Canned Apricots

I still have a load of fresh apricots left from my 26 pound flat. You can only eat so much apricot jam, which I made a batch of yesterday. So it’s on to canning them, but seriously how many canned apricots can one person have? What in the world else can you do with apricots?? Oh my goodness, I bought way too many apricots. The seven pints I canned today used up maybe 5 pounds. I still have like 12 pounds left.

This time I followed a recipe I found in You Can Can by Better Homes and Gardens:

 

I desperately bought this after I foolishly thought I could check out a canning book from the library. Yeah… right. Height of the summer and I thought I could snag a canning book from the library, plucking it right off the shelf all lonely and patiently waiting for me. What was I thinking? :)

I needed a book and I needed one fast. I had fruit sitting at home ripening by the minute. This one has photos of every single recipe and the title helped calm my nerves after realizing 26 pounds is A LOT. Perfect. So even though it’s too new to have high Amazon ratings, I think I did pretty good. I had a hard time using it for jam, since I had to make it hard and go with no/low-sugar jam, which isn’t included in the book. But it made for a good cross- reference.

For canning apricots, I followed the directions for peaches, noting their tables saying that apricots need to be “hot packed” not “raw packed” like peaches. I crossed-referenced with this resource- National Center for Home Food Preservation out of the University of Georgia (definitely bookmark worthy!). Their directions matched, so I felt good to go.

Wash and cut ripe apricots in half or fourths. I ended up using about 5 pounds, which filled exactly the 7 pint jars I had.

Then pour in a large pot along with the syrup you want. I went with something between light and medium. I used 5 cups of water with 2 cups of sugar (Syrup ratios here). Bring to a boil.

Meanwhile, get your canning pot boiling lids and rings sterilized (as you can see my stove top is pretty busy).

Once boiling, begin pouring into sterilized jars, cover with lids and rings (this is called “hot packing”). I learned quickly to fill using both slotted spoon and a ladle in order to control the perfect amount of fruit verses syrup.

Place in canning pot and “process” (boil) according to altitude. I’m just above sea level, so 20 minutes was all I needed for pint-sized jars. Let cool on cooling rack. Check that lids seal.

Important note: These steps are merely my narration of the steps I took. These are not word-for-word directions from a reputable source (like a published book or government website). Please consult those when canning. I come across a couple of other blogs (even one from a very reputable local restaurant) with directions using the “raw packing”, which my sources specifically say not to do (don’t know why, maybe it’s harmless), proving to me not to follow a blog’s sole directions for anything canning related.

Jam Session

Two years ago I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and loved every single page of it. She is a writer living on some acreage with her family and they decide to in-source all their food for a year by growing, raising, and making it themselves, buying it locally or, except for a few exceptions, go without. What an awe-inspiring experiment and a way of life. My husband would never go for it. I suppose neither would our HOA. To dream….

Anyways… One of the things I couldn’t wait to do when we got a house (besides renovate, paint, decorate, etc.) was to grow my own veggie garden and can. Well this spring was like the worst on record, so not much has happened in the veggie garden. I’m still holding out hope for my four tomato plants.

My mom canned a little when I was growing up. Nothing crazy like a full winter’s worth of green beans and pickles, but certain jams, applesauce, and things like pears and peaches. I wanted to at least try that.

Earlier this month she gave me her canner, so now I needed the fruit. I picked up some blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and apricots this weekend. After a detour for some jars, pectin, and extra sugar I was set…..

Until I got home….. and realized just how much I had bought. A “canning flat” of 26 pounds of apricots sounds like a deal until the recipe calls for 3 pounds to make one batch, which is like 5 to 7  jars. Opps.

After a few moments of freaking out, not to mention a sense of overwhelming-ness when every single recipe I consulted said something totally different (the directions that came with the pectin were soooo confusing I refused to use them), here’s what I came up with using the website pickyourown.org:

5 cups of fruit
1 package of no/low-sugar pectin
2 cups Splenda
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon butter

I made three low-sugar batches:
Strawberry-raspberry (3 cups, 1 cup)
Strawberry-raspberry-blueberry (2 cups, 1.5 cup, 1.5 cup)
Apricot

Wash and cut up fruit, then mash up. For the apricots, I ran them through the food processer. Pour in a large pot and bring to a rolling boil, stirring to keep from burning. Add the pectin and stir in. Bring back to a boil, add sugar, Splenda, and butter (this eliminates the foaming that occurs and helps prevent burning). Boil for 1 minute.

Fill sanitized jars and cover with lids and rings. Place in boiling water in a canning pot. Let sit for 5-7 minutes after it has returned to a boil.

Cool on cooling rack, checking the jar lids have sealed and the jam is setting.

This amount, makes anywhere from 5 to 7 8oz. jelly jars of jam so make sure you have enough plus some ready for each batch. I was quite surprised how each batch resulted in different amounts finished jam.

In the end, I think I did alright as a novice without any help. My last batch certainly was faster and more smoothly than my first. My next adventure will be in canning the rest of the apricots, since I still have like 20 pounds left. Stay tuned for that :)

Important note: The above directions are not obviously word-for-word of the directions I used. They can be found here. Please use a trusted source when canning and follow those directions. Because I used a no/low-sugar pectin, I had some freedom in the amount of sugar I did use, something not true with regular pectin, which requires a certain amount of sugar.

Spicy Peanut Noodle Salad

A few weeks ago I tried a similar dish at a catered lunch and loved it and has been nagging me to make it at home. As a little kid I thought it was completely weird to use peanut butter with dinner, because of course that’s what it tasted like. But even way back then I was like “…. this isn’t that weird, it’s actually kind of good”. Which of course I thought that was weird.

This was a super easy dinner to make, really only requiring peanut sauce beyond ingredients I always have on hand (no, I didn’t make the sauce from scratch…. maybe another day). It’s also a perfect summer meal that would be great chilled as well as warm.

1/2 green pepper, very thinly sliced
1/2 red pepper, very thinly sliced
2 dozen baby carrots, julienned
1 cup snow peas
1/4 cup spicy peanut sauce (found in the Asian food aisle)
a couple handfuls of long pasta (I used whole wheat spaghetti, nothing special)
crushed dry peanuts, sliced green onions to garnish

While the pasta is boiling, placed the rinsed snow peas into a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn down to low heat and continue cooking for just another minute until tender crisp. Rinse in cold water.

Next put the julienned carrots in boiling water for a few minutes to cook until tender crisp. Meanwhile, thinly slice the snow peas diagonally. Rinse the carrots in cold water.

Drain pasta and toss with veggies. Drizzle over with peanut sauce and sprinkle with dry peanuts.

P.S. It looks like a little one of my little red potatoes snuck into the corner of the photo . We just harvested a bunch right before dinner. We harvested our fingerlings just last week. We are swimming in fancy-smancy little potatoes. Looks like I need to find a few potato recipes to try.

Birthday Getaway

My birthday was last week and as I get older I can definitely see a difference in how I regard my day. When you are a kid, a giant party with cake and gifts is the standard- emphasis on the me-me-me. Tons of friends and tons of gifts with you as the centerpiece. I've noticed that my twenties, among everything else, has been a transition in how I want to celebrate my birthday.

Especially, since just buying a house and pouring most of our discretionary income towards it, but for other reasons too, I simply didn't want a bunch of "stuff". I have all the necklaces, Kitchenaid stand mixers, iPods I could want. So needless to say, I wasn't much help to my husband. But he still came through big time.

It all started with this:

My first set of real, fancy-smancy, adult luggage. I had still been using the suitcase I bought with high school graduation money. It still is in great shape and will be happily donated to a local foster care organization. I like that the gift follows the "item-in, item-out" rule and allows me to pay it forward to a kid in need. Perfect.

It also was the perfect gift because I was going to need it the very next day. He made reservations at Lakedale Resort on San Juan Island. Best birthday gift ever.

San Juan Island is the most populated island of the San Juan Islands, located about 90 minutes north of Seattle and about an hour ferry ride west.

The ferry dock at Friday Harbor, the only incorporated town of all the San Juan Islands.

Lakedale Resort is located on the shores between two small lakes up the road from Friday Harbor. It is straight off the cover of Sunset magazine. No, really it made the cover a few years ago. You totally know why when you get there. They offer hotel rooms in the main lodge, cabins, decked-out Airstream trailers, "glam-ping" canvas tents, and regular camping. A-maz-ing.

We arrived mid-day, so I already had my coffee-fix, so the following morning it was priority one to come here- The Skinniest Latte Shop. Yes that really is how wide it is. The owner and barista-extraordinaire said it used to be the alleyway between the two buildings. Too cute. My skinny latte was awesome too.

Then it was off to the Market Chef a block over, which my Frommer's said had the best chocolate chip cookies. Not being a huge cookie fan, I hoped that meant they had other baked goodies. I was so right. Their scones were a little slice of heaven. Crumbly, sweet, biscuit-y but not dried out, packed with yummy berries, perfection. We had scones for breakfast every morning (they freshly bake new flavors each day) and bought two while waiting in the ferry line to go home. I went home with a mission to perfect my scone-making skills (which aren't so hot) to try to emulate these.

Another favorite spot is the Pelindaba Lavender Farm tucked away in the middle of the island. Their large Lavender Festival was just the previous weekend so we were able to enjoy the fully bloomed and aromatic fields without the crowds. I was so in love, I bought 5 plants to put alongside our bay window out front.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to go on a whale-watching tour since we had our dogs with us. Some of the best whale-watching waters surround the San Juans. Instead, we stopped by Lime Kiln State Park, which has the best land-based whale-watching on the island. We weren't disappointed. We saw a couple singles and a small pod with a baby orca swim by. There are two resident orca pods in the area and park rangers can tell you all about them. The lighthouse and rocky cliff views are dreamy too if you don't happen to see anything. I'm sure sunsets here a one-of-a-kind. Off in the distance is Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

On the opposite end of the island (only 20 minutes though) is Roche Harbor. Very beautiful location. A huge dock for boats, restaurants, hotels, and public gardens. I had the best homemade clam chowder here at the Lime Kiln Cafe.

This was the most relaxing mini-vacation and now one of my most favorite places. I couldn't believe we've lived in the Seattle area for so long and hadn't gone here sooner. If you couldn't tell yet, I highly recommend this as the perfect summertime long weekend getaway.

We bought THAT guy's house...

You know, the creepy old guy who casts a dark shadow on the entire block. And we didn't even know it at closing.

We knew it was weird that the previous owner didn't have a blade of grass in either the front or back yard, but we liked the solid fence and well-established arborvitae in the backyard so we entirely overlooked the grass issue. Grass seed is cheap, right??

Here's the front and back yard at inspection:



Well, if it wasn't enough that our house was La Casa de Turquoise, the landscape left much to be desired. As if we needed another project, right?? But in the words of our wonderful realtor, "you get to make it exactly what you want." I couldn't agree more. In buying a house in need of surface-level remodeling (light fixtures, countertops, shrubs), you really do end up with a house that is exactly what you want without paying 30 years of interest for all the details. We totally looked passed the weirdness of no grass (mind you, we live in suburban central- no grass = creepy weird).

It was slow going. Over Memorial Day weekend, we ripped up, tore down, and hauled off all the existing trees and shrubs. That's when we learned we bought THAT guy's house. Apparently, he had let the arborvitae get 6 feet tall at one point (the HOA president gave him a complementary buzz at one point we found out), the dark purple-ly red trees completely blocked the house. The rhododendron nearly swallowed you up trying to get in the front door, had never been pruned back, and bloomed bright red, clashing profoundly with the trees as well as the house.

When the neighbors saw us out there, they ran (no really, liked jogged over) to our aid, providing chainsaws and introductions. Mind you we had moved in over three months earlier. It's like they all wanted to help increase their property value as much as we wanted to increase ours :)

Here's how it looked by the end of the day:

In June, we bought 20 cubic yards of topsoil and planted grass seed (freaking crazy how much is involved!!). By July, we finally needed a lawn mower. We were going to wait until August for plants (believe me, I had landscape plans drawn up for months!), but my birthday was last week (more on that good stuff later) and my genius brother sent over a Home Depot gift card for an amount that put a pretty good dent into the total.

That gift card was in my possession less than 12 hours. Here's what I got:

5 gallon-sized Blue lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)

12 Northern Lights Tufted Hair grasses (Deschampsia caespitosa)

1 Microphyllus Variegatus euonymus (Euonymus japonicus)

Later tonight we will plant these bad boys when it cools off and decide on a few annuals.

Eventually we will prep and plant the other side of the driveway (about a 6 foot wide stretch) to mirror this, but that means ripping out 20 more scraggly arborvitae, hauling in and leveling some topsoil, laying grass seed..... in time, in time. For now I'm in love with our airey, beachy, clean-lined and *alive* front yard.

Tomato Pesto and Yellow Squash

It's no secret that I love veggies and I couldn't be more thrilled than to be growing my own for the first time this summer..... except for the fact that this spring and summer have been like the mildest and rainiest ON RECORD.

Yeah.... So, it is the middle of July and only half my veggies have made it to "ready to eat" status: lettuce, sugar peas, and broccoli. A couple more I've just started picked out of impatience: onions and fingerling potatoes.

My tomatoes are still the size of peas and kelly green, my onions are the size of plums, and I have one decent-sized zucchini I might harvest later this week.

However, I will still pretend that tonight's dinner was full of garden harvest. At least my onions were... in all their petite glory.

Yellow Squash:

Slice onion (white or yellow) in long slices
Slice yellow squash into coins or match sticks

Saute over medium heat with a little minced garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil, and a dash of water until golden brown. Simplicity at it's best.


Tomato Pesto over Whole Wheat Pasta:

Chop up two medium tomatoes, don't discard the fleshy insides
Chop up a small onion
Have on hand a few tablespoons of prepared pesto

Let veggies cook down a little in a small pot over medium heat. Add pesto (because everything is better with pesto). Cook some more. Boil whole wheat pasta; drain.

Progress in Paint

Finally, I'm done.

For a while.

The entire downstairs of our house is painted something else besides builder-grade white, plus my office, craft room. It seems like it has taken for ever.

Here's the run down:

Formal living room, stairwell, upstairs and downstairs hallways: Navajo Sand by Glidden, a very sandy, cool beige color

Family room and kitchen: Dusty Miller by Glidden, a blueish, slight greenish grey

Half bath and Dining Room: Country Beige and Wild Honey by Behr (Painted these rooms first; Wild Honey might as well been Navajo Sand, I can't even tell the difference so I didn't repaint to match.... shhhh, don't tell :)

Office, Craft Room: Celery Sticks by Glidden

Lessons I've learned:

The color will never look "right" and you will never be "sure" of it until it drys, it up on all four walls, and it's been there a few days

Paint samples are the cheapest mistake you can ever make

Don't skimp on a good paint brush and the little hand bucket with the magnet to hold the brush

Those disposable tray liners are totally reusable with latex paint.... um, you just peel it out once dry

Home Depot always has $5 off sales around three-day weekend holidays

Always, always pull up the painters tape along trim work immediately after "cutting in" (learned this one about halfway through after careful tape placement and pressure still let tons of paint seep on to the trim. Ugh.)

And lastly, nothing new but totally proven to me all the same, paint is seriously the cheapest redecorating you can ever do (I'm figure about $200 for paint, maybe another $50 for supplies and finally my house it starting to look personalized)

Still way in the middle of various other projects, so hopefully I'll be able to post some photos later this week.