Wild Wednesday ~ Violet Jelly

Because I'm the decider around here, I'm calling this a Wild Wednesday post because violets are wild flowers. I suppose I could start another series, called Foraging Friday, but that would call for a whole 'nother level of commitment that I'm not quite prepared for.

We seem to have had a bumper crop of violets this year, and, because I've let go of most of my domestic urges, I was perfectly happy to enjoy the sign of them without feeling like I had to do anything with them. On at least a couple of occasions in the past, I've made violet jam or jelly, and on even more occasions, I've felt like I should make violet jam or jelly, but haven't had the time or energy. So it was nice to see them and smile and just be happy to live in a world covered in violets. And then the very next day, E said, "Let's make violet jam!"

Because it was his idea, I tried to get E to pick the violets, but he didn't have much stamina on a day when it was too hot for his taste (his preferred temperature range is about 64-66 degrees) and the back flies were out in force. I picked a few, but I'm no good at tedious manual labor. Finally, when I pointed out that the neighbor would soon mow his field, along with our violets, Z went on an expedition and brought back a cupful. So I scaled the recipe back by two-thirds (seriously, who is going to pick three cups of violets???).

I let the violets steep for most of a day, and they turned the water a weird and wonderful ice-blue color, which instantly changes to magenta when mixed with lemon juice.



The jelly was pretty easy to make, once the violets were picked (turns out, jelly with pectin cooks for far less time than pectin-free jam). It's also beautiful and tastes nice, but not especially like violets. C and I cam to the conclusion that all jellies are really just sugar-flavored, with the fruit (or flowers) used as a colorant.

Undomestication

When my children were small, I found the repetitive nature of the tasks required to keep them alive and healthy and happy--change a diaper, wipe a nose, fix a snack, clean up a mess, change their clothes, make a meal, clean and clean and clean--to be wearying. In fact, the unsatisfying, endless tedium of doing so many things that only had to be done again made me downright depressed.

But then I found that if I accomplished something that could actually be finished, with a real, tangible end-product that I could enjoy and admire--paint a chair, knit a gnome, bake a loaf of bread, redecorate or reorganize a corner of the house--that I could pull myself out of a funk and lift my mood. At about the same time I had this realization, I started reading blogs by mothers who were also crafters, cooks, gardeners, and home decorators. I was seduced by the siren song of domesticity and I threw myself into the work of creating a beautiful life wholeheartedly.

That's kind of a weird sentence to write, as a child of the seventies, reared on "Free to Be You and Me." But during a phase of life that can feel so very thankless and unsatisfying, there's real succor in holding in your hands the results of your own creative efforts. Homeyness was not entirely a blog-driven desire, out of character for me--my paternal grandmother knit bales of slippers, my maternal grandmother crocheted afghans and sewed quilts and kept an enormous garden, my aunts crocheted and cross-stitched and sewed, my mother knit, sewed all of our dresses, and dabbled in a range of 1970s-inspired back-to-the-land-type crafts from weaving belts on inkle looms to beading jewelry to stained glass to spinning wool to cake decorating to canning and jam-making. They all cooked and baked from scratch, skipping over the Jiffy Mix and Bisquick the rest of their generation depended on. I had always had a crafty side, and after college I taught myself to knit and sew, cook and garden, with some guidance from my mom, and a lot from books (back before online tutorials and videos).

Finding fulfillment in the domestic was part of my genetic makeup and upbringing, so it was in some ways natural to dive into that world more fully after I had children, and it served the purpose of creative outlet and emotional ballast when the redundancy of motherhood and housework and a boring job threatened to unmoor me. Until it didn't.

Maybe it was the schedule of older children that made cooking real meals impossible. Maybe it was years of hearing "I hate that!" when I put dinner on the table. Maybe it was the realization that even tasks that feel like accomplishments are never truly done--knit a hat, kid loses it, knit another; sew an outfit, kid outgrows it, sew another; paint a chair, paint gets chipped, kid outgrows it, put it out by the road; bake a loaf of bread, bread gets eaten, bake another; can a dozen jars of jam, jam gets spread on toast, buy some at the store until next summer when you can start again. Maybe it was my kids getting old enough that I don't have to serve so many of their endless needs anymore. Maybe in the internal struggle for my creative energy, writing is finally winning out over homemaking.

Whatever it is, I don't want to do it anymore. Dinner? How about frozen pizza again, kids? Sewing project? Dang, the machine's all jammed up. Garden getting overtaken by weeds? Sorry, I'm busy reading in the hammock.

I let rhubarb, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, and blackberry seasons all go by without making a single jar of jam. I finally dragged myself to the stove when a bag of plums from our own plum trees threatened to spawn a new species of fruit-fly. I made the jam by rote--boiling water, one-to-one plums to sugar, some candied ginger, boil, jar, boil, cool. Pop. Pop. Pop. The jars sealed. Plums rescued. Beautiful, jewel-toned jars on the shelf. Jam weirdly astringent from the skins. Sense of accomplishment? Nil. Mood-enhancement? Nada.

Maybe this is just a stage. Maybe I'm just really tired from trying to do too many things for too long. Something had to give. I'm still laboring over words--which is not exactly satisfying, but it feels necessary. I currently get more of thrill from identifying a flower than from cooking a meal. And, well, as long as we manage to get something to eat, and as long as the house doesn't get overrun with cobwebs, I guess that's okay.

Weekend Things--Fall Harvest

I keep waking up in the middle of the night and then lying there, all of the things I need to do, want to do, should do, running a marathon around my brain. Friday my massage therapist noted an imbalance in my gall bladder meridians, which are associated with lists and making decisions, and also with the hours between one and four a.m. I'm not sure how much I buy into all that, but when I woke up early (but not nearly as early as usual, thanks, perhaps, to the massage) on Saturday morning, I decided to just get up and get some things crossed off my list.

There is a tension in our weekends, between accomplishing all the things we need to do, and making time for the things we want to do. This time of year heightens that tension, with all of the perishable foods coming out of the garden––ours and others'––and the impending possibility of frost.

Last weekend we accidentally picked 59 pounds of apples, and, when visiting family friends, came home with a great big box of produce. During the week, I managed to turn the basil into pesto, and most of the tomatoes into ketchup and jam, but still our refrigerator resisted closing for all the goodness inside it, and something had to be done.

So early Saturday morning, I started with a quadruple batch of apple chia jam and oatmeal for breakfast, then moved on to a bowl of gazpacho soup for later weekend eating that took care of more tomatoes, a cucumber and a green pepper. The rest of the green peppers I roasted and froze (wish I'd thought of doing this with them). The rest of the tomatoes went into the solar oven for more pasta sauce. I finished off the morning with a plum cake. I left the huge harvest of beans for C to blanch and freeze later in the weekend (the winners in this summer's Garden Roulette were the legumes––peas and beans we had aplenty).



While I was cooking like a madwoman, E asked if we could get out the autumn stuff. I had just been thinking that the boys aren't all that into our little seasonal traditions anymore, so this pleased me greatly. I hung up our fall banner and E decorated our TV table with autumnal things. I still need to get out the autumn books, although we hardly read any of the spring and summer ones, now that the boys like to listen to chapter books (still on Harry Potter Round 3) and are even reading chapter books to themselves.

I was able to get most of one story revised while E and Z were at soccer an M at a friend's house, and then when I picked up M, I came home with another box of fresh produce and two jugs of apple cider right out of the press. After that we all went to another of M's friend's house for a laser tag birthday party, which I have to say while kind of fun, for a bit, definitely not something I'd want to do all the time (and yes, I had reservations about my kids running around the woods with fake guns killing each other...and me).

All of that out of the way, we cleared the decks for doing something off my "want to do" list on Sunday.

Weekend Things

It's turning out to be one of those rainy, rainy, rainy summers.

As much as I'd love to send our clouds Out West, so they could put out fires and I could get some laundry done, I haven't quite developed my powers over the elements yet.

So instead, I'm working on "making the best of it."

Friday evening I came home to boys bickering in the way that boys who have been cooped up indoors for far too long tend to do.

They kept at it all Saturday morning, which was largely my fault, since I made them help me clean house, rather than throwing them out in the rain.

By afternoon it was clear, we all needed to GET OUT.

We stopped in Damariscotta first; E has had a fifty dollar bill burning a hole in his pocket ever since he saw a Star Wars Lego set at the Reny's there, and I had a coupon for the book store burning a hole in mine.

Then, after a quick stop at the ice cream shop,  we headed straight for the beach.

The nice thing about foggy days about the beach, is that you have the whole place pretty much to yourself. Also, you don't need to bother with sunblock.

And, frankly, if you wait around for a perfectly sunny day, you might never get to the beach at all (I learned that much during our last really, really, really rainy summer).

The sun graced us with its presence Sunday, and after dashing around all morning to get M to his bus for camp (I realized at 9 a.m. that the bus left at 10:15, not the 1:45 I had in my head...he made it and I was very, very glad to not spend my Sunday afternoon and evening driving to the almost far-northernest corner of Maine and back), C, E, Z and I went to pick strawberries.

Sadly, many of the berries were rotten, thanks to the rain. It just breaks my heart to lift up a perfectly red, ripe berry and see its whole underside coated in mold. Because of the sparsity of good berries, and because we had to rush the boys off to a birthday party, we only picked about nine quarts, but I was able to make a double batch of jam last night. I had a partial box of Pomona's Pectin in my cabinet, and decided to use that, rather than my usual pectin-less method. It was kind of nice to only boil for a few minutes, rather than ages and ages. The jam leftover in the bottom of the pan was kind of grainy and lumpy, though (did I not stir vigorously enough?). Definitely not gift-giving jam, but I'm sure it will get eaten.

And how was your weekend? Are you wishing for a lot more rain or a lot less?

Handmade Holiday Countdown, Week 3: Gifts for the Grands

They boys have many sets of grandparents, step-grandparents and grandparent-like characters in their lives. I like to have them make gifts for these special people. In the past they've made pillows, twig frames, silk scarves, freezer-paper stencil shirts, balsam pillows, key hooks and bookmarks.  

For the woodburning grandpas, we made pinecone firestarters, by tying twine to the tip of a pinecone and dipping it alternately into melted wax and cold water. The wax stuck better as it cooled in the pan, so some are more thickly coated than others. We haven't tested any yet; I hope they work!

My dad, doesn't burn wood (and lives too far away to make shipping a box of pinecones practical), so we turned this bit of beaver-chewed wood into a card-holder. E ad Z took turns sawing the notch (I like to include a woodworking project in our holiday makings, even though I'm not the woodworking expert in the house), we rubbed a bit of beeswax polish over it and the boys sketched pictures on blank postcards.

For the grandmas, we made birchbark votive holders, from this season's Rhythm of the Home. I found this set of Chevrolet logo glasses at goodwill that I thought would be perfect (while there, I wondered who on earth would want to own Chevy glasses; when I got home I found out: boys between the ages of seven and eleven).

This turned out to be one of those projects that seems like it would be a good idea for kids, and turns out, not so much. Partly they were just too bouncy and not in the mood for a project. Partly, the birch bark is very fussy. We had a bunch of thick pieces my sister and I found in the woods, and they had to be pulled apart into thin layers that were flexible enough to wrap around the jars, but then the thin layers were delicate and shredded easily. The bark was also full of spiders. (In the photo below, E is just pretending to be helping). The boys did help pick out the pieces of bark, squeeze the glue and put their fingers in place for tying the bow, but in general, this was a mom project.

I bought some yummy beeswax candles at a nearby farm store and tied them up with pretty twine and string and a bit of fir. We have an extra one for an emergency last-minute gift, but I kind of hope we don't need to give it away, because I want to see what the candle flame looks like through the birch bark.

Finally, and this had nothing to do with kids, I made a batch of cranberry jam. Despite all the jam I made this summer, I never managed to make a batch in mini jars for gifting (first I didn't have enough jars, then my second flat of blueberries never came). C bought seventy-five pounds of cranberries from the farm down the road, so we have crans to spare. (To make it, I brought 5 generous cups whole cranberries and the juice and zest of one orange to a boil, added four cups sugar and boiled until it reached the jammy stage, then processed in a hot water bath for five minutes).

Hope your holiday makings and bakings are going well!

Strawberry-Kiwiberry Jam

My friend Tina has these amazing hardy kiwi vines that almost completely cover two big spruce trees and an apple tree in her side yard. Also known as kiwi berries, or Japanese kiwi, they are of the species Actinia arguta and are much smaller than grocery store kiwis and have a smooth green or reddish-brown, edible skin, rather than the fuzzy skin of the regular kiwi. They grew all over some retaining walls at the college I went to, and C and I planted two vines several years ago, which just set their first three or four fruits this summer (they need to be fertilized and pruned, I think).

Last week Tina picked a several pints of fruit from her vines and came over to my house Friday night for a jam-making party. During a hasty online research session, I found some websites that said the kiwi berries are "not suitable for jam" while others said they are suitable, but I couldn't find any recipes for them specifically. Searches for "kiwi jam" came up with (yummy-looking) jams from New Zealand, and a few strawberry-kiwi jam recipes that called for the regular fuzzy kiwis, and pectin.

As you know, I consider pectin to be a conspiracy of the agricultural-industrial complex to foist their byproducts off as valuable merchandise, and I suspected that the kiwi berries, being small and covered in thickish skin would contain natural pectin a-plenty, so I went with my usual formula: four cups crushed fruit, four cups sugar, a little lemon juice––and it turned out brilliantly. So, to make up for the dearth of kiwiberry recipes online, I present you with:

Strawberry-Kiwiberry Jam
(makes 5-6 half-pints of jam)

Bring to a boil in a large soup pot, stirring regularly:

1 1/2 cups crushed hardy kiwis (cut in half or quarters before crushing)
2 1/2 cups crushed strawberries
2 T fresh-squeezed lemon juice
4 cups sugar

Continue boiling and stirring until the mixture reaches jam-like consistency (test by placing a spoonful of the liquid part of the jam on a chilled saucer; return the saucer to the freezer for a couple of minutes. If the surface of the jam wrinkles when you push your fingertip through it, it's done). This took about 15-20 minutes at my not-much-above-sea-level home. Tina shared a bit of folk wisdom, that when the jam foams up, then the foam dissipates, it's within five or ten minutes of being done. This seemed pretty accurate.

MEANWHILE
Bring a large pot (canner) of water to boil (deep enough to cover jars by at least 1/2 inch). Wash five or six half-pint jars and place in boiling water for five minutes. Boil jars, rings, ladle, tongs and canning funnel in a separate pan.

When jam is done, ladle into hot jars, place hot lids on top and screw on rings loosely. Return to boiling water bath and boil for at least five minutes (add a minute for every 1000 feet of altitude). Place jars on a towel and wait for the satisfying "click" of the lids sealing (three of ours did not seal; it was the first time that's ever happened to me!).

Enjoy on toast!

Jam!

So I was going to write a post about pectin being a conspiracy to make money off of an industrial by-product, and my technique for making pectin-less jam (OK, not really my technique, since I adopted and adapted it from many others' recipes), but apparently I already did that last year. (Also, apparently "apparently" is a word I use a lot, because Z says it all the time, which contrasts quite amusingly with his efforts to use "ain't" and double-negatives in an acquired rural Maine patois). 

So instead, I'll just tell you about the jams you see here:

On the far left, rhubarb-ginger, next in line, rhubarb-grapefruit, on the right strawberry.

For rhubarb-ginger, I used about 5 cups rhubarb and about 4 cups sugar* (I say "about" because I lost track of sugar and so added more rhubarb in case I used too much), plus a couple tablespoons chopped crystalized ginger and the juice of one lime. It did not seem very gingery at first, but was more so after it sat (I'm thinking about using some of that Ginger People ginger spread next time). Also, the lime is the perfect touch.

For rhubarb-grapefruit, I used this recipe from Rachel at The Slow-Cooked Sentence. Except I wasn't sure what she meant by peel the zest, so I just grated off only the outermost yellow part of the peel. It has a bitter-tart marmalade kind of flavor that is warming and nourishing and will be lovely to eat near the fire next winter, if it lasts that long.

For the strawberry, which I made in two separate batches in two separate pans at once, I crushed four cups of strawberries, boiled them for a few minutes, strained out the fruit, returned the juice to the pan and added four cups of sugar. I boiled the juice/sugar mixture for a good long while, until it started to gel on a saucer that had been sitting in the freezer for a bit, then added the fruit back in and boiled (which much more frequent stirring) while I boiled the jars and prepared to can it all. It ended up quite foamy, but I couldn't figure out how to skim off the foam without losing fruit, so there's a little foam cap in each jar. I hope it doesn't compromise the quality of the jam.

For all jams, I return the jars of hot jam to the boiling water bath for five minutes to ensure total destruction of all bacteria and mold.

Do you make jam? What is your favorite kind to make? Do you have any ideas for yummy additions to strawberry jam (I was thinking lavender...)?

*I know, I know, the quantity of sugar is alarming, but I've tried low-sugar, no-sugar (using fruit juice, fruit juice concentrate or honey) and it never comes out as pretty or jammy. And I'm always worried that the dark jam is hiding pathogens.