It’s late one evening in March 2001, and we’re finishing up dinner our first night in Campbeltown, Scotland. Joyce Gardiner, my dear friend Judith’s mum, places a sterling shaker on the table alongside our post-entrée cantaloupe. Pepper, I assume. Hmmm. Maybe my dad’s side of the family, who sprinkled salt and pepper on all kinds…
Tag: Canning
Honey-Sweetened Blackberry Butter
My family’s humble, lakeside cabin in northern Wisconsin is way, way up there—at the tippy top of the state, in fact, just shy of the UP, halfway across. As if a week in that fabulous place with my fabulous family weren’t enough reward, most years I also come home with a parting gift: anywhere from…
Pickled Daikon & Carrot Coins
Twenty-eight weeks of CSA deliveries this year, and not a single daikon radish had crossed my cutting board. So when I saw them – a bundle of three, nearly as long as my forearm – in Thursday’s swap box, it was bye-bye, kale. I shredded half a radish into a slaw, set one aside for…
Really, Really Slow Food: Asian Pear Butter
My first memories of fruit butters are driven out of Carbondale, Illinois, which seemed worlds away from the Chicago suburbs, both in station-wagon miles and in accent. Maybe Aunt Harriet’s slower cadences and shifts and drawls reinforced her patience for hours and hours of bubbling the moisture out of the orchard’s apples and peaches. All…
Good Day, Sungold
And good-bye, Sungold. I’ve been picking nearly a pint a day from my Sungold cherry tomato plant for the past couple weeks. I’ve frozen them like little marbles to pop into soups and sauces this winter. I’ve oven-dried them for hours, creating raisiny, orange bursts of sugar that take up less room in the freezer…
Swap-Box Hero: Gimme a Beet
When I was a kid, beets were sweet and syrupy and neon magenta. Gramma C called them “Harvard Beets.” They probably came out of a can. I never knew there was any other kind. And I loved them. I’m told that’s unusual – that beets are a taste acquired in adulthood, and that most young…
Blackberry-Bourbon Jam
Vanilla beans and lemon zest make their way into most of my berry-based preserves. But last season’s final batch of blackberry jam had to settle for a tablespoon of vanilla extract; I was out of beans and didn’t want to head to the store just for that one item. It was, however, homemade extract that…
Crisper-cleanout giardiniera
Monday mornings, I try to clean out my fridge to make room for the new week’s share-box contents. So far this season, I’ve been keeping up fairly well, tossing out just a few items I never got to. Today’s partial casualty, a forgotten handful of snow peas, now two weeks aged and slimy, was hiding under a…
Supersmall-Batch Strawberry-Fig Jam
With strawberry season winding down and my fig tree still 6-8 weeks away from ripe, Marisa’s post yesterday seemed like a big tease. But on a dash through Whole Foods last night for bread and milk, I spied the huge (and ripe!) Black Mission figs you see above, so I decided to grab a handful,…
Swap-box hero: Pickled scallions & scapes
Seriously, fellow Pennsauken picker-uppers: What have you got against garlic and onions? The swap box just before closing Monday night contained six bunches of red scallions, three bunches of spring onions, and three lovely swirls of garlic scapes. Right. Twelve alliums. Allii. Whatever. A tragedy in any language, even Latin. Bulbus, non reliquit, right? Right. So…
Boxing Day 