as it uses two different letters for S, in 3 different places.   If it's an S at the end of a word, it's written as an S as we know it today.  If it is at the beginning or in the middle of a word, then it's written as an f.  This works well, except of course when f at the beginning of a word is actually an f.  Then you have to read it to be certain of the meaning.  Thus stript (stripped) is written ftript., stalks is ftalks, stone is ftone, skim is fkim, fast is faft and fine is fine.  Once you get the the rhythm going, it becomes fairly easy to read.

  Having finally decided on a game plan, I took out the frozen currants and stuck them in a stock pot.   The original recipes call for putting the currants in a stone jar and setting that in a pot of water in order to cook the currants to make the juice which is needed for the jelly process.   However not having a stone jar, crock or even a glass jar which would work for the amount of currants and because they were frozen into 4 separate solid masses I chose to dump them unceremoniously into my stock pot and cook them directly over the heat.   I added 1 cup of water to the pot in order to help keep them from burning as they thawed out.   I put the stove on very low heat and watched carefully.   Because the heat was so low, it took a long time to thaw but I didn't have any issues with burning the currants.

I have 2 jelly bags which I purchased for this purpose.  I'd looked for cheesecloth but couldn't find any until after I'd already bought these.  Even so, it wasn't really fine or sturdy cheesecloth, which I wasn't sure would work, so I just used the commercial bags.  I put the currants into the bag and then hung them up from the cupboards since I hadn't a bowl narrow nor deep enough to hold the bag.   There are warnings in several recipes, both historical and modern about not squeezing the bag or getting cloudy juice.  However after letting the bags drip on their own, I had only a smallish amount of clear juice in the silver bowl.  In the larger batter bowl, I had a little less, but it was cloudy do to some unintentional mashing of berries with a potato masher.  I untied the jelly bags and squeezed the rest of the juice out into the cloudy juice.    Tossing the currants, still full of juice, was just too wasteful to think of, just because the jelly wouldn't be sparkly clear. 

Cloudy currant juice due to squeezing the jelly bags

I did make two batches of jelly though, one with the clear juice and one with the cloudy juice.  My son snorted and told me that I'd be the only person to be able to tell the difference between the two.


The recipe calls for 1 lb of sugar to each pint of juice.  A pint is 2 cups and I had exactly 2 cups of clear juice, which I put in my stock pot.  I weighed out and added 1 lb of sugar, turned the stove on low and started stirring.  Once the sugar was dissolved, I turned the heat up to medium high and kept stirring.   I just kept stirring and stirring until the liquid was at a good boil.  Then I took a few minutes to grab a bowl full of ice and a small metal measuring cup.  This should have been prepped before I started for testing the set of the jelly, but had forgotten to do so.    The first time I checked by scooping out a teaspoon or so of the jelly mixture and setting the metal cup on the ice to quickly cool, the juice wasn't thick at all.   Fairly quickly, after only about 10 or 15 minutes of boiling, the consistency of the bubbles started to change.   If you've ever made soap, it was like they were at the trace stage, when you could run a spoon through them and leave a trail.  They also became like clear red bubbles rather than pinkish foamy bubbles.   When I next checked, there was definitely jelly happening.   It went pretty quickly from then and just a few minutes later, the jelly was thick.  

The first batch made less than 2 cups of jelly which I packaged in 125 ml (half cup) jars.   I'd started up the water bath canner earlier, so it was full of hot water.  Because my jar rack was too large for these tiny jars, I put a dish cloth in the bottom of the pan and the jars on top, to try to keep them from bumping together.  I processed them for about 12 minutes, dragged them out and luckily the lids all did that lovely vacuum pop to announce that they'd sealed.

I can't actually tell which jars were the cloudy juice and which were the clear.  The open jar has the leftovers of both batches and the only way you can tell the difference of which layer was which is because there is a line where the first batch had cooled before I topped it off with the second.

This jam is incredibly delicious.  It's sweet enough but still with the tartness of the currants.  I hesitate to say that it might even be better than the Apricot jam.   The only thing I would recommend is that if you're going to listen to music while making this, don't presume that one CD will be long enough, because it won't be, not even the second time you try with the next batch.