Another One?

I bet we all know what this means.

Yes, we do.

Another quilt, baby!

But, Sarah. You already have 3 quilts in various stages of UNFINISHEDNESS!

So? Is "unfinishedness" even a word?

You're just avoiding the topic. You use any excuse to buy fabric, don't you?

No...

Right.

For your information, I have been actively quilting my log cabin quilt (which I started 9 years ago) and it's almost finished. Then, I plan on finishing the tumbling blocks quilt top, doing an easy quilt stitch on that one, and then, then I'll start this new one. It's going to be my Autumn Quilt using Amy Butler's free quilt pattern for "Brick Path". I think I'm going to add a Flying Geese border on the sides for full autumn glory effect! It's going to be awesome!

If it ever gets finished.

Whatever.

Blueberry-Lime Jam

I tried this recipe out of the Ball Blue Book of preserving and was pretty pleased with it. I thought I'd post it for you, but I did a little tweaking when I came across a website that I felt had a better recipe. The blueberries make a semi-thick paste if water isn't added to the recipe, which I felt it needed.

Blueberry-Lime Jam

10 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen) (If using fresh, make sure to pick over the berries, removing stems and soft or unripe berries)
1/4 cup lime juice
2 Tbsp. grated lime peel
1/2 cup water
7 cups sugar (if using No-Sugar pectin, use only 4 1/2 cups sugar)
1 box pectin

Crush blueberries one layer at a time. Mix 1/2 cup sugar with the pectin to help keep it from becoming clumped when added to the blueberries. Combine crushed blueberries, powdered pectin/sugar mixture, water, and lime juice in a large pot. Bring to a full boil (the kind that can't be stirred down.) Add the rest of the sugar (6 1/2 cups for regular pectin, 4 cups for No-Sugar pectin), stirring until dissolved. Stir in grated lime peel. Return to a rolling boil. Boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Skim foam if necessary. Ladle hot jam into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Adjust two-piece caps. Process 15 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

Yield: I got 11 half-pints using regular pectin and the 7 cups of sugar. Darn odd number! :-)

Note: If you want just regular blueberry jam, omit the lime juice and lime peel and add 1/4 cup lemon juice where it calls for lime juice.

Larriland Farm

Berry-Pickin' Hands

Our 3-year-old showing off the effects of a good hour of berry picking.

Thanks to a tip-off from our neighbor, last Saturday we drove 25 minutes to Larriland Farm in Woodbine, MD for the very first day of blueberry season. Woohoo! Now, I'm not a big fan of eating blueberries raw, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity for some canning adventures!

Larriland Farm is a pick-your-own style farm and the prices can't be beat at the store. When we went, blueberries, raspberries, black raspberries, strawberries (slim pickings), cherries, and beets were all available to pick. We opted for blueberries, some strawberries for eating, and I wanted a go at the black raspberries. We had psyched our 3-year-old son up for picking blueberries, but after 30 minutes he was done. :-) He attempted to pick a few black raspberries, but the thorns were quite the deterrent, especially after a few pricks. Poor kid. It was hot work, but we came home with spoils of 6 lbs. of blueberries and enough black raspberries for a small batch of jam.

So, today I processed one batch each of Blueberry-Lime Jam and Old-Fashioned Black Raspberry Jam. I am really excited for them to cool down so I can slather some on a slice of bread! The blueberry jam is this gorgeous deep purple and the raspberry jam is a red so deep it's almost black. Hence the name, I suppose! I've never had good success with the old-fashioned style jam where no pectin is added, but you just boil it for a longer period of time. I'm sure hoping I didn't end up with raspberry candy in a jar! (I've had that unfortunately happen to me with grapefruit marmalade...)

I still have a lot of blueberries left. Maybe some more of that jam? Or maybe I have enough for pie filling? Hmmm.... I think I might just end up freezing them until I can figure out what I want to do.

I am completely thrilled to have such an awesome resource so close! I really want to go back to the farm for more raspberries and some beets. I love making pickled beets. They're so pretty!

A Little Organization Please!

I don't know about you, but I find a lot of awesome recipes online. It doesn't help that I subscribe to quite a few blog feeds that have recipe posts. I also e-mail myself recipes and get e-mails about recipes! For a long time I never knew what recipes I'd gotten that had looked interesting or which e-mail address I'd sent a particular recipe to or which blog had posted what -- aack! It was getting to be a little overwhelming and out of control.

So I started a system of reigning in the plethora of recipes. Any time I see a recipe I need or would like to try I print it off right then, three-hole punch it and stick it in my big ol' binder of recipes - a 3" hideous marroon-colored thing that I got at my university's surplus shop for 50 cents. This system has been the saving of my sanity! What helps even more is that I have the recipes divided into sections that are custom picked based on the recipes I like and use:

- Mixes/Canning
- Breads
- Side Dishes
- Main Meals
- Desserts
- Condiments/Drinks
- Dairy (I have a lot of cheese recipes and hope to add ice cream soon! Oh wait.. should that be under Desserts?)

As you can see, the system isn't perfect. There's always room for improvement. Sometimes I can't remember which section I put a certain recipe under. Not to mention I still have to flip through a lot of pages sometimes to get to the recipe I want. (alphabetical order someday? - Lately if I use a recipe I stick it up at the front of the section. That way the most-used recipes are at the front.)

Not perfect, but it's a lot better than it was. It's great to have a hard copy of all the recipes I love and even ones I make up all in one place. It's amazing the peace a little organization can bring.

Tip: For recipes of my invention I have a separate TOP SECRET notebook that I scribble ideas into and later type into Word to save and print out when perfected.

Another tip: For magazine recipes I've torn out, I have a separate binder where I put the pages into sheet protectors. It's harder to organize these as they have different kinds of recipes on the same page, but it certainly beats having to flip through the magazine.

A Book to Recommend: This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader

About a year ago, I found this book at my university library and read it sometime during the semester. (When did I have the time??) I really get into memoirs every now and again and this one really intrigued me. It's about a woman who is determined to get 100% of her food from her garden and from local sources. That's it. It made me wonder if I could make such a commitment - living without oranges? Ever?? Or coconut or pineapple? Hmm...

Anyway, this story is about her journey to local eating with some yummy sounding recipes that she shares along the way. It's an interesting read that really gets you to think about where your own food comes from. There's a lot of talk about gardening, vegetables, preserving and ways to eat locally.

One downside is that she gets a bit preachy and tedious now and again - to be taken with a big grain of salt if it rubs you the wrong way. She also doesn't go into how eating locally is easier in some areas than others and that there would need to be an adjustment in what we normally eat if we were to eat completely local - variances depending on the climate we live in, were rural, suburban, or urban, etc.

Overall, I found it to be an enjoyable book that helped me see that eating locally can be accomplished.

She Did it Again!

My friend Holly did it again! She found another alternative to plastic bags: a totally cool sandwich wrap. Go check it out!

International Tastes Good!

Yesterday evening we had guests over for dinner. I made Sweet & Sour Tofu from a friend's recipe. She got it from her brother-in-law who is half-Japanese. To go with it I also made fried rice which my Sri Lankan neighbor taught me how to make. And our friends who came to dine - the wife is Brazilian and she brought this amazing Brazilian cake - homemade yellow cake with homemade dulce de leche between the layers, iced with Cool Whip and covered with coconut. The coconut she had dyed a kaleidescope of colors and had sprinkled on top so that it looked like a party going on on top of the cake - it was quite beautiful! And we had good ol' American lemonade to drink. Not until today did I realize how international our meal had been.

I really love trying out foods from different cultures. It really makes life interesting, you know? Back during my last year of French in college, our professor would bring in French food occasionally. The highlight of highlights was a guest from Senegal, Africa. He cooked for us and brought in this incredibly awesome food - Poulet Yasa (a chicken dish) with rice, and a couple drinks. One was this interesting red juice from a native berry. The other was room-temperature pineapple juice with so much ginger that it was very spicy hot to drink. I still dream about that poulet yasa. Mmmmmm.....

I think about food a lot. It might be because I love to cook and that it gets me out of bed in the morning. But not only that, food is such an international way of creating bonds. Food cements memories in our mind. It's a multi-sensory experience to eat food, and one that we shouldn't take lightly. Too many times I find myself rushing through a meal without pausing to enjoy the flavors, textures, smells, and time together as a family. I need to be better at taking more time to savor such good things in life. We don't eat cardboard, so why do we have to act like it by eating to just get it over with? (I am entirely guilty!) I try to be conscious of what is going into our bodies, and where the food has come from. I think being engaged with our food on all levels is an important part of life from knowing where our food has come from, to preparing it ourselves, and finally enjoying it with friends and family - a truly bonding experience.

(I'm going to learn how to make that homemade dulce de leche from my Brazilian friend - you make it in a pressure cooker! I'll let you know how that goes. And I might post that Sweet & Sour Tofu recipe later...)