Initiation

Women and men have been canning and preserving and passing it on from generation to generation, and here I am, wanting to keep the home kitchen functioning. I wanted to Jam this year. Little did I know exactly what went into Jamming. My kitchen was hot to start with, but huge pots of water boiling for hours, standing over a hot stove with hot boiling sweetness bubbling and spattering everywhere (arms, stove, cupboards, salt dish, pepper grinder...all splatter-painted with jam) all add up to delicious jam and a sauna in your own home. My calves were sweating. Flipping hot, and worth every drop of sweat.

When I think of canning, I think of my grandma Donna. In the basement of her house there was a small storage room where I remember seeing rows and shelves of her canned goods, ranging from pickles to soups. She had a garden in the backyard where I remember falling in love with cherry tomatoes and the way they popped and exploded in your mouth with the first bite. As a child, I never witnessed the process from garden to kitchen to mason jar, but it was a part of my grandma that I always knew. So last summer when I canned Bread-and-Butter pickles, I was so proud. Jars lined my cupboard and I put them there. When Kyle and I made Apple Butter and gave it away in gift baskets for the holidays, again, so proud.


This year was my first year of Jamming at home. I bought blueberries direct from the grower through the food co-op and thought about recipe ideas. I knew I wanted to make a blueberry habanero jam, but I wanted to wait for my peppers in my garden to be ripe (schucks...I'll have to get another case of blueberries...). Then I had an idea for blueberry champagne jam. I love putting frozen blueberries in my white wine on hot evenings, so there HAS to be a way to can that flavor, right? Right.

Blueberry Champagne Jam (yield 10 .5 pt jars)

8c fresh Blueberries

2c dry Champagne

4c sugar

1/2c lemon juice

1 packet Sure-Jel pectin

Put blueberries and 1c champagne in a large pot. Cook on low heat until it comes to a simmer, about 30 minutes, mashing berries as you stir. Add sugar and lemon juice. Bring up to a boil. Add pectin when mixture is at a full boil. Boil for 1 minute. Turn off heat. Add remaining 1c champagne, stirring until bubbles have subsided. Skim foam as best you can.

Using sterilized jars and hot water bath canning method, process for 10 minutes. The Joy of Cooking has great instruction and insight into canning/processing, or there are tons of places online to read about safe and proper canning.

Jam will take a few days to fully set in the jars.

When I was at the store getting jars and pectin for my blueberry jam, I knew there was a reason for me to be in that store at that moment in time. Raspberries were on sale. Huge sale. So my night just got longer...Another batch of jam! I went for the straight-up raspberry jam. Classic, seedy, and one of my favorites.

Simply Raspberry Jam (yield 8 .5 pt jars)

7c mashed raspberries (measured after mashing)

5 1/4c sugar

Wash and dry the berries before mashing.  Place crushed berries in a large pot. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.  Add sugar to hot berries. Raise heat to High and stir constantly until mixture reaches a full boil. Keeping the full rolling boil, continue to stir until temperature reaches 215-220°F. Remove from heat. Skim foam as best you can.

Using sterilized jars and hot water bath canning method, process for 10 minutes. The Joy of Cooking has great instruction and insight into canning/processing, or there are tons of places online to read about safe and proper canning.

During the Jamming process, I was burned, yelped out loud, sweated half of my body weight away, made a huge mess, and heated my entire apartment to at least 100°F in the middle of July. As tough as it was, I found no right to complain. Generations before me have done this to the admiration and appreciation of many. Canning your own food is more sustainable and healthful than buying jams and other jars at the grocery store, and it is immensely satisfying. I felt like I was officially part of the Kitchenly-Able Club that so many before me are in, but few are joining today. Bam. I am high-fiving Donna through a mason jar filled with fruit. Initiation: worth it. 

Summer Picnics on the Deck. Love.

We are in the middle of summer. The sun rises at 5 and sets at 10 (or so...) and in between is hot and sticky. It isn't bad when you have an air conditioned place to retreat to, and being a Minnesota girl, I have learned to appreciate the heat and humidity (for the most part).

One of the best parts of summertime is the food. Grills are a common appliance for cooking meals, vegetables and herbs are as fresh as can be, and picnics are a form of "going out to eat". Deck meals have been a common practice for us this summer. Our view of the town from our 'perch' is nice, and if we are out there late enough, the sunsets are picture perfect. Our Deck Picnics tend to be plates or bowls of stuff and we eat communally. A little bit of this and a little bit of that on a piece of bread dipped in this? Yum. Every bite has the potential to be different and unique, and I love it. Quite refreshing on hot days. For example, our latest Deck Picnic served brown rice tabbouleh, refrigerator pickles, fresh kohlrabi, a bread and cheese platter, spicy tuna and caper pasta salad, and raspberry-cucumber lemonade. Yum.

Brown Rice Tabbouleh

1c uncooked brown rice, cooked

1 14oz can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed (or 1c cooked garbanzo beans)

1 medium cucumber, washed and cubed

3 garlic scapes, sauteed (or 1-2 cloves garlic, pressed)

1 shallot, sliced

1 medium tomato, cubed

1 sweet bell pepper (red, orange, or yellow) coarsely chopped

1/8c good quality olive oil

1/4c lemon juice

1/3c chopped herbs (i used parsley, chives, cilantro)

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine cooked rice, beans, and chopped vegetables in a large bowl.  In a smaller bowl, whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, and herbs.  Stir into rice. Adjust seasoning to taste. Serve room temperature or cold.

Addicting-Easy-As-Slicing-And-Sprinkling Kohlrabi

1 large kohlrabi- peeled, halved and sliced

salt & pepper

put sliced kohlrabi in a medium bowl. Lightly sprinkle with salt and pepper. Allow to sit 20 minutes before serving. Toss and serve room temperature or cold.

Refrigerator Pickles

2 medium cucumbers, sliced

1c apple cider vinegar

1c warm water

2tsp dill (fresh is ideal, but dried is fine)

1 tsp whole black peppercorns

1 tsp ground mustard powder

1/2 white onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, sliced

1/4c sugar

Salt cucumber slices and allow to sit 20 min to release extra water. Pat dry.  While cucumbers are draining, combine the water and sugar, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Add the rest of the ingredients. After cucumbers are drained and patted dry, place in a large bowl and pour brine over them. Cover and allow to sit in the fridge for an hour before serving. The longer they sit, the zingier they get! 

My bread platter was a homemade sourdough, a soft and buttery brie, herbed cream cheese, smoked mozzarella, and nice salami.

Happy summer eating! 

-Annie

Spicy Tuna with Caper Pasta Salad

Good news! It was only 90 degrees today!! Sunny with scattered puffy white clouds. Glorious. It was cool enough to cook (only 85 inside my apartment) when I got home from work! After mentioning the spicy tuna and caper pasta the other day, I have been craving it. And since Kyle and I only cook for a meal together once or twice a week (hooray for opposite schedules!), I figured making a leftover-friendly dish would be beneficial for the both of us.

Since I have never written this recipe down until now, it is always just slightly different. Lucky for all of us I really enjoyed the version I made today! This is a pretty classic pasta salad with the mayo dressing. Great for feeding those cravings of deli salads and church potlucks, but I think it is MUCH tastier than those with lemon, capers, Sriracha hot sauce, and lots of garlic :)

Spicy Tuna and Caper Pasta Salad

If Kyle and I have one understanding,
it is that there is no such thing as "too much garlic". 

1 lb Penne Pasta, uncooked (I prefer whole wheat pasta)

1c mayo

1 generous TB whole-grain dijon (I LOVE the whole mustard seeds!)

1 TB (or to taste) Sriracha hot sauce

2 TB capers, rinsed and chopped

5 cloves garlic, pressed 

1 TB lemon juice

2 cans high-quality tuna packed in water, drained

1/2 c onion (red, white, or green) finely chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Boil the pasta as directed on the package in salted water until fully cooked and al-dente. Drain and cool. In the meantime combine mayo, dijon, Sriracha, capers, garlic, lemon juice in a large bowl. Depending on your tolerance for garlic, salt and pepper, adjust to fit your taste. Add tuna, taking care not to pulverize the chunks of tuna (bigger chunks are always a treasure to find in your bowl). Once the pasta has cooled for a bit and is not dripping with water, add to your sauce along with the onions. Stir to evenly coat your pasta, and taste! Adjust seasonings to your taste.

This recipe is really flexible to fit personal taste. If you hate spicy things, forget the hot sauce and up the lemon for a lemon-caper tuna pasta salad. Add some dill or chives from the garden (my herbs are working on getting over the heat we just made it through). However you eat it, make it yours. That is the fun of it all!

Bon Appetit!

-Annie

Minnesota Summer

I haven't been doing much cooking or baking at home. Everything to avoid turning on any heat-producing appliance is being done and it is still blazing in my 3rd floor old building apartment. The George Foreman grill has been used to make grilled cheese and grilled PB&J, but that is just about it. I have been making sourdoughs more often at work and have been really becoming familiar with my recipe. Sourdough is officially NOT intimidating. Yessss.....It is the small successes in life :)

So instead of playing and experimenting in my kitchen, I have been doing lots of research, reading, and stockpiling recipes that I want to try when it isn't 103 degrees F outside. Per usual, my Bon Appetit magazine is filled with bookmarks, sticky notes, and folded corners reminding me of the summer cocktails, custards, grilled flatbreads, semifreddos that I want to make...I have never and will never regret my subscription to that magazine...



I have also bookmarked the heck out of a cookbook that I just bought at the St. Peter Food Co-op. It is called Farmstead Chef by John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist. They have a place in Wisconsin called Inn Serendipity Bed and Breakfast where they grow their own produce, bake their own bread in sun-fueled ovens, among tons of other fantastically awesome self-sustaining and earth-sustainable habits. Marked pages in there include Raspberry Cream Cheese French Toast (everything delicious on one plate...its a must-make for me), Cheese Straws, Winter Squash Rolls, Spicy Kimchee...the list goes on...Overall, I highly recommend this book if you are a seasonal cook or just appreciate reading about sustainable practices. They have lots of little 1-2 page blurbs about different things they do or that you can do like how to be a Victory Garden Grower, what other sustainable farms are doing and how they are doing it. You know. All that awesome inspirational stuff that makes me want to go off the grid and live my own sustainable life where I cook and bake off of the land and sell it at farmer's markets...ahh, that would be the life...

AND!! Today I think I found my new favorite blog. Thevintagemixer.com. Holy toledo, is this woman awesome.  Everything she makes looks fantastic. There are sweets, savories, veg/vegan recipes, seasonal stuff...I spent a long time on her site...and will spend much more time in the kitchen testing out her recipes once my kitchen is less of an oven itself.

In the meantime I am going to do some cooking by merely setting things out on the counter to cook/fry/sizzle/bake/re-heat. Or eat lots of cold salads straight from the fridge...My easy go-to cold pasta dish is a spicy tuna with caper pasta salad that I make. Once I write a recipe with actual measurements I will post it :)

Stay cool, drink lots of water and other cold refreshing beverages.  White wine has been stocked in my fridge for the past week...light, cool, refresing...mmm... A glass with a few frozen blueberries in it while sitting on the deck watching my potted garden grow is quite perfect on most/all days. Post on that to come as well.

Happy 4th of July (tomorrow) and maybe after the heat passes I will be able to write a more coherent post.

-Annie