Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Better late than never.
Summer has finally arrived in Vancouver, and we actually had a weekend at home to enjoy it. That meant gardening, canning, drinking, working on a furniture refinishing project, evening hot-tubbing, tidying up the house, picking out paint colours for our living room re-do, a little sewing, and a trip out to Rolley Lake in Mission for a picnic with friends. Not to mention some reading outloud (B and I are reading Dante’s Inferno which is a school read for me) and a trip to the Bo Laksa King where we became instant converts to the “Special Bo Spice”.
A weekend where we had no specific plans, but made a whole lot of things happen that were what we needed: some re-organization, some outdoor activity, some friend-time, and lots of relaxing.
I’m back at work now and my desk is a mite cluttered. Perhaps later I’ll come back and do some reflecting on the Love letters of Abelard and Heloise which I started this weekend (also for class in the fall). The first letter of Heloise made my heart break on my morning bus ride to work.
Rhubarb canning, 2011.
Strawberry season + seven and a half pounds of rhubarb from the back garden + long weekend = first canning of 2011! Result? Six tins of pie filling, eight jars of jam and six jars of rhubarb chutney (Victoria sauce). Plus a bit of leftover rhubarb for stewing. For those concerned about how much time that might take? Two hours or so. Not a big deal at all early in the morning before it gets too warm in the kitchen.
A couple of years ago, I posted some canning tips which are worth a read over if you are new to canning this year – otherwise proceed to the recipes we used for this weekend’s food storage project.
Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam
Makes: 8 1/2 pint jars
Modified from the recipe in the Ball’s Blue Book to reduce sugar to manageable levels
8 cups strawberries, crushed
4 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 packages “no-sugar needed” dry pectin – Bernadin makes this product and you can buy it at Safeway and Canadian Tire
2 cups of sugar (the original recipe with these quantities would have called for 10 cups of sugar since this is a double batch of fruit)
- Combine strawberries, rhubarb, lemon juice and pectin in a large saucepot.
- Bring to a boil over high heat.
- Add sugar, stirring until dissolved. Return to a rolling boil.
- Boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly.
- Remove from heat.
- Skim foam if necessary.
- Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.
- Adjust two-piece caps.
- Process 10 minutes in water bath.
Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Filling – We used the Bernadin Recipe as written on the website as it doesn’t have a high sugar content.
Victoria Sauce (Rhubarb Chutney)
From the Ball’s Blue Book of Canning
Makes six 1/2 pint jars
2 quarts chopped rhubarb
1 1/2 cups chopped raisins
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 1/2 cups brown sugar (modified from original 3.5 cups)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (modified from original plain vinegar)
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger powder (modified from original ginger)
1 teaspoon salt
- Combine rhubarb, raisins, onion, sugar and vinegar in a large sauce pot.
- Cook until thick, about 25 minutes.
- As mixture thickens, stir frequently to prevent sticking.
- Add spices; cook 5 minutes longer.
- Pour hot into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space.
- Adjust caps.
- Process 15 minutes in boiling water bath.
Next up for canning will be raspberries and cherries – both coming on the market as we speak. I’m thinking cherry salsa and stewed rhubarb and raspberries will be on the next round of canning whenever there’s enough cheap product out there for putting up.
Garlic scape pesto
For all my complaining about the weather this year, when I actually get out into my garden I have to acknowledge that it’s coming along pretty well. I’ve had a hard time with some things (salad greens – how odd) but others (red cabbage, fennel) are taking right off. In particular this year my garlic is coming in thick and gorgeous and I’m excited for August when I actually get to pull it up and dry it.
This morning I was out toodling in the morning sun (finally! sun!) and I noticed that my garlic has got scapes going on. Scapes are essentially the seedpod of the garlic, and as cool as they look, they should be removed in order to promote the growth of the garlic bulb. The good news is that they are edible and make a wonderful addition to salads, stirfrys, pasta sauces, and pestos. Basically any recipe that calls for garlic can use scapes instead – because scapes taste like a mild garlic.
This week at the farmer’s market, I bought some scapes and basil to make one of my favourite summer-time recipes – Garlic scape pesto – which is awesome on meat, pasta, or thinned with some vinegar to make a salad dressing. I love this stuff – and mix it with everything when the ingredients are in season. It’s very straight forward to make and takes no time at all:
Garlic scape pesto
Makes 2 cups
Ingredients
2 bunches basil
10 garlic scapes
1/4 cup pine nuts or 1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds, hulled
oil to thickness desired
feta or parmesan cheese to taste
salt to taste (but not too much or it kills the delicate garlic taste!)
How to:
Throw the basil, garlic scapes, and pine nuts into a food processor. Chop until fine. Add oil just to moisten ingredients, blend and add cheese and salt. You can make it chunky or smooth (I like my pesto smooth) – and put it on pretty much anything savory. Sometimes I add sundried tomatoes or roasted peppers to the blend. Any which way you make it – this is the best early summer peso ever!
Pivoting.
I seem to be gravitating back towards this blog and away from regular posting on the other one – reflecting my disenchantment with gardening in the rainiest, coolest summer *ever* on the coast. I’m crossing my fingers that is going to change this weekend – but really – it’s almost July and we had hail just a few days ago!
In any case I am wondering about the utility of having many blogs and whether or not with the advent of grad school this fall, I should just roll everything back into one. We’ll see how it goes this summer – but I may end up merging Among the Weeds here in the fall since I’m not sure why the delineation anymore.
I will be adding a new feature category here called “Required Readings” as part of my uni requirement to keep a reading journal for my first year of classes. There is a shit-ton of reading to do, and I am hoping to do some creative non-fiction sketches as well as post general impressions and notes that may help me later if I choose to finish with a thesis project rather than coursework. At the moment I’m thinking along the lines of a book of creative non-fiction essays exploring themes of social and ecological collapse, personal transcendence, and the messiness of it all. If that sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve been talking about writing a similar project for years. I’m hoping this degree gives me a bit more impetus to do it. (Plus one of my profs has environmental philosophy as his core research interest, and another old prof of mine at the university is working on a new book dealing with the environment – so I’m in a place of good guidance for such a project).
We’ll see. It means redisciplining myself around reading and writing and making time by giving up other things (after this garden tour – I am done with community organizing for a good long time!). Having weekly classes as a focal point should help somewhat, but I’m also trying to kick down to a four-day work week starting in the fall. That’s going to come down to affordability in the end – but I’m also recommitting to spending less money in order to do it.
Rebalancing. That’s what I’m thinking about at the moment. Retracting in order to turn and point myself in a different direction.
Jupe avec des vélos
This is really not the greatest shot of this finished skirt – taken this morning before I left for work in our very dimly-lit living room….. but you get the basic idea. A new skirt, made from two tones of linen-blend with four appliqued bicycles on the front. Pretty cool, yes?
The pattern for the skirt came from Sew Serendipity which is full of cute ideas, and instead of using the embellishment suggested I just found a bicycle outline on the Internet and turned it into some complementary. Strangely enough, I have no purple in my stash and would have been totally out of luck had I not recently ordered one of the scrap packs from Hawthorne Threads. That had two purplish pieces in it which made awesome bicycles.
Here is a close-up (and way better photo) of one of the appliques. Originally I was just going to use two on the skirt, but it looked odd so I put two more on last night.
So for the clothing count: I have now completed 2 skirts and one dress. I have one skirt needing only hemming to be complete and another one cut out and ready to be sewn (same style as this one but in one colour of linen). Hopefully this week I’ll get those other two skirts done and then I can move onto the red linen-look jumper that I’m dying to make for fall!
Red Cedar 