Short Story Long

I think I might actually blog more efficiently if I were writing by hand; I love a good pen gliding along paper in swirls and dips.   Anyway, I took an unintentional hiatus from blogging, there.  I did read some, and discover new ones, though, and I am happy to see so many people are still blogging in this era of Facebook and Instagram.  It takes more of an effort, doesn't it? to hunt out lovely blogs, but like many intentional acts, I find it brings a higher percentage of good results than whatever debris lands on my Facebook feed.   The school year is ended and our garden is just in the beginning stages, so I find it is a good time to review my goals for the year, the season, and begin again.  In anticipation of good things to come:   a new batch of vanilla extract  in progress.  

While perusing my canning cookbooks, I came across some pear recipes.  In the end, the one I used was online, here .  My boys were skeptical of the star anise but we made it once as-written and it is pretty great.  And we wondered, are there other kinds of anise?  I went and got more pears for another batch (and pictures, of course!) I made more peach preserves.  It's the easiest thing to come by in large quantity, a box of good peaches, and a crowd pleaser, definitely.    I used my favorite recipe as previously posted . And lovely strawberry... preserve.  Jam?  I'm not sure.  Poor strawberry stuff, no spices; just lemon and sugar - and I used all the lemons.  I ate that strawberry after the pictures, and it was delicious. I'm thinking that these would all be perfect for a tea party, and perhaps I should make some lemon curd.  Have you made lemon curd?  I'll have to look for a recipe unless you can sugge...

What a beautiful time of year: not too hot, in fact perfect for a sweater, especially in the morning!  And yet, there is still plenty of garden goodness to be had.  My boys are in school, and everyone has a little space and independence, including me.  I am always happy to discover another rose, a neighbor out walking dogs, a few leaves turning, a good book with just enough time to crack it open, and new yarn in my local yarn shop.  BFJ and I drove up to Boulder yesterday for some pictures, and I discovered a tin of my favorite tea - which I'd just recently run out of, in one of the culinary shops on Pearl Street.  Perfect timing. Today, I'm making some  Peach Preserves . It seems like everything is so readily available these days, at the store, on the internet.  Almost takes the fun out of finding things.  However, local, organic peaches - that are hopefully ripe, are not easy to come by.  I'm settling for local, ripe peaches this year. ...

I think I might finally be done with canning for this season.  We didn't do as much of any one thing as we've done in previous years - like back when I only did apple butter , when I got a box of peaches from my mother-in-law , or when I bought a bushel of cucumbers.  But we did a bit of each, and a lot from home and local friends or farms.  I did have to buy peaches and apples at the store.   spiced peach preserves - I always forget the cardamom, but I love that you can see the little vanilla beans.   bread and butter pickles, by request apple butter And finally, some raspberry jam - we separated the gold from the red, since they cost more.  What's the point of getting them if  you mash them into the reds??   The general consensus is that they do taste sweeter / better than the reds we picked at the berry farm, although our own red bush is sweeter than those as well.  We ended up with four small jars of gold raspbe...

I went to my local local grocer's to buy local cucumbers.  Of course, we canned them!  I find that pickles are one of the easiest things to put up, although the vinegar smell does linger in the house.  This is my most requested canned good item, from friends and husband, and BFJ opened the last jar of last year's pickles a week or two ago.  I don't want to have a disappointed spouse for the next year so I stopped and got some cucumbers.  I actually planted what I thought would be a bed of cucumbers, but it turns out that only two or three of the plants are actually producing cucumbers, while another two are producing what appear to be mutant pumpkin hybrids.  And I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the plants I thought I had.  Sad.  The lemon cucs are doing better but are in the corners of the other beds. The jalapenos and other peppers and goodies did come from my garden, though, and I did make a couple small jars of home-grown stuff....

I have a friend who received some Spiced Peach Preserves from me last year, and she inquired recently whether I'd be making more this year.  I answered that I was not sure, as it is hard to can with store-bought fruit after you've received organic, homegrown, best-you-ever-tasted peaches.  Obviously I would love some more of those peaches, but unfortunately my in-laws' peach tree was hit hard with a late frost this past spring, as were many fruit trees in Colorado.  My local farmer's market had some lovely peaches on a day when I didn't have time to can, and assured me that they'd have more the next week.  They didn't!  So previously mentioned friend asked her brother to pick up a box on his way through Palisades last week, and she gave them to us in exchange for some finished jars, and a little lesson in canning.  Isn't that nice? I decided to blog the recipe so that you can use it, and I can find it here again!  Spiced Peach Preserves R...

It feels a little like cheating to call this #1 on my list, because this is not the project I had in mind when I made my list.  However, the summer is zipping by and technically, it is going to be a Christmas gift.  I need to knit a few more so that I have one to keep, and can bear to give the rest away!  The best part is that it pings at least three things I love - knitting, gardening, and savoring the small wonders in life.   Every year I ponder cutting my lavender so that I can use it for something, but I think, I'll do it after I get a picture that does justice to the lavender plants .  And then I leave it for the bees.  And then... it is past its cutting prime.  This year, I did not hesitate, because I'd found this cute little sachet pattern and I knew it would be lovely to dry some lavender.  I also have bits of vanilla bean that weren't quite fine enough for the vanilla sugar, and when I remember where I put them, I think that will ...

No, that's not dirty snow!   After pouring some little jars of vanilla extract, we had some vanilla beans ready for re-purposing.   I threw them in the food processor with a cup of sugar and blended it up.  The big chunks of vanilla were sifted out and processed with a second cup of sugar, and then repeated this with a third cup of sugar.  You can see in the picture how the sugar on the right has more brown bits than the middle, and the sugar on the left has the least.  We actually did a fourth pass with just a half a cup of sugar because I didn't know how much more would fit in the jar.  We mixed it all together and put it back in one of the quart jars that we used to make the vanilla extract.  Vanilla sugar!  Time to make some cookies...!

Personally, I enjoyed the cool morning, with my newly finished, hand knit sweater, and a stack of packages waiting to be sifted through, presents waiting to be wrapped.  We usually make some of our preserves into smaller jars to give as gifts at Christmastime.  It is the perfect gift for a teacher or neighbor - consumable, not expensive enough to warrant any strong obligations, and yet very personal; not something we just ran out and got.  In addition to the preserves, this year I was inspired by this post to try my hand with vanilla extract.  In May, I purchased a pound of organic vanilla beans and split them with a friend (I think they came out to about fifty cents a piece), and bought some vodka.  Then some more, then some more.  I filled up five quart jars with Fleischmann's Royal Vodka, chopped the ends off of eight beans (per jar), split them lengthwise, and put them in the jars.  We gave the jars a little tip or shake every day for a ...

On Monday, the boys and I drove down to see my mother- and father-in-law once more before school starts. On the top of my list was picking peaches.  You may remember we picked peaches a few years ago .  May I say, I am not a big peach fan (it's the fuzz) but I make an exception for these peaches.  They are delicious!  Grandma, the boys and I picked about four boxes of peaches, just the ones that seemed ripe.  We enjoyed spending time with Grandma and Grandpa, and playing with the chickens, and came home with two of those boxes.  Boy, are we enjoying them!   On Wednesday, I made Spiced Peach Preserves from here .  I did not have cardamom but otherwise, followed the recipe pretty close this time.  I realized I must have done half batches before, as I did not recall the pot being quite so full.  And I actually had vanilla beans in my pantry, which I know I did not have previously.    I also have a couple of cousins i...

Fresh Strawberry Syrup Ingredients: 1 c sugar 1 c water 1 1/2 c mashed fresh strawberries Directions: In a saucepan, bring sugar and water to a boil.  Add strawberries and return to boil.  Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Serve over pancakes or waffles. Recipe from www.allrecipes.com . I visited Berry Patch Farms again with a couple of friends.  This time, I left triumphantly with a whole flat full of strawberries, and a few pints of raspberries.  I could have picked more, but you know, I did have to pay for them!  From this:  We now have one bottle of syrup, three pints of raspberry jam, at least six pints of strawberry jam plus more on the stove now, eight little packs for lunches, and several snacks on the go.  Yum!

Okay, not millions, but whenever I think of peaches, I think of that song . My kids are learning to sing it. One batch of Spiced Peach Preserves : I can't figure out what I altered last year but I didn't use a vanilla bean - don't have any; instead, I used a dash or two of vanilla extract. I wish I had more peaches for more batches but alas! other members of the house wanted some fresh.  We also made some of Guy Fieri's  Cin-Ful Peach Cobbler , which was delicious.  A very big hit with everyone!  I left out the cranberries (didn't have any) and if I had it to do over, I would leave out the almonds as well; I didn't think they added anything. 

Berry Patch Farms - lots of flowers, not so many berries, yet! Last week, we went to Berry Patch Farms as we did last year.  We should have waited another week or two, we were not allowed to pick berries to our heart's content, only two pints per...  We thought that was two per family but some people nearby apparently interpreted that as two per half person.  Anyway, we did not get enough to make a batch of jam.  We did get enough you-pick-it basil for some delicious pesto.  I don't know why I waited so long to make my own, I LOVE basil.  So no berries, but luckily, my friend Judy had called me a month ago asking if I wanted in on some peaches.  Yesterday, our twenty pound box arrived.  The boys all wanted to eat them out of the box; not me, I don't like the whole fuzz thing.  Today, we are making our first batch of peach preserves for the year.  YUM.  Thank goodness for blogging: I could not find the recipe I u...

Without further delay, the give-away winner is lucky #3, Mimi!  Congratulations! (Please contact me, Mimi, so that I can send your prize!) As for the rest of you, i f you've EVER commented on my blog, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  I really enjoy blogging, both writing and sharing my own personal projects, as well as reading and being inspired by so many of you.  Now, what have I been doing since August 18th?  I really had no intention of not posting for so long, but I just wasn't in the mood.  It started out with having too much going on, and then I added a terrible rash which got so itchy I could hardly sleep.  Then, we had back-to-school stuff going on.  I also shot a wedding, a birthday party, and some portraits,  and have over 700 pictures to go through!  On top of it all, I knew I needed to pick a winner and I hadn't gotten to that yet.  So, you know, life stuff.   I was ...

These cucumbers are straight from the garden!  We have four cucumber plants; I am not sure if four is enough plants to have enough cucumbers at once for canning dill pickles.  Last year, someone gave me a bushel of smaller cucs, and maybe I need to get some at the farmer's market.  However, four plants is enough for refrigerator pickles!  Too bad I didn't measure them before I cut them up but I think the biggest ones were about 10".    I am not really a pickle eater but I hear they are great.   You can tell this is a fresh jar, the spices haven't settled yet!  I wish I'd had onions and peppers from my garden to use, as well.  I do have some onions that are doing well but I love onions and they are being saved for a Special Purpose. Perhaps some Awesome Potatoes. I have one bell pepper and I'm waiting for it to turn yellow.  I have grown some sweet italian roasting peppers in the past, and ha...

This past summer I was looking for some salsa ideas but stumbled instead upon a recipe for apple butter.  I've actually never had apple butter before.  I keep seeing apples on sale at the grocery store so finally bought some.  Last night, the boys and I got started on this project.  Of course, as I was skimming the recipe I hadn't noticed the "stir for 1 or 2 hours" part!  I'm glad it didn't actually take longer than an hour to get to the buttery consistency.  We all had some this morning on toast.  Mmm-mmm!  No wonder I like fall.  I made this apple butter with Golden Delicious, per the recipe, but I also bought some Honeycrisp, which my friend Candace has raved about.  She lives a lot closer to the Pacific than I do so maybe they aren't as pricey where she lives.  I was glad to find them on sale, and bought five.  They are delicious, no doubt about it.     Now I have several little j...