By Jenn, on January 14th, 2012
Last weekend, my canning buddy Shani and I kicked off our planned year of canning (commitment to get together at least every two months to have a day of preserving stuff) with a date to make some marmalade. She’d gotten me a new recipe book Tart and Sweet for Christmas and I’d spied a recipe for candied kumquats that looked very interesting. Since we knew kumquats were available right now, we knew we needed to get moving.
Of course, when I went to the local grocery where I’d seen the kumquats, they didn’t have any more. Which meant that on Saturday morning, I was shopping at my favorite fancy pants gourmet shop looking for some. Found them and realized that fancy pants shop had a whole lot of interesting citrus. After a quick back and forth, I walked out with kumquats, meyer lemons, and bergamot. If you have never sniffed a bergamot, you should seek one out and try it – they smell SO good. All morning, we would circle back to the bowl holding them until we were ready for them and breathe.
We started with the kumquats, which were fiddly but not difficult. Blanched them the three times the recipe wanted and then packed them into their syrup full of vanilla, star anise and cinnamon. Shani had prepped lemons for marmalade the night before (a lot of the recipes we’ve found want the citrus to soak in water overnight before you use it) and we did that next. It was pretty simple; combine the lemon slices, some sugar and a little vanilla and cook it down until it was nice and thick.
After a quick break for lunch. we moved on to prepping the bergamot. After reviewing the recipes we had for it, we settled on a roughly half and half mix with lemons. We decided to add some teabags to the initial simmering – since bergamot is used in Earl Grey, Shani thought that some tea would give the jam an interesting depth. While the bergamot were simmering in their first round of blanching, we made what I thought was the most interesting preserve of the day – preserved lemons.
To make these, you cut the tips of your lemons, then cut deep Xs in each end, not quite deep enough to go all the way through, but close. Then you pack each lemon with as much salt as you can fit into the cuts and press them into a hot jar, squeezing out juice to cover the lemons. About 7 or 8 lemons fit into each jar by the time we were done, and now we have to leave them to sit for about a month. After that, they’re reportedly good in anything you want to add a salty, lemony kick to. I’m very…interested to try the finished product.
By the time we finished that, the bergamot and lemons were ready for their start turn. Given that both the fruits we were using were fairly bitter, we added a little more sugar than our recipe called for and cooked it down until it was this beautiful deep honey brown color. We accidentally mad more than we thought we were, so we had to break the last bunch up into two different batches.
Just like our last couple of times out, we might have overestimated how much we could get done in a single day, and we didn’t finish up the last batch until after 11:00. I think we’ve agreed that we need a pound limit on how much we should try to process in one session.
Next time, we’re going to try pickling some carrots and some cauliflower, and if I can find all the right spicy bits, we’re going to try making something called fire vinegar, which is going to make an excellent Christmas present for my spicy food loving brother.
By Jenn, on January 9th, 2012
It’s the first week of January, and that means registration for Squam opened today. I was at the Post Office ten minutes after they opened, handing over my envelope.
It’s still a long time and a lot of waiting from January to June, but once you know for sure you’re registered, the going becomes more real, and for me it feels like something small I can take out of your pocket and pet when I need a reminder that there are good things coming up.
If all goes as requested, I am taking a photo class and knitwear design class. Those both fit snugly into the path I am trying to build for myself. We’ll see when my registration gets there if it is meant to be.
As always, I am looking forward to my time in the woods. This year will be different – although the friends I have gone with many time are still going to, I’ve chosen to share a cabin with other friends, ones that I met there in years past. Although I love my friends to pieces, I am finding the thought of changing things up to be profoundly exciting, like I am shedding a protective shell that had grown a little too confining, and stretching out to embrace a new experience. I am a little afraid that I will have hurt my friends’ feelings with this choice, and hopeful that they will recognize that it has less to do with them and more to do with me, and wanting to grow into something new.
Far more than simply rooming with new people, I am taking an even bigger leap with my Squam experience this year. For the first time, Elizabeth is taking the Squam experience to foreign shores (Can it still BE Squam if it’s not AT Squam? I guess we’ll find out!). In October, Squam takes a vacation to Italy, and I am going there too!
All by myself. And I’ve spent all day moving back and forth between being wildly excited and completely freaked out at the thought of going to a workshop all on my own. This is all the funnier if you know that I’ve spent the past three years convincing people that it would be just fine for them to do the very same thing and join us in the woods of New Hampshire without knowing a soul in the camp. Yet, when it is time for me to do it myself, I am a giant ball of anxiety.
But Italy has been at the very top of my travel list for years. It’s been there for so long that it was starting to intimidate me – that only the “perfect” vacation would be right, that if I couldn’t go for long enough or visit the right places or stay in the right kind of hotel, that I just wouldn’t go because it wouldn’t be everything I’ve hoped and dreamed. How damn crazy is that? So, despite having a million reason that it might not end up working out, I added Italy into my registration envelope last night and popped it off in the mail this morning, before I had a chance to have second thoughts and use my fear as an excuse to keep myself small.
And it is going to be awesome.
By Jenn, on December 20th, 2011
This week, today is my Friday. Gotta burn up the vacation time and spend some time with Miss Hannah, since today was the last day of school and now she’s off for nearly two weeks.
Tomorrow, the final push to Christmas prep starts, and I’m over here trying hard not to think to hard about all the things I have to accomplish between now and Sunday (hint: It’s a LOT.)
Tonight, though, Hannah and I will be heading into Boston to have a lovely fancy dinner and see the Rockette’s holiday extravaganza. I can’t think of a more fun way to kick off the final approach to Christmas!
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By Jenn, on December 18th, 2011
Last summer, I had a crazy plant grow in my morning glory bed near my back door. I let it grow because I was both lazy and curious to see what it was and what it would. I still don’t know what it was, but it grew to be huge – taller and wider than me.
Since it got cold and everything has turned brown and dead, every time I walk by that bed, I have thought to myself how bad it looked and how I really should have cut it down and cleared out the bed to get ready for next spring. I haven’t, of course (see above, re: lazy) but it’s been bugging me.
Yesterday morning when I came downstairs in the cold hours before the sun had been able to warm anything, I looked out the window and realized that the tangled brown mess was full of birds. Little black juncos and brown sparrows all chattering to each other and feasting on the seeds the plant mess was still holding in its dried branches.
Just like that, something ugly, messy and annoying was transformed into something wonderful and entertaining. It made me smile all day long.
By Jenn, on November 23rd, 2011
As much as I might be inclined to whine about how stressed or tired I am, I can’t forget that I have so much more to be grateful for than not.
As I’ve been hearing so many people angst about family drama on the holidays, I think the thing I am most, most thankful for is my family. We’re not perfect, but I really genuinely enjoy my family, despite our differences and am immensely grateful that I still have them and that I get to spend time with them often. I really only have my mother in law on Wiley’s side, but she is great too.
It’s easy to forget how lucky I am in the day to day, but it is a lucky, lucky thing.
By Jenn, on November 18th, 2011
Earlier this week, I came across this story, and immediately fell in love with the idea of this sandwich. Given how much of a steak lover Wiley is, I knew he would want me to make them for him.
He’s off tomorrow to go help my Dad with trailwork on the piece of the Appalachian Trail that he is responsible for maintaining. After the terrible snowstorm in CT Halloween weekend, they are expecting a lot of hard work cutting up fallen trees and clearing brush. It’s going to be a long, hard day – just the kind f day that justifies a sandwich made with two entire steaks and a whole loaf of bread. Plus, it’s his birthday, and everyone deserves treats on their birthday, right?
So, tonight I set about making sandwiches for the trail crew. Wiley couldn’t find a big loaf of bread, so he got three little ones instead, which meant we had wee little steaks to go inside them instead of big huge ones.
Of course, I forgot to snap pictures until I was already moving along, so we’ll start in the middle.
Hollowed out bread loaves:
Steaks just starting to sizzle:
Mushrooms, cooked and ready:
Steaks, nearly ready:
Sandwiches under construction:
Pretty packages, tied up in string:
My house is full of smoke from cooking the steaks, and the kitchen smells fantastic. The sandwiches are sitting under my heaviest cutting board and cast iron dutch oven slowly compressing, waiting for Wiley to pack them up in the morning. I hope they are half as delicious as they smelled – if they are, those men will be eating well tomorrow afternoon.
By Jenn, on November 16th, 2011
Last weekend when I was helping with the babies, I was perusing Carrie’s shelves because she has awesome things to read and I was looking for something light and entertaining to read while baby snuggling. I picked up The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club and skimmed the back cover. I was about to put it back on the shelf, when Carrie piped up that it was really good and she thought I would like it.
Now, I’m not normally a fan of chick-lit. I’m even less of a fan of audience-targeted chick lit – just because I like to knit doesn’t mean I’m going to like your heartwarming tale because you’ve set it in a yarn shop because that won’t save it from being a crap story. Carrie knows this, so when she says she thinks I’ll like a particular one, I’m usually willing to give it a chance.
And this time, she was dead on right. This book was great - a story that was engaging and charming and a joy to read. It did, of course, follow the conventions of its genre, but made them feel more real than most writers usually accomplish, and created characters that I really cared about instead of ones that were cliched and annoying. Best of all? So far, no one has died from cancer.
I’m already halfway through the sequel Needles and Pearls and just pre-ordered the third one, which is getting released at the end of the year. I’m really glad I picked this one up.
By Jenn, on November 14th, 2011
I should have known that this month long posting every day thing wasn’t going to happen, but I actually made it further than I expected. Life is a little too crazy right now, and I’m a little too sleep deprived.
Helping a dear friend through a crisis (that so far looks like it will end well, but there’s still plenty of room for it to go pear-shaped on her), a couple of overnight baby shifts to help keep the new parents from completely losing their minds, and a test knitting project that is getting very close to the deadline and is not nearly finished enough piled on top of normal life have all combined to turn me into a giant ball of stress. I hadn’t realized how bad it was until I realized yesterday that I was driving around with my jaw clenched so tight that my neck and face were throbbing. And I was just running errands, not doing anything warranting that level of mental torque, at least not right in that moment.
I’m a worrier by nature, and that’s especially true when there’s situations where I can’t do anything to help. I gather in all that stress and clutch it to me, as if I hold it tight enough, I’ll be able to move the universe with the power of my mind and make things tun out OK.
Since I realized just how stressed I was feeling yesterday, I’ve been trying to pull myself back from it, mostly by noticing when I’m starting to tense up and taking a minute or two to breathe and let it go. It’s working remarkably well. Tonight I am going to settle into my couch with the test knitting and make some progress – double bonus, since I’ll be moving forward on something stressing and knitting is a great relaxation tool – and I’m going to try to get to bed early enough to get some good sleep in.
Any other suggestions, besides a good glass of wine to go with the knitting tonight?
By Jenn, on November 11th, 2011
Spent the night last night helping with the twins. I had forgotten what that level of sleep deprivation is like, and I only did for a night!
As I commented on FB today- last night when little Sam was being very cute and snuggly, it made me want more babies. This morning after I’d been up for feedings at 11, 2 and 5 and awakened for the morning at 7:30, I remembered why I’d been willing to let the more babies question drop, and why I love other people’s babies so much. Not that I would change having the one for all the world, but it awfully nice that she’s old enough to ask us what time we would like to sleep until in the morning.
Speaking of Miss Hannah, tonight was her first performance with the Boston Children’s Chorus. Her group was great , the overall performance was amazing, and most important, she loved it and can not wait until the next one. I am so proud of her I could just pop.
Off to finish my gauge swatch, and then it is time for sweet blessed sleep.
By Jenn, on November 10th, 2011
There’s so much that s wrong going on right now, both out in the world and right here at home. Some of it I can’t talk about and most of it I don’t want to dwell on any more than my brain is making me. So instead, I am going to whine about something completely ridiculous.
Someone left a Sur la Table catalog lying around in the office break room this week. I was thumbing through it this morning and found two of the most ridiculous items I have ever seen for sale in it.
The first, a specialized timer that lets you put in the cooking times and desired finishing times for all your recipes, so that it can ding to remind you when it’s time to start a particular dish in relation to the other you are cooking. I know that getting everything to come out at the same time is one of the biggest challenges of learning how to put on a complicated meal, but do we we really need an automated timer to ding for us to keep us on track?
The second is even more ridiculous. It was a specialized calculator that would let you enter in a recipe and have it spit out the increases or decreases you would need to make to change the number of servings your recipe would make. Seriously? Did doubling a recipe suddenly get so difficult that we need an electronic gadget to do it for us? Of course, Shani might remember me flailing, badly, at doubling a jam recipe or two in her kitchen this summer, and we won’t be discussing that – but my 10 year old can double a recipe in her head.
Along with all the ways the world is going to hell, this essential laziness drives me out of my mind.
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