Party Like It’s 1939

The Great Canning Project of 2010 has concluded. 200 pounds of organic produce, 200 jars, 12 recipes, 2 exuberant women, and approximately four square feet of counter space...whew. I am exhausted. In case you’re wondering where I’ve been, the answer is a simple one…I’ve been at home, trying to extend and hold on to summer as long as humanly possible. The mornings here in Colorado are now nearly always freezing, though our project began when they were merely crisp. I had anticipated blogging as we went, but alas, I seem to have gotten lost amid the dozens upon dozens of jars, lids, and pounds of produce.

While I love the onset of fall, I find I’ve never quite ready to say good-bye to peaches, tomatoes, and all of the other lovely summer nibbles. It seems that the farmer’s markets had just gotten interesting and abundant when summer came to a close.

The GCP started, like so many things do, with a Facebook post. I believe it went like this: Me: So I want to order 200 pounds of produce to can, and there’s only one person I can think of who would possibly be interested in doing this with me…
Friend: Yes! Just let me know the details. Let’s chat more.
What followed were a series of preparation events: ordering the 200-pound “single” canning share from Grant Farms, a CSA that also offers canning shares, an afternoon planning (overambitiously) which recipes we would use, purchase of necessary equipment from the hardware store in the neighborhood (where I haggled with coupons vs. sale items and buying more jars than I’d ever purchased at once), and a practice run in which I canned a dozen jars of blueberry jam solo.

Whew. Even the preparation bit sounds tiring, looking back.

When I say that we planned overambitiously, I don’t mean I would do it differently. We selected 4-6 recipes per type of produce. We ordered (to be delivered in a TBA format) 20 pounds of peaches, 40 pounds of pears, 40 pounds of apples, and 100 pounds of tomatoes. We really, really like tomatoes.

For the planned recipes, I’ll give an example—from the 20 pounds of peaches we intended to make Peach Melba jam, peach salsa, peach BBQ sauce, and peach jam. Did I mention that my stove is one of those that would be best described as “dated” on those house-hunting shows? Two small burners and two big ones? Did I mention that every time I watch a house-hunting show, I am typically in awe of the kitchens and their mad canning capacities? An island, what I wouldn’t give for an island…but I digress. We must can in the kitchens we have, not the kitchens we wish we had.

The peaches arrived first, which was lovely. As I said, there were a mere 20 pounds of peaches to contend with. However, it took nearly an entire day (8:30 a.m. until about 4:00 p.m.) to work through them, and we only got to three of the recipes. There were a couple of bruised ones, and I’m not sure what happened to the rest, with our careful calculations we had done. We somehow came up about four pounds short. The pits? It remains a mystery. But the Peach Melba jam (a mixture of peaches and raspberries, inspired by the dessert), peach salsa, and peach BBQ sauce are all fantastic! In anticipation of the day, I had purchased a slab of pork ribs to barbecue. I put them on the grill with a rub of cumin, coriander, smoked paprika, salt and pepper, and put the peach BBQ sauce on at the very end. Perfection. Truly the epitome of summer.

I had scarcely licked the last of the BBQ sauce off my fingertips when the next Grant Farms e-mail arrived…pear delivery, three days away! Luckily, pears store a little better, so we gave ourselves a week off. And proceeded to split the pear canning process into two weekends. Peeling pears takes a long time. With the peaches, we had blanched them briefly and were able to peel them pretty quickly. Another side note about the peaches--we peeled them over a bowl, and then placed the peaches into another bowl. Left behind in the two bowls was a good amount of peach juice. I simmered some of it later on with a bit of cornstarch for thickening and just a hint of sugar and lemon juice, and it made a fabulous syrup to put over vanilla ice cream. I’m currently watching a snowstorm beginning to build, and the memory of that peach syrup makes me feel warm inside.

But I digress. With the pears, we wound up making pear-orange butter, autumn cranberry pear jam, and pear-port-thyme conserve. The last recipe is from the fantastic book Well- Preserved by Eugenia Bone; the rest of the recipes were from Ball’s canning book.

I found it interesting that Ball does not actually manufacture jars anymore. They stopped in 1996. Most of my canning jars still carry the Ball logo, but apparently Ball specializes in metal containers and aerospace technologies.

Where were we? Three weekends of canning down, three to go. The tomatoes came in two deliveries. We canned crushed tomatoes and Italian herbed tomatoes. My husband began saying that our kitchen looked like a war zone, and I suppose it did with tomato splatters all over the place. We needed a break (not my husband and I, but my friend and I—from the canning. I feel the need to clarify that). We decided to freeze the tomatoes. And then the apples sat in the fridge for a few weeks.

But now we are done. This weekend we finished off the apples by making and canning applesauce (apple butter and more applesauce was a few weeks ago). The remaining tomatoes were made into salsa and tomato butter (http://www.foodinjars.com/2010/08/august-can-jam-tomato-butter/) which I can’t wait to try on a pizza, with caramelized onions and goat cheese, as suggested. The tomato texture changed a little by freezing, but since they got pureed for the tomato butter and thickened in the salsa, texture wasn’t a big deal. Oh, and the final tomato-and-applesauce canning session took only four hours!

I managed to fit all the jars onto one shelf of my rather deep pantry. I have roughly 100 jars of differing sizes. I’m looking forward to spending winter weekend mornings eating pancakes and biscuits with all of my preserved summer toppings!

There is one sad note about the GCP, though. I gave my dad a jar of blueberry jam and a jar of the peach BBQ sauce for his birthday. Unfortunately, these were confiscated by the TSA, although they were clearly not liquids. I hope that the TSA agent in Albuquerque enjoyed my canned goods. Next time, I will just mail the gifts.

Zucchini Bread

I was recently at a farmer's market in Boulder. I always love going to a farmer's market, but I admit that I am usually a little disappointed in Colorado farmer's markets. They are always a little too heavy on bread and meat, and too light in actual produce. Often there is produce from out of state...a vendor may shout enthusiastically, "fresh from California!" Not exactly the point. This particular one had a fair amount of local produce, including lettuces, green garlic, and zucchini.

I bought an obscene piece of zucchini. It was about a foot and a half long and about three inches in diameter. You could probably cause some serious damage with it if you wanted a weapon. In any case, it was not suitable for small children to see. It was the biggest one in the basket, and the moment I spotted it, I knew it would make at least a double batch of zucchini bread.

I do not like zucchini much on its own. Occasionally in a ratatouille or veggie lasagna, and of course, fried, but that doesn't really count. I once had a fantastic pasta dish made by a friend who had recently gone to Italy. I have no idea what was in it, but it seemed to be only zucchini, olive oil and parmesan cheese. I have tried to replicate it to no avail.

But I make a pretty mean zucchini bread. Some recipes I've found are more like zucchini cake. Cake is nice, but if it's going to feature a vegetable, I'd prefer it to be more healthy than not. I don't feel this way about, say, chocolate cake. You will not find me substituting sweet potatoes into a chocolate cake to up the fiber, or adding wheat germ, or any other "tricks" my health magazines try to see me on. But with zucchini bread, I've felt the need to doctor recipes so that this can be a somewhat healthy snack, especially if I'm going to make 4-6 loaves at a time, which I'm prone to do.

Zucchini is pretty easy to come by during the summer, when it's in season. If you grow it in your garden, you will inevitably have more than you know what to do with. If you have a small garden and don't have space for it, such as I do, then you will probably have a friend or coworker that's looking to get rid of some of theirs.

This recipe is adapted from James Beard's Beard on Bread, which has a lot of delicious, basic bread recipes that you should learn how to make.

Zucchini Bread

3 eggs (egg substitute works well if you're a cholesterol-watcher like me)
2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
2 cups grated, peeled zucchini
3 tsp. vanilla (I forgot to put it in today, which resulted in a more savory bread)
1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
3 tsp cinnamon
1 cup walnuts

Beat the eggs. Add the sugar, oil, applesauce, zucchini, and vanilla and mix. Combine flour, salt, soda, baking powder and cinnamon; add to zucchini mixture. Stir until blended, add nuts, pour into two 9 x 5 x 3-inch loaf pans. Bake in 350 degree oven for one hour; cool on rack. I spray the pans with nonstick cooking spray and put a rectangle of waxed paper into the bottom, as I've found these loaves prone to sticking. You can also make 2 dozen muffins in lieu of two loaves, or one dozen muffins and one loaf.

This bread freezes exceptionally well. The recipe makes two loaves, so if you double or triple it, you will have a nice supply. I have played with the ratio of oil to applesauce and the flours. Using all whole wheat flour made the loaves heavy and a little dry. My next experiment may be to use equal parts whole wheat and whole wheat pastry flour. I also considered adding a bit of ginger in place of some of the cinnamon, but shied away for today. Next time.

A Jungle of Mint

Summer is the time of year I love desserts the most. Well, that might only be partially true, as I love a dense, warm molten chocolate cake or gingerbread in the winter. But summer seems to bring endless flavor combinations with its ripe fruit.

Since getting an ice cream maker as a wedding present, I've been very busy whipping up various frozen desserts. I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favorite, so I'll just list what I've been making: fresh mint ice cream, watermelon sorbet, blackberry-strawberry sorbet, and blackberry-nectarine sorbet. Making this list, I've just realized that I've neglected to try a peach ice cream, so I'll need to remedy that soon.

My mint plant is out of control, as mint tends to get. Mint grows runner roots, which means the roots go out horizontally underground, sprouting up other shoots along the way. Another complication with mint is that once you cut it back, it grows several new shoots in the place you just cut. Our first solution to controlling it was having a mojito party, but alas, that just made it grow back twice as big. Luckily, I have it in a container, so it's not taking over the entire garden. But it produces far more mint than I can typically use.



Enter solution #2: fresh mint ice cream. All I can say about this is that it's a true revelation. I will admit that I love mint-chip ice cream, despite its disturbing artificial minty green color. For fresh mint ice cream, you steep mint in milk and cream, strain it, and make a custard. It does have a faint green color, but the taste is completely refreshing and lovely. I used this recipe.

But I can't eat mint all the time, so I've turned to sorbet for an easy, healthy dessert. Sorbet is ridiculously easy and basically has a formula: 2-6 cups of fruit, 1/4-1 cup of sugar, a tablespoon or two of lemon or lime juice, and sometimes water, depending on the fruit. For example, for watermelon sorbet, I mix 4 cups of watermelon, 1/4 cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons of lime juice. Watermelon doesn't need added water, and it's already pretty sweet, so not much sugar either. For blackberry-strawberry sorbet, I use 2 cups of strawberries, four cups of blackberries, a simple syrup of 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar, and one tablespoon of lime or lemon juice. Some of the combinations are a matter of experimentation; blend the fruit in a blender or food processor with some sugar (and water, if necessary) and keep tasting until you like the sweetness. I enjoy some tartness in sorbet. And if you don't have an ice cream maker, you can reduce the amount of water, pour the mixture (strain out seeds if there are berries) into a rectangular dish and freeze, scraping a fork across the mixture every 1-2 hours until it's frozen. Then you have granita, which is like a sno-cone, only without the nasty flavored syrup. Maybe you like the flavored syrup, but I prefer fresh watermelon flavor over, say, tiger's blood.

As for today, I think I'm going to put it all together and try a strawberry-mint ice cream.

Looking Forward to Summer's Bounty

This week, it happened. The first truly warm day in which I could open the windows, let fresh air in, and let winter out. Though there will inevitably be spring snowstorms, in my mind we are just one step away from summer.

Tomatoes, eggplant….tomatoes, eggplant. Bell peppers. Peaches, apricots, cherries. All manner of colorful fruit. And best of all, firing up the barbecue nearly every night. I have a gas grill, and though I have some guilt about that (dad always taught me that charcoal or wood tastes better), it is nice to come home from work at 5:30 and have a grill that’s ready in ten minutes.

I was dreaming about some of my favorite summer foods. Tomatoes are the best. Eggplant is a close second, though I find I can get it at other times of the year and it tastes quite good. The sickly pink tomatoes of winter are not worth buying, in my opinion.

I found a ridiculously easy recipe last summer for a grilled eggplant and tomato salad. If you like eggplant and tomatoes, you must make this dish. It is ridiculously easy, and if you just pour the grilled salad on top of some pasta, it’s a satisfying, quick weeknight meal. You can try different cheeses, too; I like it with goat cheese or feta. I suppose it would also be lovely on top of polenta or mixed into a risotto.

It is from Cooking Light:
• 1 (1-pound) eggplant, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices
• 2 cups coarsely chopped tomato
• 1/4 cup (1 ounce) crumbled feta cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 2 teaspoons capers
• 1 teaspoon extravirgin olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 garlic clove, minced
Grill the eggplant about 3 minutes per side. Cut it into bite-sized pieces. Mix it, along with all other ingredients, in a large bowl.

Other, less formal grilled salads last summer included bell peppers, corn, and summer squash. I basically throw whatever I have on the grill, chop it after it cools a little, and mix some oil and herbs in. fresh basil, thyme, oregano or mint are all fantastic. I now prefer grilled salads to cold ones, because to tell the truth, I get a little bored with lettuce. Although you can also pour the grilled veggies on top of the lettuce for yet another variation.

If only it were summer all year long, I just might be a vegetarian. But then, even the best eggplant doesn’t quite compare to a grilled bison steak (for me, at least)!

What are your summer favorites?