Strawberries - June 1, 2013

I was just looking over last year's posts and realize that it isn't just my imagination and impatience that thinks the spring/summer fruits are taking forever to come into season this year. Last year we were picking strawberries in mid-May and already had peaches canned by June 1!

2013 is off to a later start, but the fruit that we are getting is tastier than I remember. We got up early this morning and drove out to Hollin Farms in Delaplane, VA. It is just a bit more than an hour drive from our house, but such a beautiful drive that we don't mind taking multiple trips out there, beginning with strawberries today! We each got a flat and decided just to pick until we were sick of picking or until the boxes were full, whichever came first. That ended up being just a bit over 20 lbs.

Then a spent the rest of the day sorting, cleaning, washing, jamming, and freezing! I put up (love that quaint phrase) nine pints of honey-sweetened jam and seven quarts of whole berries in the freezer. There are another three quarts or so that were less than ripe sitting on the counter, and another quart that I held back just for us to enjoy.

Tonight we had a few of them as grain-free, lactose-free, and refined sugar-free strawberry shortcakes.

The cake is an almond flour, honey sweetened cupcake and the cream is whipped coconut milk. I haven't quite perfected the technique yet, but it was delicious.

Apricot-Glazed Ribs - Oct 7, 2012

One of Nick's and my favorite Sunday suppers, especially during football season, are these amazing ribs.  The recipe is an old one, that has shown up here before.  We've even made them for Jaime and Richie once when they stopped by during one of their tours of the Midwest.



So there's nothing really new here.  This is not a recipe that I tweak.  Mostly because it's so perfect, and simple as it is.  That being said, I did mistakenly purchase St. Louis style ribs, which have a lot more fat on them than the called for baby backs, which changed things up a bit.  Specifically, there was quite a bit more fat to cook through, and so the meat wasn't as tender as it normally is.  Also, these things were so rich...pretty overpoweringly so.  We have some leftovers.



Nick and I served these with a side of delicata squash from our CSA box.  I think delicata might be my current favorite squash variety.  And, here's something else that I'm excited about...I cooked this squash in my pressure cooker.  Yep, my shiny Kuhn Rikon pressure cooker that's been sitting neglected in the back of a cupboard for the past 6 years or so.  Ellen reminded me that I should pull it out and play with it when she asked to borrow it for a baked bean recipe of her grandmother's.  Now I'm rediscovering how wonderful it is to be able to cook squash in 10 minutes, and rice in five.  And beans in 20 minutes!  This thing is revolutionizing our weeknight dinner options, especially since I've been so much busier lately.  Stay tuned for more pressure cooking fun. 

Tomatoes - September 1, 2012

The couple brands of commercial canned tomatoes without added citric acid available on the market (Pomi and Bionature) are imported from Italy and therefore exorbitantly expensive, so ever since my corn allergy was diagnosed last summer I have been searching for a cheaper and more environmentally sustainable solution. Growing my own tomatoes and then canning the harvest seemed like an obvious solution, but unfortunately we live in a city townhouse with a postage stamp yard without much sun and likely very nutrient-poor soil. Undeterred, I started a huge number of tomato plants this past winter and transplanted them outside where unfortunately they just never thrived. We did get a decent number of tomatoes off our three container plants to eat fresh, but no where near the quantity I was hoping for and would get us through the winter.

Our local farmer's markets are loaded with gorgeous tomatoes this time of year, but with a going price of $2.50 a pound, I quickly realized that canning those was not going to be any cheaper than continuing to purchase the imported tomatoes.

Finally, I stumbled across some "u-pick" options and found Hollin Farms in Fauquier County, Virginia was offering a "canning special" at $1 a pound as long as you bought more than 20 pounds. Of course, it is about an hour drive from the beltway, but even factoring in the cost of gas I was finally going to get some tomatoes at a price that I could stomach. Plus, it was a pleasant drive to a beautiful location with gorgeous mountain and valley views in all directions and we could bring the dog! Our total haul was 46 pounds, about half roma tomatoes and the other half a variety of other types.

I then spent the bulk of Labor Day weekend peeling, chopping, food mill-ing, cooking, and canning tomatoes! We ended up with 6 quarts of quartered tomatoes, 3 quarts and 3 pints of diced tomatoes, and  4 quarts and 7 pints of sauce.

Converting everything to pints just for math simplicity sake, I managed to put up 36 pints of tomatoes.

Cost of tomatoes - $46
Cost of gas - $30
Cost of jars - $25

Total - $101

Cost per pint, including jars - $2.80
Cost per pint, not including jars - $2.11

Cost per ounce, including jars - $0.18
Cost per ounce, not including jars - $0.13

(I can't decide if it is fair or not to include the cost of the jars. I did have to buy them this year, but expect to use them again and again over the rest of my life like my mother has done. Next year I will only need to buy new lids. I also used up a bottle of organic lemon juice, but that was already in my pantry and I can't remember what it cost. And of course, there is the cost of electricity to run the range and the water, but I don't have an easy way to calculate that.)

So... in terms of cost, how did I do compared to the expensive stuff from Italy?

You can purchase a case of Pomi chopped tomatoes from Amazon for $27.99. This is a pack of 12, with each TetraPak container holding 750 grams or 26.46 ounces. That is a per ounce price of $0.09. Sounds wonderful, until you realize that this offer is not eligible for Amazon Prime and shipping is an astonishing $23.38!

The Bionature crushed tomatoes are also available currently on Amazon and are selling for $60.23 for a pack of 12 cans holding 800 grams or 28.2 ounces. That is a per ounce price of $0.18. There are free shipping offers, so that price is accurate.

The bottom line... This was not an exercise in extreme frugality, however I did not do worse than my only store bought options and I have the satisfaction of knowing exactly what is in those jars and that they didn't have to travel half way around the globe to get to my cupboard. And it was kind of fun!

Hartman Garden Update - July 16, 2012

It is tomato season!

I am so excited to be harvesting tomatoes... These are some of the heirloom beefsteaks. I feel like I've been watching these babies grow for ages, starting out as just seeds germinating under a light on a corner of my desk in the dark days of winter. I am so attached that it is almost difficult to eat them! But their deliciousness wins out in the end. I've been eating them raw but their true deliciousness came to life last night when I put them on top of a pesto pizza. Even Richie - who doesn't like "chunks" of tomatoes and made a face when he saw it - gave it a try and admitted that they tasted "ok." We might convert him to a tomato eater yet!

We also have a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes and are harvesting more than I can eat, so I decided to utilize my new canning skills to preserve some for the winter. This is another recipe from The Preservation Kitchen. Don't know how they taste yet, but they sure are pretty!

The only disappointment thus far has been the San Marzano tomatoes. I've been fighting blossom end rot with them and have only managed to salvage a couple small tomatoes so far. My research tells me that the cause could be any of several issues, including a lack of calcium in the soil and inconsistent watering. I've added egg shells to the container and put mulch on the soil to help keep the moisture level, but when the temperatures soar into the triple digits, it is hard to keep up sometimes.

Foraged Plums - June 20, 2012

Just as peach season wrapped up, we turned the Hartman house to plum central. A few weeks ago Richie discovered that some of the pretty flowering trees in front of some office buildings not far from our house were not just the typical ornamental cherries or ubiquitous Bradford pears but are actually fruit-bearing plum trees. He kept an eye on them and then when they turned ripe and started dropping onto the sidewalk in mass quantities late last week, we decided it was time to pounce. Early Saturday morning we threw a ladder, a basket, and a few canvas grocery bags into the car and came home with an astonishing 26+ pounds of fruit!

I then proceeded to spend the rest of Saturday working furiously to preserve as many as I could since they were ripening and splitting open in front of my eyes and I was about to leave on a three-day business trip Sunday morning.

Remembering the "Italian prunes" my mother used to can each summer for us to eat all winter, I put up 13 pints of whole plums in syrup. I also made two kinds of jam - one just plain fruit and the other plums with spices. 

Then this morning I made a small batch of this plum chutney that just happened to be posted on The Kitchn by the author of Food in Jars at the very moment I was looking for something else to do with the remainder of my plums! This was my first experience with chutney outside of the stuff you get at an Indian restaurant so I didn't know what to expect. I slathered some on a portion of the leftover smoked pork shoulder we did last week and stuck it between two slices of hearty bread and discovered it turned some ordinary leftovers into an amazing sandwich! I'm a chutney convert now!

We still have a few pounds of the least ripe ones left in the refrigerator and the remainder of a plum crisp I improvised Saturday night to eat, but the rest have been jammed and/or canned and added to my growing pantry stash! 

Peach Season - May 31, 2012

It is peach season at our house! When Richie came back from Home Depot some years ago with some fruit trees, I thought it would be an interesting experiment but never imagined they'd actually be productive. Hundreds of peaches, dozens of pears, and a few apples later and I can't imagine not having this amazing bounty each summer.

The peach tree took a direct hit during Hurricane Irene last year and nearly toppled over, but thankfully it survived. We staked it up and did some serious pruning and it has had a relatively productive year. Not quite as impressive as last year, but still more than we know what to do with!

I've been enjoying peaches with my yogurt (homemade of course!)... Shown here drizzled with honey and garnished with a few mint leaves from the herb garden.

We've had peach cobbler... Served with some of my homemade ice vanilla ice cream. Dinner Clubbers may recall that I have been in the past adamantly opposed to "a la mode." Well, let's just say that change is possible. I have definitely changed my tune on that preference, especially when the ice cream is this good.

And we've preserved some peaches for the winter months. Shown here are the four pints I put up so far (alas, one didn't seal so I'll be turning it into peach-mulberry cobbler tonight).

I also made a batch of peach jam with some of our earliest windfalls, but I should have probably crushed the fruit a bit more as it ended up separating from the jelly part. Live and learn!

Pickled Asparagus - May 19, 2012

My second home canning effort! A few of the stands at the Alexandria farmer's market yesterday still had asparagus and I decided it would be fun to try out the recipe for pickled asparagus I'd just read about in The Preservation Kitchen, a new cookbook I decided to buy based solely on Amazon's recommendation due to my recent purchase of a canner and assorted canning accessories.

This is the first recipe I've tried (and I haven't tasted it yet!) so I can't do a full review yet, but it is very fun to look at and read. When I bought it I didn't realize his restaurant was in Chicago, so it was a delight to read about him sourcing local ingredients from Wisconsin and Illinois. Makes me really miss the midwest!

I ended up halving the recipe that called for four pounds of asparagus and would make about 4 quarts, primarily out of concern for my budget. Half pound bunches of asparagus were $4 each, so the two pounds I did buy cost me $16. Plus, I had to buy two bottles of white wine vinegar (the recipe called for champagne vinegar but I decided that was just too expensive and white wine would have to do) at $4 a piece. The dill is growing on my patio, so that was essentially free. Adding in a few cents for salt and garlic, the we are approaching $12 a quart! Yikes! I sure hope that when I actually bust into these preserves this winter, I decide they were worth the expense!

Strawberry Jam - May 15, 2012

I did it! My first ever jam-making and canning experience! These little jars are so pretty and so much more work than I expected went into making them that I can't even imagine eating them, although I'm sure I will change my mind when the dark days of winter roll around.

Cooking, cooking, cooking... What does "gelling point" mean, anyway??

My mother was a home food preserver, even in the 1980s and 1990s when it was not very fashionable. I think she was either ahead of or behind her time, not sure which! In addition to canning the tomatoes and freezing other veggies from our garden, she would buy crates of peaches, pears, and plums from the supermarket each summer and can them for us to eat throughout the year. I recall having a vague awareness of what she was doing, but never got interested in learning more. When I was very young I thought it was just something moms did, but then I got older and thought it was old fashioned and weird. No way was I going to go through all that work! I'd just buy canned stuff at the store, like everyone else in the normal world!

Which is exactly what I did, until my adult-onset food allergies threw me for a loop. Virtually all commercially produced canned tomatoes are a problem for me due to the citric acid (derived from corn) they add. Jams and jellies - even the "natural" ones without high fructose corn syrup - are still dangerous because there is no way of knowing what is in the pectin or what the fruit might have been treated with. So here I am... following in my mother's footsteps after all!

And to my great surprise, it is a lot of fun! And as I learn more about the commercial food supply, the more I am grateful that I had something push me in this direction.

Strawberry Picking (and a new puppy!) - May 13, 2012

It's strawberry season here in Virginia! We drove down to south central Virginia on Saturday and on the way home, stopped at Gallmeyer Farms outside Richmond for our first ever experience of "u-pick" strawberries. I've had plenty of strawberry picking experience, of course, since picking in the garden was a task my sister and I were often given. But this was very different. For one, I actually WANTED to do it! Disgusted by the quality of supermarket berries and newly inspired to eat more locally grown foods, Richie and I have decided to make the most of the fruit growing season here. Next up will be blueberries and then apples in the fall. I'd love to find some cherries too, but that is proving a little more difficult.

The other major difference was that I was free to pick what I liked. I could pass over berries to my heart's content and no one would scold me later for leaving some to rot on the vine or picking some that were not completely ripe yet. So freeing!

Altogether, we picked a little more than 10 pounds of berries. Not bad for about 30 minutes worth of effort! We had strawberry shortcake right away (yum) and then I sorted the rest. A big bowl of not-so-ripe ones are hanging out in the fridge waiting for me to get some canning jars and then turn them into jam (on my agenda for this week) and I froze another four bags to be enjoyed throughout the year.

The primary reason for our drive was to check out a new litter of chocolate lab puppies! It has been over a year now since we said goodbye to your beloved yellow lab Kili and have finally decided that the time is right for another dog. The puppies were adorable and we got to meet the breeder and see both of the parents (the father is an international champion... whatever that means!), who were healthy and very good natured. They were just born on May 2 so still have some more time to spend with their mother before our little one can come home on June 22. More pictures will follow then, but here is a teaser for now!

Pickled Ramps - April 1, 2012

Ramp season is upon us, a good month earlier than usual here in Minnesota!  I picked up a couple bunches at the co-op last week and pickled them over the weekend.  I used a variation of this recipe, adapting it to what I had on hand.  I added a bit of fresh orange zest and grated fresh ginger to season.  These are just refrigerator pickles, and so have to be consumed within the week or so.  That shouldn't be a problem.

Just a note about the greens: I chose not to pickle the green parts of the ramps, choosing instead to use them fresh, chopped into salads and the like.  Fresh ramps are incredibly delicious, and so I find splitting the greens from the bulbs to be a nice way to enjoy both flavors.

Jess & Nick's CSA Delivery #9 - Aug 25, 2011

Oh wow, sorry for the long absence Dinner Clubbers! August has been hectic...the good kind of hectic where you try and squeeze everything into a waning summer. I feel terrible that this post is so delinquent. Let's just dive right in, shall we? Last Thursday I picked up our ninth box of veggies. It was HEAVY. I'm guessing it was over 30 pounds, and could have easily been 40, of fresh, green goodness. The biggest contributor to that weight was a beautiful, ripe and sweet watermelon, pictured in the top left corner. Right after taking these pictures I cut it open to find bright, cool, yellow flesh that was almost devoid of seeds. It was so sweet and juicy that I think I ate nearly half of it while cutting it up to put in the fridge. Moving on down the line, we also received green and yellow beans; vitamin greens; some charming goose-necked yellow summer squash; edamame; another melon, this one much smaller; tomatoes; onions; peppers; and cucumbers. Not pictured, but also a big contributor to building up my biceps carrying this box to the car, were six ears of sweet corn; potatoes; and Thai basil (the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back?).

Now, lest you be thinking, '30 pounds! What's this wuss complaining about?,' I should mention that I also had 25 pounds of Roma tomatoes to pick up, as I purchased one of the produce plus options offered by our amazing CSA. Yeah, and I made one trip, one, with nearly 60 pounds of awkward produce, to my car parked two blocks away. I almost didn't make it. It wasn't my finest moment, but all's well that ends well.

And look, look what I did with those tomatoes!

It's my first tomato canning experience.  Even though I've wanted to put up tomatoes for the last three summers, I've never made the time until now. Twenty-five pounds of Romas gave me 12 quarts of tomatoes, with about five tomatoes left over. This should hold us through the entire Minnesota winter. I've had a very self-satisfied feeling, bordering on smugness, for the past several days now.

A huge thank you, a bit delayed but no less sincere, to all the good folks at Harmony Valley Farm!  You've truly outdone yourselves this week.

Pickled Radish Seed Pods - Aug 2, 2011

Remember those radish seed pods Nick and I received in CSA delivery #6? After adding a few of them fresh to salads and enjoying their spicy crunch, I decided to pickle the rest. I found a recipe for pickled peppers in August 2011's Bon Appetit and simply substituted the radish seed pods for the peppers. They turned out great and were delicious on some all-grass-fed-beef franks that we grilled awhile back. These are just refrigerator pickles and we'll need to eat them within one month (similar to when we pickle ramps in the spring), but it's still nice to preserve things to last a bit longer.

Blueberries - Aug 1, 2011

Last Thursday I made a little day trip just north of the Twin Cities to pick some blueberries. My sister had been sending me taunting pictures of the 25 pounds she had picked the weekend before out in Oregon. I spend two hours in unpleasant heat and humidity and got just 1/5th of that amount. Five pounds, however, was enough for me to make a half batch of blueberry jam, freeze enough for two future pies, and to keep a little jar of fresh berries out for Nick and I to eat at our leisure over the weekend.


Blueberry and Strawberry-Rose Jam

In addition to the quick batch of blueberry that I made up on Thursday, I also made some strawberry jam, using berries that I had frozen when my stove was on the fritz, on Monday. I know you're not supposed to mess around with jam recipes because they are scientifically formulated and all, but I couldn't help myself from adding a teaspoon of rose flower water in with the strawberries because that sounded like a great flavor combination. The jam did indeed set, so the rose flower water did not interfere with the chemistry, but I haven't opened any yet, so I don't know how it will taste. I'll get back to you.