11 lemons in 3 days

Our Meyer lemon tree was shaded by Texas privet trees and it was really struggling for the past few years. We finally cut down those pesky privets and after 18 months of good air circulation and exposure to sunlight, the lemon tree has made a nice come back. We have beautiful lemons again!


Meyer lemons

Yesterday, Joanne posted a link to a Meyer lemon muffin recipe that uses 2 lemons, peel and all. Perfect! I baked up a batch and 4 disappeared before I could snap a photo. I moved this recipe from my "I'm hungry" board to "I tried it and I liked it" on Pinterest.


Meyer lemon muffins

They weren't too lemony, in fact I thought they would have a stronger lemon taste. But now that I think about it, I was comparing the muffins to cakes and other baked goods that were probably enhanced with extracts or artificial flavors. No, these muffins are naturally good with whole lemons. I'm going to make these again.

2 lemons down, 9 to go.

When the lemons are pretty and beautifully ripe, they want to be marmalade. They need to be marmalade. If you haven't made marmalade before, you probably don't know that a batch of marmalade can't be made in a day. It's a 2 day process so it requires a little bit of prep and planning. I usually don't think about canning until Sunday, so this 3 day weekend worked in my favor. 8 lemons were picked, washed, sliced, and dumped into a pot of water for 1/1/2 batches of Meyer Lemon Marmalade.


Marmalade prep

After 24 hours, I'll add sugar and heat to transform this pot of citrus and water into bright, yellow, delicious Meyer Lemon Marmalade.


Long weekend marmalade

That's 10 lemons. Where did the last one go? We had barbeque beef sandwiches for dinner and had cole slaw on the side. The juice of the last lemon went into that big bowl of cabbage and carrots.

Do you have an awesome Meyer lemon recipe to share? Let me know about it, I'd love to give it a try.

A speck o' pickled peppers

Our little Jalapeño bush has been producing some nice peppers.


Jalapeño peppers

We collected them in a basket on the counter and it seemed like we had a lot until I started stuffing them into pint jars. We barely had 1-1/2 pints. Hmmm. Okay. Time for smaller jars.


Pickled Jalapeño peppers

Now we have 3 cups of Pickled Jalapeño peppers.

After I packed the peppers in jars and covered them with hot brine, I pushed them down with a wooden utensil to try and force the solution into the peppers. It looks like it worked well on the 2 jars on the left, not so much on the jar on the right. We'll eat that one first. I'll let you know how they taste.

Garnet Red

Ahhh. How pretty is this?


Strawberry Peach Jam?

I bought strawberries and peaches at the farmers market and made a combo jam. I added lemon juice to the pot since peaches normally need to be acidified. All of the jars have sealed, but I'm not sure they're going to set up in a jammy way. I used liquid pectin instead of my go-to powdered pectin and it's really soft right now. If it doesn't thicken, this is going to be a ton of ice cream sauce. Okay maybe not a ton, but a half gallon.

The smallest batch ever

My mom gave me some figs last weekend and I got a few more from a friend this week. Altogether it was a pound which was too much for us to eat fresh and seemingly too little to can. Or was it?

I made a 1/3 batch of Chunky Fig Jam from Marisa McClellan's cookbook, Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round.


Chunky Fig Jam

It's almost 2 cups of sweet & seedy jam and it's going to set up pretty firm because 1/3 of a pouch of liquid pectin is a little tricky to measure out. I'm sure I put in too much. Maybe I'll do what my sister suggested and make fig newtons or some other type of filled cookie with it.

Call me crazy

After nurturing 10 tomato plants this summer and harvesting many pounds of tomatoes, I surprised myself and bought 5 pounds of tomatoes at the Farmers' Market.

I know it sounds crazy, but they had late season Early Girls (an oxymoron?) on sale for 50 cents/pound. Plus, I wanted to make a batch of Amy's Tomato Jam from Marisa McClellan's cookbook, Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year-Round.


Food in Jars cookbook & Early Girl tomatoes

Some of you are probably saying, "Tomato jam? That's crazy!" That's what I said when I read the recipe and when I made my first batch with heirloom tomatoes. But we said, "Oh, that's good!" when we tasted it for the first time. Amy's Tomato Jam is a delicious combination of sweet, spicy, and savory from a mixture tomatoes, sugar, fresh ginger, cinnamon, and red pepper flakes. The first thing you taste is a mildly sweet tomato, then when the jam is seemingly gone from your mouth, you get hit with the hotness of ginger and red pepper. Crazy.

The first batch yielded 4-1/2 cups from 5 pounds of heirloom tomatoes. Can you imagine? There was more than one pound of tomatoes in each half pint jar. I didn't realize there was so much water in the heirlooms but when I reduced the mass to get a jammy consistency, it was clear that a lot of the volume evaporated away. Crazy.

The Early Girls have a lower water content so I was able to get 6 cups from 5 pounds. That's more like it. Isn't it pretty? Pretty crazy, that is.


Amy's Tomato Jam

For those of you who are interested in trying the tomato jam, Marisa has the recipe on her blog: Recipe for Amy's Tomato Jam.

The end is in sight

It may not look like it, but the heirloom output is slowing down. This is less than 15 pounds picked in a little over a week.


Heirlooms

The yellow/orange tomatoes are German Stripe tomatoes and are better eaten raw than they are cooked, but I canned almost all of the tomatoes shown in the photo anyway. All 5 quart jars sealed perfectly. I don't see this season's canned tomatoes lasting through the winter, but maybe they'll get us through the fall.

22 lbs in a week

All of these tomatoes were processed over the weekend.

8 pounds turned into Freshy Fresh Pasta Sauce and a good portion of that went into Mama's Lasagne. Other than using Italian Sausage for the protein and grating cheese instead of using pre-grated cheese from the store (eek), we stayed true to the recipe. The lasagne is delicious. I tried taking photos of it for you, but the lighting has been very unflattering. Maybe I can stage something before it's all gone.

10 pounds were crushed and canned according to the directions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.


Crushed Tomatoes

Not having canned tomatoes before, I thought I'd start small with 10 pounds. The guideline from the web site was 14 pounds for 9 pints, so I thought 10 pounds would be just short of 7 pint jars--my canner rack holds 7 pint jars comfortably. Our tomatoes must be overly juicy because 10 pounds was over 8 pints. Next time I'll use quart jars and I shouldn't have a problem. The overage is in the fridge and might be used in tomato bisque.

In addition to the tomatoes in Friday's photo, I picked ~4 pounds over the weekend and we gave those away. Looks like I'm going to be spending a lot of time with pots boiling on the stove until summer's over. Not that I'm complaining... being able to enjoy our own tomatoes this winter will make it all worth it.

I have a recipe for that

I might have a few jars of jams in my cupboard. Yeah, just a few, but that's okay because they'll keep. But when one of the jars of Mandarin orange marmalade didn't seal, I had too many open jars in the refrigerator.

I searched the internet and found a recipe for Thumbprint Cookies. Perfect!

Here they are, some with Mandarin orange marmalade and some with strawberry jam. They're delicious!


Thumbprint cookies
Recipe and video on JoyofBaking.com

Fresh and tasty

My local Farmers' Market had Mandarin oranges on Sunday, so I thought I'd try this recipe: Mandarin Orange Marmalade

The process spans 3 days, but the most difficult part (which wasn't difficult at all) was cutting up the fruit. I referred to Hitchhiking to Heaven's blog post, How to Slice Citrus Fruit for Marmalade. Mandarin oranges don't have seeds, so the chopping 3+ pounds went pretty quick.

Yesterday was the 3rd day of the process and I canned 6-2/3 pints of lovely marmalade.


Mandarin Orange Marmalade

I dove into the partial jar this morning and spread a generous amount on my breakfast bread, Oatmeal Date Nut (with dried cranberries) from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day.


Good morning!

I wish I didn't wait so long to make this marmalade. Hopefully the Farmers' Market will have more Mandarin oranges in the weeks to come.

Another favorite: Sourdough Biscuits

The sourdough starter is a few weeks old and I think I'm getting my sourdough mojo back. This is the 3rd time I've made these biscuits and each batch is better than the last.


Sourdough Biscuits

They're delicious with butter and jam and they also make a great little sandwich bun.


Front: Strawberry-Olallieberry
Back: Peach

The starter is from Goldrush and the biscuit recipe is from the Carl Griffith 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter brochure.

Summer in a jar

Nothing says summer like stone fruit.


Apricots

Jam captures summer in a jar.


Apricot Jam

Olalalalala

Olallieberries made an appearance at the Farmers' Market yesterday.


Strawberries and Olallieberries

Ooo, this should be good! Enjoy the 4th everyone.


Strawberry Olallieberry Jam

Pickled Green Tomatoes

The last tomatoes of the season have been put up just in time for winter.


Pickled Green Tomatoes recipe
(Doubled for 5 half pints)

A bowl of green

This large bowl holds the last limes and tomatoes of the season. It's time for juicing, freezing, and canning.


Yeah Green!

Paying homage

Paying homage to Marisa at Food in Jars--


Pickling Cucumbers

Here's my version of Marisa's photo--you can see it on her web site along with the recipe for these awesome pickles.


Paying Homage to Food in Jars

6 pints. Nom nom nom.


Garlic Dill Pickles

You know, I really don't have time for this

4th of July shopping, cooking, cleaning, TdF... I have a lot I'm supposed to be doing and I really didn't need to see these at the Farmers' Market this morning:


Pickling Cucumbers

Here they are an hour later:


12 half pints of Garlic Dill Pickles
Recipe from Food in Jars

Now, what was I doing before I was so rudely interrupted?

Jam session

Debra and I had a jam session yesterday which went really well.


Jam session with Debra

I brought the canning pot, jars, and utensils, and Debra supplied the apricots fresh from her tree, the sugar, and the Wolf range. I LOVED the range--it reminded me of the good ol' bad ol' days when I worked in restaurants--but of course her digs were much nicer.



Thank you Debra, it was a lovely afternoon.


Apricot Jam

Apricot jam session. Delicious.


Apricot Jam with 10 grain bread in the morning

Prunus armeniaca

Prunus armeniaca, the humble apricot.


Apricots from the Farmers' Market

These delicious orbs were what got me started canning food. Last year, a lovely friend handed me a jar of apricot jam she made and that was all it took. It was so tasty, I wanted more.

Many pints of fruit later, here's my first batch of apricot jam.


First Apricot Jam

And what goes well with apricot jam?


HBin5 Wheat

It all comes full circle. Thank you Carol.

Goodness

Berries are plentiful at the Farmers' Market, so we brought a few home.


Bounty from the Farmers' Market

Half of it is now 8 cups of Strawberry Raspberry Jam.


Strawberry Raspberry Jam

First Jam 2010

The Farmers' Market had strawberries today... big, juicy strawberries.


Farmers' Market strawberries

The 3 baskets were shy of 6 cups mashed fruit, so I cut up a Fuji Apple to make up the difference. Voila, the first jam of 2010.


Strawberry-Fuji Apple Jam


mmm...