Food in Jars

Ball® Home Canning Made For More Small Business Fund

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 13:00:00 GMT

This post, announcing the Made For More Small Business Fund is sponsored by Ball® home canning products.

I started this blog in early 2009 because I loved jars and wanted to deepen my canning practice. At the time, I had no expectations that it would ever become anything more than a useful hobby. However, soon after I started blogging in this space, opportunities to teach and write began opening up.

By the summer of 2011, I was doing this work full time. That means that next summer, this tiny business of mine will have been a full time endeavor for ten years. I have taught many thousands of people to make jam, pickle vegetables, and preserve tomatoes. And I’ve done it all using Ball® home canning products (truly, I could not have done it without them).

As we all know, the pandemic has been devastating for everyone, but particularly so for small business owners. Newell Brands, the maker of Ball brand home canning products, wants to show their loyal customers how much they mean to them with their Made For More Small Business Fund.

This fund is designed to give small businesses that use Ball brand home canning products in their work the opportunity to apply for 10 grants of up to $10,000 to fuel their survival and growth during this incredibly challenging period.

In addition, the awarded businesses will be showcased on the @BallCanning social media channels, featured on product packaging, and given business mentorship from senior executives.

The program is open to U.S.-based for-profit small businesses that have 99 or less employees, and that use Ball brand home canning jars and lids in some aspect of their business. Click here to enter. The entry period is open from Dec. 15, 2020 to Jan. 31, 2021, with public voting to take place from Feb. 15 to Mar. 10, 2021.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post that is part of an ongoing partnership with Ball Brand Home Canning. They have provided jars, equipment and monetary compensation. All thoughts and opinions expressed remain my own.

Sweet Yellow Tomato Chutney from Ball® Fresh Preserving

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 17:00:00 GMT

This post, featuring Sweet Yellow Tomato Chutney is sponsored by Ball® Fresh Preserving.

It’s time for my next partner post with Ball Canning. I’m working with them this season to share recipes, new products, and canning tips. So far this year, I’ve tackled a pantry makeover, shared my cheater shrub recipe, made a batch of strawberry rhubarb jam, cooked up some bread and butter pickles, fired up the oven for roasted salsa verde, and boiled up a small batch of pepper jelly

This month, I’ve made a large batch of Sweet Yellow Tomato Chutney. Most of the time, I prefer recipes that produce a smaller yield, but a few times a season, I like to opt for something that will give me a big bang for my energetic buck. That way, I have some dedicated products to pull from for holiday giving.

To my mind, chutney is the perfect product to choose when going big. It gets its consistency from evaporation, and so there aren’t any issues around getting sugar and pectin to set. You can toss everything into a large pot and then cook it down until you’ve reached your desired texture and reduction. Sometimes I even cook it down over the course of a couple days, to better make it work with my schedule. Chutney is forgiving that way.

The backbone of this batch 12 cups of chopped yellow tomatoes (I struggled to find true yellow tomatoes, so instead opted for orange ones. They have a similar flavor profile and acid levels, so I feel fine with the swap). Nine cups of peeled and chopped green apples are the co-star.

The rest of the ingredients include apple cider vinegar, golden raisins, minced onion, two kinds of sugar, three fresh chili peppers (I used Hungarian wax), garlic, mustard seeds, fresh ginger, cinnamon, and salt. These are classic players in traditional chutneys and give it its signature sweet/savory/spiced flavor that is so good with meat, fish, and cheese.

To prevent the apples from browning, you start by pouring your vinegar into a large stock pot (I used a 12 quart pot because this chutney starts with a lot of volume) and then drop your apple pieces in as you peel, core and chop.

The only issue with the technique is that it doesn’t allow you to precisely measure the number of cups of apples you use (and cups are the primary measurement), so you have to estimate a little.

Once your apples are chopped, you start working on the tomatoes. The recipe instructs you to peel and seed them before chopping. My tomatoes were too soft to peel easily, so I did my best with the peels and seeds, but didn’t try to be absolutely perfect.

Once the tomatoes and apples are prepped, the rest of the ingredients join them in the pot. Then, you put the pot on the stove over high heat, bring it to a rolling boil, reduce the heat to medium-high and cook the chutney until it has reduced by about half.

Click here for the full Sweet Yellow Tomato Chutney recipe and complete instructions

The recipe claims that it should take no more than about an hour to cook down, but I found that it took far longer than that. My batch took just over four hours of gentle boiling (with lots of regular stirring to prevent sticking and burning on the bottom) to reduce to the point that it was thick, no water separated out, and it could mound on a spoon nicely.

The other issue with this recipe is the yield. The starting ingredients total just over 34 cups. It states that it should make 6-7 half pints. The chutney would need to reduce to 1/4 of its original volume to get even close to 6-7 half pints. So going in I suspected it would make more than that. Boy, did it ever.

My batch reduced a little more than half (normal for chutney), which left me with a total yield of 16 half pints. The pictures in this post show eight of the 16 jars, because I ran out of matching jars and the finished pictures wouldn’t be nearly as pretty with all the motley jars I had to use to finish making all that chutney shelf stable.

I’m not at all sad about having so much chutney on the shelf (like I said earlier in the post, I like having a stash of things to give to friends and neighbors), but I am curious where the original recipe writer got 6-7 half pints for the yield. Unless they meant 6-7 pints? That would be closer to target.

Click here for the full Sweet Yellow Tomato Chutney recipe and complete instructions

Thankfully, the finished flavor of this chutney is bright, fruity, and just a little bit spicy (thanks to those hot peppers!). I’m working on filling a number of gift boxes to send to my family for the holidays this year (since we aren’t able to gather in person), and come November, jars of this chutney will be winging their way to my parents in Oregon and my sister in Texas. I know that they will be welcome accompaniments to cheese boards and turkey sandwiches.

To get the recipe for Sweet Yellow Tomato Chutney, click here. Make sure to visit Ball® Fresh Preserving for more seasonal recipes.

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post that is part of an ongoing partnership with Ball Canning. They have provided jars, equipment and monetary compensation. All thoughts and opinions expressed remain my own.

Note: I am working with Ball® Canning to resolve the yield and logistical issues in the Sweet Yellow Tomato Chutney recipe.

Check the recipe index for more tasty preserves!

Pepper Jelly from Ball® Fresh Preserving

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 01:53:22 GMT

This post, featuring Pepper Jelly is sponsored by Ball® Fresh Preserving.

This month, I’ve made a batch of pepper jelly This recipe came at the exact right time for me. I’ve been getting a farmers choice box each week (it’s like a CSA, but you opt in or out each week) from my favorite local farm, and the last couple boxes have come with loads of crisp, sweet peppers.

The peppers were building up in my fridge and so I was happy to make good use of them. And pepper jelly is a particularly good use. It’s signature combination of sweet and heat makes for a useful, tasty condiment. While it’s traditional to serve it over cream cheese, I really like it shaken into vinaigrette, spread on a turkey sandwich, or used to glaze meatballs.

I first discovered how good that sweet hot combination could be when I was in high school. There was a food truck across the street from my campus that served grilled teriyaki chicken skewers over rice for just $3 a portion (this was 1995, after all).

When you placed your order, you could ask to have the chicken seasoned with a strip of warm Thai sweet chili hot sauce (it was always poured from a big Tupperware pitcher). Ever since, I’ve been a fool for the combination.

I made this pepper jelly over the course of two days. The first day, I gathered my peppers and carefully chopped them into tiny squares. You could use a food processor for this job, but I find the process of making a teeny, uniform dice quite soothing.

I didn’t wear gloves for the sweet peppers, when it came time to chop the jalapenos, I pulled on a pair of disposable gloves I keep in my kitchen for precisely this purpose.

In earlier days, I might have rolled the dice and hoped that the peppers weren’t too hot, but since I wipe tiny faces and change diapers a dozen times a day, I didn’t want to run the risk of having hot pepper oil on my hands.

If you have similarly sensitive people in your life, kitchen gloves are a must any time you handle hot peppers.

The next day, I took my carefully chopped peppers out of the fridge and gathered the rest of my ingredients. In addition to five cups of peppers (1/2 cup are hot), you need 1 1/4 cups apple cider vinegar, 2 cups granulated sugar, 1 cup honey, and 3 tablespoons of Ball Low or No-Sugar-Needed Pectin.

Once your ingredients are gathered, you want to pause of the making of the jelly and get your canning pot ready. Pull out your canner or line the bottom of a stock pot with a heat proof canning mat.

Arrange the necessary half pint jars on top of the mat or rack and fill them with hot tap water. Keep the water running until the jars are just submerged. If you have hard water, add a healthy glug of white vinegar to the pot to help prevent mineral deposits from adhering to your jars.

Put the pot on the stove and let it heat up while you make the jelly.

In a large pot (I used a low, wide 8 quart pan made from stainless steel), combine the peppers and vinegar. Bring them to a hard boil and stir in the pectin, one tablespoon at a time. Then, add the sugar and honey. Once all the ingredients are in, you let it boil hard for three minutes, and then the cooking process is done.

Click here for the full Pepper Jelly recipe and complete instructions.

Once the jelly is finished, it’s time to get it into the jars. Pull one of your hot jars out of the canner and put it on a heatproof surface (I like to work on my butcher block, because the wood absorbs the heat and doesn’t put the jars at risk).

Fit your jar with a canning funnel and pour in the jelly, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Use a chopstick or bubbling tool to remove any trapped air bubbles and check your headspace. If it has dropped below 1/4 inch, add a little bit more jelly.

Wipe the rim with a clean, damp towel. Place a clean, new lid on the jar and fasten it in place with a ring (taking care to only twist to fingertip tight). Return the full jar to the canner and repeat with the remaining jars and jelly.

Once all the jars are back in the canner, bring the pot to a rolling boil. Once it has achieved a boil, set a timer for 10 minutes (adjust the processing time if you live above 1,000 feet in elevation). When the processing time is up, turn off the burner and remove the lid.

Let the jars sit in the cooling water for five minutes. This helps improve the quality of your seal and also helps prevent the product from siphoning out of the jars once they are removed from the canner.

Finally, remove the jars from the canner and set them on a folded kitchen towel to cool. Let them sit undisturbed for 24 hours. Check the seals when that time is up. Any unsealed jars should be refrigerated and used promptly. Sealed jars can be stored in a cool, dark place for up to a year.

Pepper Jelly is a great preserve to have for holiday gatherings (if such things exist this year) and makes a lovely addition to gift baskets.

To get the recipe for Pepper Jelly, click here. Make sure to visit Ball® Fresh Preserving for more seasonal recipes, as well as to find new promotional offers throughout the summer!

California Capers aka Pickled Nasturtium Seeds

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 16:00:00 GMT

My friend Shae has shut down her blog, Hitchhiking to Heaven. Before she took it offline, she offered up some of her old posts so that they can continue to live and be useful. The first time I met her in person, she gave me a jar of these California Capers.

This is my favorite kind of canning project — making something wonderful (and a little bit quirky) from a plant, bush, or tree that we live with every day.

Some people hold Nasturtiums in the same esteem as weeds. The stems and foliage brown to a scraggle by summer’s end. They’re prone to aphids in downright creepy numbers. And once they take hold, they reseed with a vengeance.

Lucky for us, I say! (Well, not about the aphids — but the other parts.)

First of all, the flowers deliver pure, pop-in-the-eye color, and you can eat them in your salads . . .

Second, after the flowers are done, when what’s left starts to turn ugly, look a little closer.

These seedpods are nothing but beautiful — and tasty, when properly prepared.

You can pick the plump green pods and turn them into “false capers.” Soaking the pods in brine for three days (changing the solution once a day) mellows out their peppery burn and turns them into an excellent caper substitute — or an intriguing snack. I opened a jar and somehow they disappeared from the fridge before we had a chance to cook with them.

This recipe, which I adapted from The Splendid Table, calls for a pint of pods, but you can modify it to use what you have. Remember to go for the green pods; the brown ones won’t taste good. They’ll become next year’s crop.

California Capers (Pickled Nasturtium Seeds)

1 pint green nasturtium pods
3 cups water (1 cup per day)
4 1/2 tablespoons pickling or kosher salt (1 1/2 tablespoons per day)
1 cup white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
bay leaves (For a 1-pint jar, use 2 fresh leaves or 1 dried. For my quarter-pint jars, I picked one small bay leaf for each jar.)
fresh thyme (For a 1-pint jar, use 2 3-inch sprigs. For quarter-pint jars, I added a 1 1/2-inch sprig to each jar.)

Day One

Pick over the pods to remove any remaining stems or flower bits. Place the pods in a pint jar and cover them with a mixture of 1 cup water and 1 1/2 tablespoons pickling or kosher salt. Let them stand, uncovered at room temperature, for one day.

Day Two

Don’t be alarmed by the stinky sulfur smell coming from the pods. I don’t know what causes it, but it’s normal. Drain and rinse the pods and pick out any soggy bits of flowers left behind. Return the pods to the jar and cover them with a fresh mixture of water and salt. Let them stand for another day.

Day Three

Repeat the steps from day two.

Day Four

1. Drain and rinse the pods and put them into the jars you’ll use to keep them. I chose 4 quarter-pint jars so that I can easily give them as gifts.

2. Bring the vinegar, sugar, bay leaves, and thyme to a boil in a small pan. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the pods, distributing the bay leaves and sprigs of thyme among the jars.

3. You may process your jars in a water-bath canner for 10 minutes if you like (leaving 1/2-inch head space), but it’s not necessary. If you don’t want to use the water bath, simply allow the vinegar mixture to cool, cover your jars, and store them in or out of the refrigerator — it doesn’t matter which. (Canning expert Linda Ziedrich says so! Scroll down to her post from October 15, 2009 to see how she handles her pods.) I water-bath canned my jars because I thought the tight seal would be better for packing them up and shipping them cross country.

Yields 4 quarter-pint jars.

This piece was originally published on Hitchhiking to Heaven on August 12, 2010 and was written by Shae Irving.

Check the recipe index for more tasty preserves!

Proudly Homemade Bread & Butter Pickles from Ball® Fresh Preserving

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 16:00:31 GMT

This post, for Bread & Butter Pickles, is sponsored by Ball® Fresh Preserving.

For the last nine canning seasons (I can’t quite believe it’s been that long), I’ve been partnering with the folks at Ball Canning to share recipes, new products, and canning tips. So far this year, I’ve tackled a pantry makeover, shared my cheater shrub recipe, and made a batch of strawberry rhubarb jam.

This month, I’m sharing two recipes. First up is Bread & Butter Pickles made using Ball® Bread & Butter Pickle Mix. I’m doing more canning this season than I managed last year, but my time is still super limited. Because I have to squeeze all my food preservation endeavors into nap windows or late night kitchen sessions, I am taking short cuts wherever possible. The pickle mix is a very welcome helper this season.

As with any canning project, the first step is gather all your ingredients. For these pickles, you need 3 1/2 pounds pickling cucumbers (if you plan on making these as refrigerator pickles, you can use other varieties, but if you’re canning them, stick with a pickling variety like Kirby), 2 1/2 cups 5% acidity white vinegar, 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar, and 1/4 cup Ball® Bread & Butter Pickle Mix.

The next step is to set up your canning pot. Place your jars in the pot and fill them with hot tap water. Run enough of that hot water in around the jars to mostly submerge them and if you have hard water, add a generous glug of white vinegar (it helps prevent mineral deposits from adhering to the jars). Put the pot on the stove and bring it to a boil. Wash the lids and rings with warm, soapy water and arrange them on a kitchen towel in a single layer to dry.

Prepare the brine in a medium saucepan. Combine the vinegar, sugar, and pickle mix and stir well. Bring the mix to a boil, stirring occasionally to make sure that the sugar is fully dissolved.

Wash your cucumbers well and cut them into half inch thick rounds. When all the cucumbers are prepared, and both the canning pot and brine pot are hot, it’s time to pack the jars.

Remove one jar from the canning pot. Then, working quickly, pack the cucumber slices into the jar, fill it with the hot brine to 1/2 inch headspace, and wiggle out the air bubbles (top with more brine if the level has dropped below 1/2 inch).

Wipe the rim, apply the lid and ring, and return the jar to the canner. Repeat the process with the remaining jars. Once all the jars are filled, process them in the boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes. When the time is up, turn off the heat, remove the lid and let the jars stand in the hot water for an additional five minutes.

If you struggle to keep your pickles from floating, make sure to use regular mouth jars. Their shoulders help keep the pickle slices tucked firmly below the top of the brine. The quality of the finished pickle is work the minor frustrations of getting all those cucumber slices to lay neatly in the jars.

Once the jars have finished cooling in the water, remove them from the canning pot and place them on a folded kitchen towel to cool. These pickles like to have at least a month in the jar to allow the flavor to fully infuse before you open them up.

I had enough cucumbers to make three quart jars of pickles. One of the great things about using the Ball® Bread & Butter Pickle Mix is that you can make as big or as little a batch as you need. To get the recipe for Bread & Butter Pickles, click here. Make sure to visit Ball® Fresh Preserving for more seasonal recipes, as well as to find new promotional offers throughout the summer!

Small Batch Cherry Plum Jam

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 17:27:51 GMT

Every summer for the last decade, the kind folks from the Northwest Cherry Growers have invited me to be part of their Canbassador program. Most years, I spend a whole lot of time making things with the fruit they sent and sharing the resulting recipes. Last summer, the fruit arrived the day before I unexpectedly wound up in the hospital with preeclampsia, so I never got to make anything with those cherries (my friend Audra adopted many of last year’s cherries and dehydrated most of them).

I’ve spent most of the last year looking forward to redeeming myself with this year’s partnership, but because of the pandemic, things are a little different than they’ve been in the past. Instead of sending me a truly epic volume of cherries, they gave me a gift card so that I could pick up cherries at a local market. Because I’m a rational person, I bought my cherries in more reasonable portions than they would have sent and have made a pair of preserves to share with you all.

The first thing I’ve made is a small batch combo recipe. I paired one pound of sweet cherries with another pound of plums. I find that you have to be careful with cherries to prevent their flavor from tipping into cough syrup territory. I typically like to combine them with something acidity to temper them and in this case, the plums (along with a healthy squeeze of lemon juice at the end of cooking) do the job nicely.

I used my six hole pitter to make quick work of the cherries. I bought this tool a couple of years ago and continue to appreciate the speed at which it allows me to pit a pound or two of cherries. It’s a massive upgrade from my single cherry pitter.

The finished flavor of this jam is cherry, mellowed by plum. I made this one relatively low in sugar so that the fruit would be shine through and I think it worked. This is one that I see using primarily on peanut butter toast. It’s a little too firmly set for yogurt and oatmeal.

Now, because I have so many years as a Canbassador under my belt, I have whole bunch of cherry-centric recipes that I’ve developed within this partnership. Go forth and preserve some cherries!

Sweet Cherry Butter (2018)
Sweet Cherry Balsamic Jam (2018)
Sweet Cherry Meyer Lemon Marmalade (2017)
Sweet Cherry Ketchup (2017)
Spiced Cherry Preserves (2017)
Sweet Cherry Barbecue Sauce (2016)
Sweet Cherry Rhubarb Jam (2015)
Cherry Kompot (2015)
Sweet Cherry Chutney (2014)
Sweet and Sour Cherry Jam (2013)
Pickled Sweet Cherries (2010)

Finally, for all things cherry, make sure to follow the Northwest Cherry Growers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Yield: 3 1/2 half pints

Small Batch Cherry Plum Jam

Ingredients

1 pound sweet cherries, pitted and diced
1 pound plums, pitted and chopped
1 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon calcium water (part of Pomona's Pectin)
1 teaspoon Pomona's Pectin
1/2 lemon, juiced

Instructions

Prepare a boiling water bath canner and enough jars to hold 3 1/2 cups of jam.
Combine the prepared fruit with 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1 teaspoon calcium water. Stir to combine.
Once the sugar has dissolved and the fruit looks juicy, place the pot on the stove.
Bring to a boil over high heat. Once the fruit is boiling, reduce the heat to medium high and continue to cook for another 8-10 minutes, until the fruit is reduced.
Combine the pectin powder with the final 2 tablespoons of jam. Add a bit of the pectin-spiked sugar to the jam and stir to combine. Continue to do this until all the pectin is incorporated. The jam should visibly thicken as you incorporate the pectin.
Remove the pot from the heat. Funnel the finished jam into the prepared jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.
Wipe the rims, apply the lids and rings, and process the jars in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes (adjusting for altitude if you live more than 1,000 in elevation).
When the time is up, turn off the heat. Remove the lid from the pot and let the jars cool gradually in the pot for 5-10 minutes.
Finally, remove the jars from the canner and place them on a folded kitchen towel to cool.
When jars are cool enough to handle, remove rings and check seals.
Store cool, sealed jars out of direct sunlight. Sealed jars will keep on the shelf for up to a year.

What to do With Blackberries

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 16:00:00 GMT

My friend Shae has shut down her much loved blog, Hitchhiking to Heaven. Before she took it offline, she offered up some of her old posts so that they can continue to live and be useful. Here’s one on what to do with those blackberries that are coming into season.

The past couple years have been terrible for blackberry picking here. The drought hit California hard and the berries suffered badly. In the patch I love, they fried before they were even close to ripe. (You know, I almost called these our “native blackberries,” but they’re definitely not.

What we get around here are mostly invasive Himalayan Blackberries, which I have happily picked since I was a kid. Native California blackberries do exist, however. They’re called the Pacific Blackberry, or Rubus ursinus, and I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen one. I need to do something about that.)

We’re still in a serious drought, but we had enough rain this year that the blackberries are back — and early, too! I went out to the patch yesterday evening, just to see how they were coming along, and I picked five pounds of fat berries in a little over an hour.

I’ve gotten into the habit of freezing almost all the blackberries I pick, which buys me time to decide what to do with them. With this first trip to the patch, I was so much on autopilot that I popped every berry into the freezer and forgot to keep any fresh for the fridge or for friends. That was dumb and I won’t do it when I go back out there later this week.

Here are some ideas for what to do with blackberries if you, too, are the recipient of what promises to be this summer’s great bounty. The list focuses on preserving blackberries, because that’s what I do — but down there at the end is one fun resource for bakers and cooks.

Things to Do With All Those Blackberries You Picked

1. Eat them warm from the bushes. It doesn’t get much better in the world of fruit.

2. Share them fresh. Store bought blackberries are expensive and they usually don’t taste like much. Many people don’t have the time, patience, or mobility to go out and pick their own. A gift of luscious, handpicked berries could make a person’s day.

3. Freeze them. To freeze blackberries, I turn them out onto cookie sheets, pick out any debris, then flash freeze them for a few hours. After that, I weigh them out into bags of one or two pounds each, making sure to label each bag with the weight, the year, and anything else I want to remember, like where I picked them if it was somewhere unusual.

Later on, your frozen berries will make great jam, or you can bake with them or put them in smoothies or whatever you like. For freezing, I use a Food Saver because it does a perfect job of pulling out all the air and sealing the bags tight. Before that, I used regular freezer bags and sucked the excess air out with my mouth (you can also use a straw for that) before sealing them.

4. Make blackberry jam. Of course. Here are some of my favorites.

Blackberry Strawberry Jam. This is my favorite of all blackberry jam recipes. It’s why I probably won’t ever post a new blackberry jam recipe here: I’ve already got what I want.

Blackberry Chambord Jam. Fancy! But you can leave out the Chambord to make a classic blackberry jam without pectin.

Blackberry Lime Jam with Pomona’s Pectin. Blackberries are great with lime, and this recipe lets you keep the sugar low.

Blackberry Mojito Jam. This one was just plain fun. If you check it out, you’ll see that the post about it was written by a porcupine.

And here’s a recipe from Marisa at Food in Jars that I’ll be making later this summer with rhubarb that’s already tucked away in the freezer. It looks too good to pass up . . .

Low-Sugar Blackberry Rhubarb Jam

5. Make blackberry juice. If you have a lot of berries, juice is an indulgence. I once made a nice Blackberry Rhubarb Juice using honey instead of sugar. You’ll find that recipe here on the blog and also in a large collection of blackberry juice recipes from Juicer’s Best on Pinterest. You might find something else on that list to try. I love my Mehu-Liisa Steam Juicer for juicing. (I bought mine used on eBay — a fine investment.)

6. Make blackberry syrup. It’s great to have in the fridge for summer drinks. Here’s an easy recipe from The Kitchn.

7. Make blackberry shrub. A shrub is basically a fruit syrup that includes vinegar. As the website for Shrub & Co. explains, “Vinegar works much like citrus in your drinks — it quenches thirst, cleanses the palate and is very refreshing.” Here’s a simple blackberry shrub recipe from Brooklyn Supper, including instructions for a tempting blackberry shrub collins with mint.

8. Make blackberry liqueur. I’ve made blackberry liqueur so many times that I’m surprised I’ve never posted a recipe here. It’s another simple project for blackberries. I like the look of this method on Serious Eats. Or, if you’re up for an experiment, you could try blackberry wine.

9. Make blackberry condiments. BBQ sauce, ketchup, vinegar. These all sound intriguing to me, though ketchup seems “interesting” in the weird sense of the word. You can suss out lots of recipes through a quick search.

10. Make blackberry fruit leather. Again, this is such an easy thing to do. You can use a dehydrator or just your oven on a low setting. (I think I’ll do blackberry-plum leather this summer. So many plums!) Here are some notes I made on making fruit leathers — and you can find many recipes out there.

11. Bake something, or . . . ? I rarely bake, so I won’t stumble into specifics here, but for goodness’ sake, check out this list of 30 of the Most Delicious Things You Can Do With Blackberries on the Country Living website. There are lots of great baking ideas and much more than that: milkshakes, popsicles, salads, sandwiches — you name it and you can probably find a good way to put blackberries in it. You may also want to knock yourself out with the images of all the blackberry ice cream recipes on Pinterest.

That’s about it, except for this reminder that there’s more than one reason to wear tall, heavy leather boots in the blackberry patch. They’re good for controlling the canes and minimizing scratches and snags, but check out the length of this snake skin I found out there last night (toe of my boot included for scale). It may well have belonged to a gopher snake, but a rattlesnake would be just as much at home in the area. I always approach with caution and watch where I step!

This piece was originally published on Hitchhiking to Heaven on July 5, 2016 and was written by Shae Irving.

Proudly Homemade Strawberry Rhubarb Jam from Ball® Fresh Preserving

Thu, 25 Jun 2020 17:25:48 GMT

This post is sponsored by Ball® Fresh Preserving.

For the last nine canning seasons (I can’t quite believe it’s been that long), I’ve been partnering with the folks at Ball Canning to share recipes, new products, and canning tips. So far this year, I’ve tackled a pantry makeover (those clean-up shelves still bring me so much joy), and shared my cheater shrub recipe.

This month, I made a batch of Strawberry Rhubarb Jam using the recipe from Ball Canning. Strawberry season arrived quite late here in the Philadelphia region, and so I’ve been waiting on this recipe for a bit until the berries came in. But they finally arrived and they’ve been glorious. So plump, juicy and red!

This recipe uses an approach to combining the fruit, pectin and sugar that I rarely opt for but think I might choose more often going forward. Instead of macerating the fruit with the sugar, you cook the fruit with the pectin for a time before adding the sugar.

While you do have to stir near-constantly to ensure that the fruit doesn’t stick, this method shortens the cooking time and helps the finished jam retain a slightly more fresh tasting finished flavor.

This recipe does call for one vanilla bean to add flavor to the jam. Prices for natural vanilla beans are still high (there’s been a global shortage for several years now) and I exhausted my stash of beans last Christmas. In place of the bean, I used a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste. It’s my favorite substitute and brings both good vanilla flavor and those tell-tale vanilla bean specks.

Prior to cooking the jam, you want to prepare your canning pot. Gather six half pint jars. If they’re new, wash them in warm soapy water before proceeding. If they’re jars that have been used before, be sure to give the rims a quick examination, to ensure that there aren’t any chips or cracks that would lead to seal failure.

Place the jars in your canning pot (if you don’t have a dedicated canner, you can use your tallest stock pot fitting with a rack. I like the one that comes in the Ball Preserving Starter Kit) and fill it about halfway up with water. Add a healthy glug of white vinegar if you have hard water. Bring it to a simmer so that it’s ready for you when you are ready for it.

Once the jam is finished cooking, remove one jar from your canner. Place it on a wooden board or towel-lined countertop and fit it with a wide mouth canning funnel. Fill the jar with jam, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe the rim with a damp cloth and fit the jar with a new, cleaned lid (they don’t need to be boiled anymore, but they do need a quick washing in warm, soapy water before using). Secure the lid in place with a ring, taking care to not overtighten.

Place the filled jar into the canner and repeat the process with the next, until all the jars are filled. Process the jars for 10 minutes, adjusting for altitude.

When the processing time is up, turn off the heat, remove the lid from the pot and let the jars stand in the pot for an additional five minutes (this allows them to cool more gradually, which helps prevent siphoning and can also help develop a more robust seal).

Remove the jars from the canner and set them on a folded kitchen towel. Let them sit undisturbed for 12-24 hours so they can fully cool and seal. Before storing, make sure to check that the seals are firm and unbending.

My batch matched the six half pint yield perfectly, with a tablespoon leftover for immediate snacking. The flavor is sweet from the berries, tart from the rhubarb, with the vanilla supporting both star players. To get the recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Jam, click here.

Make sure to visit Ball® Fresh Preserving for more seasonal recipes, as well as to find new promotional offers throughout the summer!

Instant Shrub Sparkler with Ball® Canning

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 12:00:00 GMT

This post is sponsored by Ball® Fresh Preserving.

I joined team shrub nearly a decade ago (this Black Raspberry Shrub was the first one I shared on this site). Most commonly made with equal parts fruit, sugar, and vinegar, shrubs can track their lineage back to the Colonial era.

It’s an easy way to preserve small amounts of fresh fruit and transform them into a syrup that is good in cocktails, pan sauces, and tall glasses of sparkling water (my preferred usage).

I’ve been turning to shrubs during this period of social isolation as a way to give myself a treat. During the day, I mostly drink coffee, lactation tea, and water, but when late afternoon rolls in, I like to pull out one of my new Ball® Flute Jars (they make me feel so fancy!), and make myself an instant shrub sparkler.

Sometimes I take the time to make a batch of shrub for the fridge (I prefer the cold process method), but there’s almost always a gap between the time when a batch runs out and I find the time to make a new batch. That’s when my trick for instant shrub comes in.

In the jar I plan on using for my drink, I combine two parts jam with one part vinegar (if you think about it, this roughly mimics the ratios found in most recipes) and whisk them to combine. If I have any tender fresh herbs (like mint or basil) around, I will bruise them and add them to the party for additional flavor.

Now, I want to pause here to say that this technique leaves you with a bit of jam sediment in your drink. If you hate that, you can sieve your jam/vinegar slurry. In my previous, before twins life, I would have done that. But these days, I have approximately 45 seconds to make this from start to finish and so sieving is a thing of the past. Thankfully, I don’t mind the bits.

Once your jam and vinegar is well-combined, give it a quick taste so that you can adjust the balance should it be necessary. Too sweet? Add a touch more vinegar. Too astringent? A little more jam. Just remember that you’re about to dilute your instant shrub with sparkling water, so it’s okay that it is strong.

Finally, add your sparkling water. My seltzer maker and I are inseparable so my water is plain, but if yours comes with a bit of flavor, make sure to choose one that complements the jam you started with.

And that’s really it. On very hot days, I add ice cubes. If you drink alcohol, a splash of aromatic gin would be nice (I’m still breastfeeding my boys, so booze is mostly off the table for me these days). You could also add a drop of bitters if you have some. However, I like it just as described, particularly in these times where we’re all searching for ways to infuse pleasure into our days.

Oh, and just one more thing. I also really like these new because they’re a bit harder for babies to knock over than my traditional drinking glasses (I think it’s the wide base) but not at all precious should one get broken. It’s funny how much my requirements for glassware have changed.

Strawberry Feijoa Jam

Fri, 29 May 2020 12:00:44 GMT

My friend Shae has shut down her blog, Hitchhiking to Heaven. Before she took it offline, she offered up some of her old posts so that they can continue to live and be useful. I often get questions about what to do with feijoa/guava so am very happy to bring this lovely recipe to Food in Jars.

If you met a feijoa on the street, how would you say hello? You could greet it in Spanish (fay-ho-ah), Brazilian (Fay-zhwa), or as they do down under in Australia and New Zealand (fee-joe-ah). Or you could chuck all that and simply call it a pineapple guava. It will answer to any of these names and then happily offer itself to you so you can eat it up.

They’re funny things, feijoas are. The blossoms are beauties — and edible, too. The fruits themselves are odd: mottled green torpedos with fuzzy little antlers. (If you drew a face on a feijoa, it would make a pretty good Muppet.) That starburst of scarlet stamens dries up into hard little bristles that you sometimes have to pick out of your preserving bowl. On the inside, the flesh of feijoas is subtly gritty; they’re sandy enough that some people just don’t like them.

I like feijoas very much. They have an intriguing, candy-sweet fragrance. (A friend says it reminds her of Pez candy. When’s the last time you smelled those?) It’s difficult to describe the taste. In her book The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves, Linda Ziedrich says, “The sweet, highly perfumed flesh reminds people of pineapple, guava, strawberry, or a combination of these.” (Her book contains a recipe for a nice, low-sugar feijoa jam for the fridge.)

The Tropical Fruit Society of Sarasota does a good job of summing up the entire experience of a feijoa, including the parts that make some people go “ick”: “The thick, white, granular, watery flesh and the translucent central pulp enclosing the seeds are sweet or sub-acid, suggesting a combination of pineapple and guava or pineapple and strawberry, often with overtones of wintergreen or spearmint.”

Given all of that, strawberries seemed like a natural partner for feijoas in a jam. The flavors are a great match. The berries smooth out the texture of the feijoas somewhat, and they definitely improve the color. (Feijoas are not a knockout color to start with, and they easily oxidize and turn brown.) We can get decent strawberries at our farmers markets here in California in November, but the ones I used are my favorite local berries, which I froze at the height of their flavor in June.

Personally, I adore this jam, but in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll confess that tasters have given mixed reports. Last year, I offered three different jars of jam to an organization for their winter silent auction, and the person who won the jams contacted me to see whether she could get more of this jam, in particular. She loved it. On the other hand, a good friend with impeccable taste dipped into an open jar the other day and scrunched up her face. “It’s the grittiness,” she said, “I don’t think I like feijoas.” So you’re on notice. Weirdly, I find the grit interesting and even entertaining. And it completely disappears when the jam is on toast: Is that my toast or my jam that’s crunchy? Who knows!

Two things to know about preserving feijoas: One is that they are not highly acidic. I have read that they are on the borderline of safe pH for canning (though I wasn’t able to find the exact value), so do use tested recipes if you want to seal them in jars. Between the strawberries and the added lemon juice, this jam recipe is thoroughly acidified. I tested the final product with a commercial pH meter and got a reading of 3.11, way below the safe mark of 4.6 — so no worries here. The other thing to keep in mind is that most of the pectin is in the skin. To capture the pectin and ensure a good set, this recipe includes a cup of feijoa juice made from the skins. It’s all described below . . .

Strawberry Feijoa Jam

Ingredients

2 1/4 pounds feijoa flesh (weigh after peeling)*
1 pound strawberries
4 cups sugar
2 ounces lemon juice (6 tablespoons)
1 cup feijoa juice

Instructions

Day One

1. Rinse the feijoas, cut off the blossom ends (the ends with the hairy antlers), and slice the fruits lengthwise. Scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Put the flesh into a large bowl and, at the same time, drop the skins into a large, nonreactive saucepot. (You will use these skins to make the juice in Step 3.) Mash the flesh with a potato masher and set aside.

2. Rinse, hull, and roughly chop the strawberries — or get ’em out of the freezer if that’s where they are. Add the strawberries to the bowl with the feijoa flesh, then add the sugar and lemon juice to this bowl and set it aside.

3. Make the feijoa juice by covering the peels with water until they are submerged by about 1 inch and simmering for 20 – 25 minutes. Strain out the peels. (You will have a lot more juice than you need. I think this is a good thing, because you can refrigerate or freeze that juice to make a wonderful feijoa syrup later; see below.) Add 1 cup of feijoa juice to the bowl with the rest of the ingredients, gently mix, cover tightly, and place in the fridge to macerate for about 24 hours.

Day Two

1. Sterilize your jars and place 5 metal teaspoons on a small plate in the freezer, to test your jam for doneness later.

2. Transfer the contents of the bowl to your jam pan. Heat the mixture on medium, stirring frequently until the sugar is fully dissolved. Then turn up the heat and bring the mixture to a boil, stirring as needed to prevent sticking or burning. (If it starts to stick at any point, turn down the heat a bit.) Use a shallow, stainless-steel spoon to skim some of the stiff foam off the top of the mixture as it cooks, taking care not to scoop up the jam liquid as you do so. You may also want get in there with your potato masher again if you feel moved to do so. In my 11-quart copper jam pan, the total cooking time for this jam is 20-24 minutes. Watch the mixture and test it when it starts to thicken up, the foam settles down, and the bubbles become small and shiny.

To test your jam for doneness: Remove the pan from the heat. Use one of your frozen spoons to scoop up a little bit of jam — not a whole spoonful. Return the spoon to the freezer and wait 3 minutes. Retrieve the spoon and hold it vertically. If the mixture just fails to run and is thick and gloppy when you push it with your finger, it’s done. If the jam isn’t ready, cook it a few minutes more.

3. When the jam is done, ladle or pour the hot mixture into sterilized jars, leaving 1/4-inch head space. Wipe the jar rims clean and secure the lids. Process 10 minutes in a hot-water bath canner.

Yields about 6 half pints.

*If you don’t have enough feijoas, or if you prefer more strawberry, you can change the proportions of fruit to include more or mostly berries — just shoot for 3 1/4 pounds of fruit overall, and keep in mind that changing the proportions may change your cooking time, as well.

Notes

Bonus Feijoa Syrup

You can use the leftover juice from the jam recipe to make an easy feijoa syrup for homemade sodas or cocktails. Simply combine 1 part juice with .75 parts sugar and simmer for about 15 minutes. Skim off the little bit of skin that might form on top of the syrup, let it cool, and bottle it for the fridge. I like to add some chopped, fresh ginger while the syrup simmers, and then the juice of a couple of limes after I remove the syrup from the heat. Experiment! (But please remember this syrup isn’t for canning. Store it in the fridge or freezer.)

This piece was originally published on Hitchhiking to Heaven on October 26, 2012 and was written by Shae Irving.

Simple Vanilla Cake with Jam Topping

Wed, 27 May 2020 14:37:36 GMT

Oh friends. We are living through an extraordinarily strange and disorienting time. My little family is doing well, despite our relatively close quarters. The babies are nearly 11 months old and are now overwhelmingly mobile. Their needs give shape to my days and I am grateful for the structure they lend (especially since Scott is now working from home and so can’t rely on his comings and goings to give me some sense of rhythm).

I have groceries all over my apartment because at the beginning of this thing, I did a little anxiety-fueled shopping. Worried I wouldn’t be able to get fresh vegetables, I bought multiple bags of spirulina powder thinking we might need it as a source of healthy greens. Thankfully, we haven’t had any trouble getting fresh produce, so I’ve been making smoothies on a near-daily basis to try and use some of it up.

Like just about everyone else, I’ve been doing a whole lot of baking as a way of coping. And because I’m me, I’m always looking for ways to incorporate my preserves into any and all baked goods. Ages ago, I spotted a post on Instagram from fellow cookbook author Anja Dunk for a simple cake that is topped with berry jam and and dried coconut. A classic UK school dessert, it was typically served in a puddle of custard.

I didn’t have any custard mix, and sadly dried coconut isn’t an ingredient Scott is into, but the bones of the treat spoke to me. An easy cake topped with a layer of jam?! Sign me up.

Reading through the comments, Anja mentioned that she used a classic recipe using 125 grams of sugar, flour, and butter with two eggs. I took those instructions and ran with them. I kept the measurements the same, but included 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon fine salt. However, any cake recipe would work fine here, since the bulk of the trick is to spread it with a goodly amount of jam while the cake is still hot.

Scott and I ate this over the course of three days, carving off slivers whenever we passed by. He offered his highest cake compliment, which is that it tasted like one made from a box (this might not sound particularly flattering, but he is someone for whom there is no better cake than Funfetti made from mix).

If you’ve not encountered Anja Dunk in your travels through the food world, she is someone well worth a follow. I greatly enjoy her Instagram account (she has the most glorious wall of jars) and her books are just so good to read and cook from. She co-wrote the charming book Do/Preserve and Strudel, Noodles and Dumplings is one that I often read, novel-style when I need a moment of escape from two very active crawling, climbing babies.

I have included instructions below using the metric measurements that I cribbed from Anja. If you don’t have a scale, you can either use a converter to switch this recipe to work with cups, or just use one like this.

Simple Vanilla Cake with Jam Topping

Ingredients

125 grams all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
125 grams room temperature butter
125 grams sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup jam (according to my research, berry is traditional, but I think apricot or even marmalade would also be good here)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F/177°C.
Butter a baking dish that can hold 6 cups. It can be a square 8x8, a round 8x2, or some other shape. I used a vintage rectangular pan that happened to be in circulation at the time I was making this cake.
Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl and set them aside.
In a large bowl using an electric hand mixer, whip the butter and sugar together for 3-4 minutes. You want it to become really light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix to combine.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix on the slowest setting, just until everything is uniformly combined.
Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out mostly clean (a couple dry crumbs are okay).
Let the cake cool for a few minutes and then top with the jam. You want it to be warm so that it absorbs the flavors a bit, but not so hot that the jam liquifies.
Serve warm or at room temperature.

Check the recipe index for more tasty preserves!

Making Jam from Frozen Fruit

Fri, 22 May 2020 17:45:00 GMT

My friend Shae has shut down her blog, Hitchhiking to Heaven. Before she took it offline, she offered up some of her old posts so that they can continue to live and be useful.

Last year, two things came into my life that changed the way I preserve fruit. One was an upright storage freezer, which now lives in the basement. The other was a Food Saver, which allows me to freeze fruit in vacuum sealed packages at the height of just-picked excellence, without the danger of ruin from stale air and freezer burn. (Even before the Food Saver, I’d started freezing summer fruit in this way, using heavy-duty freezer bags and sucking out the excess air through a straw or with my mouth — all of which is easier than it might sound.)

The ability to freeze good fruit is important to me, in part, because we spend the peak preserving month of August far away from home, at our cabin in Alaska. Just before we leave, I am slammed with pounds and pounds of berries and plums — more than I could sanely process, given everything else that’s going on. It’s a huge relief to be able to flash freeze, package, and tuck away the harvest to make jam later.

When I started to create jams with my frozen summer’s haul, I was of two minds: Mostly, I loved having the luxury of combining so many fruits. Opening the freezer to securely preserved strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, plums, and figs was like diving into a chest of colorful, edible art supplies. I had strawberries to blend with feijoas when the latter showed up in November. (I’ll be sure to post that recipe next fall when feijoas come in again. It was one of my favorite jams of the year.)

I made a luscious plum, strawberry, and ground cherry jam that I never would have thought of if I’d used up all those strawberries in June. The frozen plums — at least three different varieties – found their way into almost everything, lending a tart complexity and pectin boost to jams from October until just last week, when they finally ran out.

But I also felt guilty. Isn’t it cheating to make jam from frozen fruit? I let flavor decide that question. It’s all good jam. Because the fruit was frozen with care, at the very point where I would want it for jam making — some of it perfectly ripe and some of it just under — the difference in flavor was negligible to nonexistent. As Darina Allen says in her gorgeous book, Forgotten Skills of Cooking:

If you don’t want to spend your whole summer in the kitchen, the most practical approach is to freeze fruit in perfect condition in small, measured quantities, so that you can make jam as you need it throughout the year. Jam made from frozen fruit will taste infinitely fresher and more delicious than a six- or seven-month-old jam even if it is made in peak season.

So. Yes. You can make some damned fine jam from frozen fruit. Here, I thought I’d share a few tips and the method I like to use for jamming frozen fruit.

How to Make Jam From Frozen Fruit: Tips and Tricks

Start with the best. What goes into your jars is what you get out of them, so use the best fruit you can find. Depending on the type of fruit, you’ll want to freeze it at the peak of flavor or when it’s just a tad underripe. Hitting that peak of ripeness is critical for fruits like strawberries or figs, where a little bit to one side or the other makes all the difference between the jam you want and the one you don’t. With fruits like plums, blackberries, or raspberries, however, I like a mix of perfectly ripe and just under, for both the extra pectin and the extra pucker that the less ripe fruits provide.

Don’t get it wet. I pick over berries. I gently spot clean plums. I remove any bad bits from strawberries. But I don’t wash fruit before I freeze it. It’s all organic or foraged from unsprayed places. I pick it myself, or I know the people who do. I’m also going to boil the bejeezus out of it, so I don’t worry about skipping the wash. (As an aside, some professional jam makers I know and respect don’t wash their organic fruit before jamming it. That’s how I learned to stop doing it, myself. So if a professional jam maker jumped off a bridge, would I jump off a bridge, too? I suppose I might.)

Slice, dice, and weigh. Before you freeze the fruit, cut it to the size you think you’ll want it to be when you use it later, because you probably don’t want to mess around with trying to chop up plum halves or whole, huge strawberries after they’ve been frozen. If you want different textures for different jams, freeze multiple bags, each containing the size you’ll want. You may want to plan for bags of various weights, too. I prepped a lot of two- and three-pound bags, but found that I also loved having single-pound bags to play with.

Flash freeze first. You already know about this, right? It’s where you put the individual pieces of fruit on trays and freeze them until they’re just solid. Then you put the flash frozen fruit into freezer bags. This is how you avoid things like whole bricks made of blackberries. Do note that some fruits have special needs when it comes to freezing.

For example, I freeze figs in sugar syrup to retain color and texture. You can learn about that here. And you can find detailed information about freezing other types of fruit here. I have never, for example, frozen peaches, nectarines, or apricots because I haven’t had enough to warrant it. I’d want to check up on the particulars of freezing those or other fruits before attempting it for the first time.

Get the air out. Suck it out with a straw, give your freezer bags mouth to mouth, or get a Food Saver — just extract as much air as you can before you seal the bags. Then double check the seals.

Label it now or regret it later. On the outside of the freezer bag, jot down not just the fruit it contains, but the weight and the date you froze it, along with anything else you might want to remember, like where you picked it or who gave it to you. You’ll be glad you did. (For those of you who are ahead of me in the labeling game, would you please tell me your favorite way to label freezer bags? I write on them with a sharpie, but that makes reuse challenging. I travel with my toiletries in a bag labeled “Blackberries 2010.”)

Plan before you jam. Before you start pulling summer out of the freezer, think about what you want to make. It’s not a big deal — just some recipe notes so you can get in and out of the freezer quickly and not grab or thaw a lot more than you need.

Mmm . . . macerate. This is the best part. I start almost all my frozen fruit jams by macerating the fruit in sugar while it thaws. Doing it this way means you won’t end up with sad, pulpy bits of skin floating in a mess of juice. As the fruit thaws, the sugar nestles it and absorbs the liquid, so you end up with a mixture that is thick, bright, pectin rich (provided you’ve chosen a blend of fruits that provides enough pectin to make a successful jam, which is actually kind of hard not to do) and ready to cook.

I don’t add powdered or liquid pectin to my frozen fruit jams and I’ve not yet had a bad experience with one. In terms of how much sugar to use, that’s up to you and your fruit. I usually use 60%-75% of the weight of the fruit, depending on how much pectin it has (less pectin = more sugar) and how sweet it is to start.

Anyway, go clean out your freezer and make some jam. Because it’s spring and rhubarb is already upon us!

This piece was originally published on Hitchhiking to Heaven on March 25, 2012 and was written by Shae Irving.

A Pantry Makeover with Ball® Canning

Mon, 18 May 2020 12:15:00 GMT

This post is sponsored by Ball® Fresh Preserving.

Among my family and friends, I’ve long been known as an organized person (when I was a kid, my idea of a good time was to organize my doll accessories). But between last year’s book tour and birth of my twins, many of my orderly systems have broken down.

Before I tackled this makeover. As you can see, things had gotten pretty messy.

One spot where entropy had hit the hardest was my pantry shelves. This storage area exists at the far end of my kitchen (remember, my kitchen is just 80 square feet, so we’re not talking about a vast room) and is a space we use and access constantly.

More often than not, things got shoved in wherever we could find room. The lack of order meant that I never knew when I was out of critical ingredients and when I had more than I needed (during this reorg, I found three bags of chickpea flour. I like a chickpea crepe as much as the next home cook, but even I admit that this is more than I need).

So when the folks from Ball® Canning asked me if I might be interested in participating in a pantry makeover featuring their Ball® Leak-Proof Storage Lids, I said yes. I’m cooking at home more than ever right now (like so many folks) and I desperately needed to create some order. Plus I love those leak-proof lids (seriously. They’re so great).

In my pre-child life, I would have been able to knock this makeover out in a day (two, tops!). However, in my current parenting life, it took me more than a week to get these shelves in order. I worked on it section by section, moving things out of the motley assortment of containers and rehoming them in the new jars from Ball® Canning.

I used Regular Mouth Smooth-Sided Jars for a lot of my items, because I find that they pour nicely and the unembellished sides allow me to write the contents with a Sharpie (it comes right off with the scrubby side of the sponge).

They also sent me a number of the Amber Jars, which are great for things that degrade with light exposure (I always stash my coffee beans in them).

My plan with this makeover was not only to get everything into fresh, clean jars fitted with those Ball® Leak-Proof Storage Lids, but also to create zones. Instead of having lentils shoved next to the brown sugar, I wanted to get all the legumes in one place (though I’ll confess right now that I have a bean annex in our front hall closet. Early on, I channeled some of my pandemic anxiety into a very large order from Rancho Gordo). Same with the flours, sweeteners, grains, etc.

Investing this time into redoing these shelves has already yielded a great deal of relief and pleasure. Knowing what I have and where I have it makes it so much easier to cook for my family, particularly during this time when each day is inherently stressful.

May Partners: Fillmore Container, EcoJarz, Sticker You, McDonald Paper, and Mason Jar Lifestyle

Mon, 04 May 2020 06:57:57 GMT

Happy May, dear readers! It’s the start of the month and that means that it’s time to thank the businesses that help make this site possible. Please do show them that you appreciate their support with your time and attention.

Lancaster, PA-based and family-owned Fillmore Container are with us again! They offer all manner of canning jars, lids, and other preservation gear and carry just about every Ball jar currently available, so if you’re looking for a particular style, check them out.

Our friends over at EcoJarz are another stalwart sponsor. They make an array of products designed to fit on top of mason jars, including cheese graters, coffee brewers, and stainless steel storage lids. Don’t miss their Bopple lids, which can close narrow-neck bottles.

Back again is Sticker You. They sell custom die-cut vinyl stickers, labels, decals, tattoos, magnets and more, in any size, shape and quantity. They have a wide variety of labels you can order to make your preserves look slick and professional.

McDonald Paper & Restaurant Supply is gear emporium located in Brooklyn, NY. They are open to the public and sell all manner of culinary supplies. Restaurant supply stores are a great way to get affordable, durable kitchen gear (including jars!). I’m a big of their big food storage containers for macerating fruit for jam, as well as these disposable containers for those times when you know you’re not going to be able to get your containers back!

Mason Jar Lifestyle is a one-stop shopping site for all the jar lovers out there. They sell all manner of mason jar accessories and adaptors. If you’re in the market for lids, straws, sprouting lids, fermentation weights, airlocks, tea light converters, cozies, they are there for you.

And if your company, shop, or family business is interested in reaching the food-loving and engaged Food in Jars audience, you can find more details here. Leave a comment on this post or drop me a note to learn more!

C is for Celery Citrus Salad

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 12:00:59 GMT

This May, our friend Shae Irving is shutting down her blog, Hitchhiking to Heaven. She has offered up some of her old posts so that they can continue to live and be useful after HtH closes its doors. This Celery Citrus Salad is quick, convenient, and a refreshing respite from the heavier foods that winter has to offer us.

It is spring! That pleases me for many reasons, mostly having to do with the garden and a long list of dirt-digging tasks. But it’s also a perfect day to have this Celery Citrus Salad for lunch. Doesn’t it look like spring in a bowl?

This salad is the “official” entry for my personal veggie challenge, in which I am working my way through the vegetable alphabet and posting a related recipe on the last day of every month. (So far: A is for Artichoke and B is for Bok Choy.)

Last year, celery grew very well for me in a half-wine barrel. Right now, my celery plants are babies — about 3″ tall — but I’ll be glad to have something new to do with that celery when it’s ready. (When I got caught with too much last year, I enjoyed making ultra-simple Summertime Celery Water, which is a refreshing, mineral-rich drink for hot days.) If you have a favorite way to use celery — something that takes it beyond its unfair reputation for being nothing but boring diet food — would you share in the comments?

The original recipe for this salad came from the free, take-away magazine published by Whole Foods. I like to pick up a copy when I shop there because I often find good, budget-friendly recipes in it. (This, despite the universal understanding that Whole Foods is not the most budget-friendly place to shop. Their large assortment of clear, practical recipes makes the Whole Foods shopping experience more sane.) Whole Foods has a well developed recipe forum on its website, too.

I did make some changes to the original recipe. I cut the amount of celery called for to reflect the amount I had. I replaced regular balsamic vinegar with golden, to keep the color bright. I added flowering miner’s lettuce from our yard and a handful of chopped pecans. This is one of the best things about salads; they invite play.

If I’d had time, I would have followed Kaela’s lead and made honey roasted nuts to top my salad. (She posted those just this morning and I wasn’t quite fast enough to get my head around them, but I will make them sometime soon.) Still, I’m not complaining about the pecans. They added great flavor and enough substance to make the salad act more like a meal.

Happy Spring!

Celery Citrus Salad

Ingredients

5 tangerines or mandarin oranges (I used Clementines)
1/4 cup feta cheese
2 tablespoons golden balsamic vinegar
1 cup roughly chopped celery leaves
2 cups sliced celery
4 cups (approximately 1/4 pound) mixed salad greens
1/2 cup chopped pecans
cracked black pepper

Instructions

Squeeze the juice from one of the fruits into a large bowl. Add the vinegar and cheese and mix well with a fork, mashing the cheese as you go.
Peel the remaining fruit and separate into segments, removing any stringy bits before adding the segments to the bowl.
Add celery leaves, sliced celery, and salad greens, and toss well. Top with chopped pecans and add cracked black pepper to taste.

Check the recipe index for more tasty preserves!

Meyer Lemon PAMAlade

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 12:00:13 GMT

This May, our friend Shae Irving is shutting down her blog, Hitchhiking to Heaven. She has offered up some of her old posts so that they can continue to live and be useful after HtH closes its doors. This Meyer Lemon Marmalade with Pomegranate Seeds is one we thought you might appreciate.

One of the most popular recipes posted on Hitchhiking to Heaven is a tasty, simple Pomegranate Champagne Jelly. In the comments to that post, a couple of folks asked whether it would be okay to include the pomegranate arils — that is, the seeds in their beautiful red, fleshy wrappings. I didn’t think it would lead to happy results.

That particular jelly needs to go into the jars piping hot and the arils would float to the top. If you waited for the jelly to cool enough that the arils wouldn’t float, the texture of the jelly would be wrecked. I concluded this from my experiences trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to float intriguing things in jelly — like slivered almonds or flowers.

Pomegranate Arils or Pomegranate Seeds

Still, those tiny red jewels kept rattling around in my head. When I spied some lovely arils at Whole Foods the other day, knowing I had a bag of freshly picked Meyer lemons in my car — well, you can see what happened. I decided to try the arils in a chunky Meyer Lemon Marmalade, and it worked out great. To add a splash of complexity, I included some booze from my stash of liquor minis for jamming: a pomegranate liqueur called PAMA.

And that’s how the marm got its name.

If you like to eat pomegranate arils (they’re good for you — full of fiber and antioxidants) you might want to experiment with something like this. As marmalades go, this one isn’t very labor intensive. It’s a one-day process instead of the usual two or three. Meyer Lemon Marmalade can be prepared more quickly than most marmalades made with other types of citrus, because the lemons are so soft.

Yield: About 6 half-pints

Meyer Lemon PAMAlade

Ingredients

2 pounds Meyer lemons
5 1/2 cups water
5 cups sugar
2 ounces (50 ml bottle) PAMA (pomegranate liqueur)
1 cup pomegranate arils

Instructions

1. Slice your lemons according to the directions in How to Slice Citrus Fruit for Marmalade. Strain the leftover lemon juice (the post about slicing fruit explains this) and set it aside.

2. Put the lemons, strained lemon juice, and water into a large, nonreactive saucepot. Bring the water to a boil and then immediately reduce to a simmer. Simmer the lemons for 5 minutes only.

3. Transfer the lemons and water to a large glass or ceramic bowl and set them aside to soak, covered, for 4-6 hours. (It’s fine to leave them at room temperature.) Don’t leave them to soak any longer than 6 hours. You don’t want them to fall apart. I usually prepare the lemons early in the day and then come back to cook them in the late afternoon or evening.

4. After the lemons have soaked, sterilize your jars and put 5 metal teaspoons on a plate in the freezer to test the marmalade for doneness later.

5. Place the lemons and their liquid in a large, nonreactive jam pan. Bring the liquid to a boil and then immediately reduce to a simmer. Simmer until the lemons are tender. If a slice of lemon easily comes apart when you press it against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon, the lemons are ready.

6. Add the sugar to the pot and stir well. Bring the mixture to a boil on high heat and leave it on high heat to cook. Stir very little during this initial cooking phase, so the mixture doesn’t cool too much.

7. Add the PAMA and pomegranate arils toward the end of the cooking process. I added them after the mixture had been cooking for about 30 minutes, expecting that my marmalade would set somewhere between 35-40 minutes. As it turned out, the addition of the cooler liquid and the arils extended the cooking time quite a bit. It took closer to 45 minutes for the marmalade to cook. Next time I do this, I will add the liqueur and arils later, at about 35 minutes.

8. Start to test the marmalade for doneness* when you notice that the mixture has thickened and the bubbles have become smaller, shinier, and more concentrated. You will also notice an increase in foaming when you stir the marmalade during this final stage.

9. When the marmalade is finished, remove it from the heat and skim the foam. Allow the mixture to cool for about ten minutes, giving it a gentle stir every couple of minutes or so to distribute the arils. Then ladle or pour the marmalade into the sterilized jars, leaving 1/4-inch head space. Wipe the jar rims with a clean, damp cloth if necessary, and secure the lids.

10. Process in a water-bath canner, using the correct time for your altitude: 5 minutes for 0-1,000 feet above sea level, plus 1 minute for every additional 1,000 feet.

Notes

*Testing the marmalade for doneness. Remove the mixture from the heat. Use one of the frozen spoons to scoop up a little bit of marmalade — not a whole spoonful, more like half. Return the spoon to the freezer and wait 3 minutes. Retrieve the spoon and hold it vertically. If the marmalade doesn’t run and has reached a semi-solid consistency, it’s done. Alternatively, give the mixture a push with your finger. If it wrinkles all the way through, it’s done. If the marmalade isn’t done, return it to the heat, cook it for 2-3 more minutes, and test again.

Citrus Smash Jam

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 12:00:20 GMT

This May, our friend Shae Irving is shutting down her blog, Hitchhiking to Heaven. She has offered up some of her old posts so that they can continue to live and be useful after HtH closes its doors. This mixed citrus jam is both versatile and delicious, making it a must-share here at Food in Jars.

It’s not the first time I’ve had to do this. A few days before leaving town at the peak of citrus season and one or two of my trees are still laden with fruit; this year it was limequats and Valencia oranges. Plus there was an assortment of citrus rolling around in the bottom drawer of the fridge — a couple Meyer lemons, several Cara Cara oranges, and one lone grapefruit.

In these moments of too much citrus fruit and too little time, the easiest, most satisfying thing I’ve learned to make is mixed, whole-fruit jam. (There are other options: Put the fruit zest into baggies and squeeze the juice into ice cube trays, freezing everything to use later. Or put it all in a flat-rate box and send it to friends in colder climates. Whatever, just keep moving.)

Where I’m headed is the opposite of citrus season. I’m going to Fairbanks for a month to learn a few things about winter. Even though we’re approaching spring, Fairbanks temps are predicted to be about 28 degrees below zero when I arrive tonight, quickly warming up to a beautiful, sunny week with highs between 5 and 20.

So if you’ve got a pile of citrus fruit, I hope you’ll have fun with this jam. Please don’t expect precision here — it’s a process. In practice, it’s so easy to do. I wish it didn’t take so many words to explain it! I call it either Citrus Smash Jam (after the cocktail) or Sunshine Jam, depending on whether or not I add liquor.

Yield: 8-10 half-pin

Citrus Smash Jam

Ingredients

Instructions

Cut and prepare the fruit*. Slice each piece lengthwise along the stem. Notch out the pith from the centers of the fruit, retaining those pithy centers so you can squeeze juice from them later**. Then, using a small bowl with a strainer suspended over it, run your thumbs along the insides of the notched fruit to remove any seeds while collecting the juice in the bowl. Squeeze the pithy centers over the strainer also. The goal is to collect as much juice as you can at the same time as you are preparing the fruit pieces for cooking. Set the bowl of juice aside.
Cook the fruit. Place the cut fruit pieces in a big, nonreactive pot, and cover with cold water so they float freely. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until the skins are soft enough to pierce with a skewer***.
Drain the fruit. (Keep the cooking liquid if you want to make it into syrup as a side project, which you can do by adding sugar at a 1:1 ratio and simmering for about ten minutes.)
Combine the cooked fruit and the fresh juice from Step 1. Puree in a VitaMix or food processor, but don’t completely liquefy the mixture. Leaving small chunks of rind gives the finished jam a better texture.
Transfer the fruit mixture to a large glass or ceramic bowl, measuring it out to see how many cups you have. Stir in one cup of sugar for each cup of puree. Cover the bowl tightly, and let it rest in the fridge overnight. (Honestly, you don’t have to wait if you don’t want to. If you want to keep right on cooking, go directly to the steps for Day Two. I usually break it up so I have time to do other things, like packing.)
Sterilize your jars. You’ll have to guess at how many you need. It shouldn’t be more than ten half-pints.
Transfer the fruit mixture to your jam pan (I use an 11-quart stainless steel or copper pan) and slowly bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium and cook until the mixture reaches a jam-like consistency. Stir frequently to prevent sticking, and you may have to reduce the heat as the jam cooks down, so it doesn’t scorch. Mine usually takes 20 minutes or less. Look for the point at which excess liquid has evaporated from the top of the mixture and the bubbles become smaller and more settled. You’ll also probably start to see clear tracks at the bottom of the pan when you stir, and the surface will start to subtly crease. With all this citrus, you definitely won’t have trouble achieving a good set.
Remove the jam from the heat. Pour the jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch head space. Wipe the rims clean, apply lids, and process in a hot water bath for 5 minutes, adding time for your elevation if necessary.

Notes

Note that this is a time consuming recipe; if you're keen to break the work into two-days, Steps 1-5 cover day one, while Steps 6-8 cover day two.

*Depending on the kind of fruit you’ve got, you may end with neat halves, ugly chunks, or random pieces. It really doesn’t matter.

**If you’re working with tiny fruit like limequats, you may end up picking out the seeds. Do what you have to do to nip out the pith and seeds from the core of the fruit.

***There’s more than one way to approach this step. If some of your fruit is thick skinned (think grapefruit or tougher skinned oranges) you may want to separate out those pieces and cook them in a separate pot where they can simmer longer. Or you can do it the lazy way by cooking everything in the same pot then straining the fruit when most of it is ready. (Don’t dump the liquid!) After that, you’ll need to separate out any thick-skinned pieces and return them to the cooking liquid to simmer until all the fruit is of a fairly equal texture. You can see this is not an exact science!

Double Meyer Marmalade

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 12:00:42 GMT

This May, our friend Shae Irving is shutting down her blog, Hitchhiking to Heaven. She has offered up some of her old posts so that they can continue to live and be useful after HtH closes its doors.

So I was looking in the liquor cabinet, because that’s where I keep my canning supplies (honest). Right up front was a bottle of Myers’s Rum. And sitting on my kitchen counter were a couple dozen Meyer lemons, of which I am blessed with a year-round supply. Myers’s Rum, Meyer lemons? Double Meyer Marmalade. True, it would be even better if the Misters Myers and Meyer — Fred and Frank, respectively — had gotten it together on the spelling of their surnames, but I tried a bunch of different names (“Fred and Frank’s Fabulous Fruit?” asked Stewart) and came back around to this one. Make mine a double.

I had no idea how much rum to add to my regular Meyer Lemon Marmalade recipe to get the right mix. I poked around on the Internet and saw folks adding a tablespoon of rum to this and a splash of rum to that, but what has a tablespoon of rum ever done for anyone, really?

So I got scientific about it and added the amount that first popped into my head, which was half a cup — plus an extra tablespoon at the very end, which seemed to make a nice difference. By some divine grace, perhaps by the will of Fred and Frank, it turned out well. Half a cup gave the fruit a mild but discernible rum flavor. You could certainly bump it up a little if you wanted to, and next time around I may do just that. Might throw in some nutmeg, too.

Also, if you prefer, you could go the other direction and make a basic, luscious Meyer Lemon Marmalade by leaving out the rum and vanilla bean — keepin’ it simple.

Yield: About 9 half-pints

Double Meyer Marmalade

Ingredients

2 1/2 pounds Meyer lemons
7 cups water
6 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup Myers’s Rum, plus 1 tablespoon to add at the end
1 vanilla bean

Instructions

Wash the lemons and then chill them for at least an hour. Chilling is optional, but it’s so much easier to thinly slice a cold lemon.
Slice each lemon along the stem and then cut a notch from the center to remove the pith.
Hold each lemon over a bowl and run your thumb along the inside of the notch to remove the seeds. (This is my favorite part. I don’t know why; it’s just fun.) The bowl will catch the seeds and the juice, which you should set aside until Step 5.
Slice the lemons as thin as you like.
Put the lemon slices and the 7 cups of water into your heavy-bottomed, nonreactive pot. Strain the set-aside juice and seeds and add the juice to the pot, too.
Simmer for five minutes, then transfer the mixture to a large bowl, cover it, and let it stand in the fridge overnight.
When you're ready to return the next day, sterilize your jars.
Prepare the vanilla bean. (I used only one bean, but if you want a more intense vanilla flavor, I think two would work.) Slice the bean lengthwise and separate the seeds by running your thumb along the inside. I followed a tip I read that suggested mixing the seeds with about a cup of the recipe’s sugar, to ensure they’re evenly distributed when you add them to the mixture. It worked well for me, though I couldn’t say whether or not it’s really necessary to go to the extra trouble.
Simmer the lemons and water in your big pot until the peels are soft. (If they come apart easily when you try to separate them with a wooden spoon, they’re done.)
Add the sugar, 1/2 cup of rum, and the vanilla bean and seeds.
Boil the mixture until it reaches the jelling point. Be patient, because this takes some time — usually 30-40 minutes for me. I usually remove the mix from the heat as soon as it reaches 220F on my candy thermometer. I test it for jelling on a cold surface and then boil it a little longer only if I need to. I really don’t like overcooked Meyer Lemon Marmalade, so I always try to remove it just when it hits the jelling point, no later.
When the mixture is ready, stir in 1 tablespoon of rum. Remove the vanilla bean from the pot. I rinsed the bean and cut it up into smaller slices, then put one piece into each jar when I filled it.
Ladle the mixture into the sterilized jars and process. I left 1/4 inch head space and processed for ten minutes in a water bath canner.

Notes

Note that this is a two-day process. Steps 1-6 are the first day, allowing time for the mixture to sit in the fridge overnight. Steps 7-13 are for day two.

2019 Canning Adjacent Cookbooks

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 02:26:20 GMT

Oh friends. We’re living through unimaginable times, aren’t we. Like most of the rest of the world, I’ve been doing my part by staying home, keeping my distance from my neighbors, and cooking.

I’ve been finding a great deal of comfort and solace in paging through cookbooks. I’m reading far too much virus coverage and I can’t focus on novels. Cookbooks offer me the opportunity to take momentary respite and unlike fiction, are meeting me where I am.

I’ve had this stack of books sitting on my coffee table for four months. They are the ones that I think of as being adjacent to my canning practice. While not dedicated to putting food into jars, they all compliment a homemade pantry and are worthy of being on your shelf.

Our local, independent book stores need us now more than ever. If one of these books speak to you, please consider buying from Powell’s, Book Larder, Omnivore Books, Read It and Eat, Now Serving, Kitchen Arts and Letters, or your local that’s still offering shipping or contactless pick-up.

Dirty Food by Julie van Rosendaal – The title of this book is a playful response to the clean food movement and it celebrates all things messy, drippy, and crumbly. The flaky biscuits are amazing with jam. [Julie self-published this book and so it’s best to buy it directly from her.]

Hangover Helper by Lauren Shockey – Who knew how many traditional hangover remedies involve pickles? Also, the warming garlic soup is a pantry friendly dish that is great for these times (I’m making it for lunch later this week). [Powells | IndieBound]

Growing Berries and Fruit Trees by Tara Austen Weaver – The bulk of this book is dedicated to teaching people how to grow fruit in the Pacific Northwest. However, I think that even if you live outside that region, there’s space for this book in your library. The final third of the volume contains a thoughtful collection of recipes (the Everyday Oatmeal Fruit Muffins alone are worth the price of admission). [Powells | IndieBound]

The Food in Jars Kitchen by Marisa McClellan – This is my book (and it turns one on Thursday!). It’s all about making the most of your pantry (homemade or store bought), a topic which seems to be weirdly prescient in light of current events. [Powells | IndieBound]

Family Foraging by David Hamilton – This is such a great book to help teach kids about wild edibles. If you’re looking for ways to keep your kids occupied during this time of isolation and you have a little outdoor space near you, this one could help keep them occupied. [Powells | IndieBound]

Fire Cider by Rosemary Gladstar and Friends – This is an entire book devoted to fire cider (a concoction of apple cider vinegar, horseradish, onion, garlic, ginger, hot peppers, and honey), flavored vinegars, and healthful, healing liquids. It’s great. [Powells | IndieBound]

Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll – This is a fully updated edition of a beloved cheese making guide. If you’re dealing with the pandemic by making food, perhaps you should take up a cheese making hobby. [Powells | IndieBound]

When Pies Fly by Cathy Barrow – This book embraces anything wrapped in pastry or dough (including a whole chapter dedicated to the knish). In a time when many of us have time on our hands and are in need of comfort food, we should all be cooking from these pages. [Powells | IndieBound]

The Joys of Baking by Samantha Seneviratne – This is a memoir disguised as a cookbook. Whenever I need a break from the reality currently swirling around me, I pick up this book. The recipes are also spectacular. [Powells | IndieBound]

Lavash by Kate Leahy, John Lee, and Ara Zada – This book is a snapshot of Armenian cooking that uses that culture’s bread (that’s the lavash) as it’s centering point. The authors spent a lot of time in the country, gathering the recipes and experiences that fill its pages. It’s a remarkably wonderful book. Whether or not you get a copy, you should also listen to Kate and Ara talk about their experience writing it on the Book Larder podcast. [Powells | IndieBound]

Modern Sourdough by Michelle Eshkeri – This cookbook comes out of Margot Bakery in London. It’s a bit of a stretch volume for me, but there’s a nice chapter of jams and spreads in the back that keep it on my shelf. And for those of you who are currently diving deep into sourdough, it would be a good buy. [IndieBound]

Miso Tempeh Natto by Kirsten K. Shockey and Christopher Shockey – I feel like this is a book I could spend a lifetime exploring and I’d still only scratch the surface of what it has to offer. I can’t wait to dive in. [Powells | IndieBound]

Midwest Made by Shauna Sever – I have never lived in the midwest and it’s not a place where any of my people are from. And yet, I still everything to love in this thoughtful, delectable, downright beautiful book. I think I could be happy baking from these pages for the rest of my days. [Powells | IndieBound]

Heirloom by Sarah Owens – This book a wild, creative ride through preserving, fermentation, naturally leavened baking, and the recipes that use and love the products of those processes. Sarah is a genius and I wish my mind worked like hers does. [Powells | IndieBound]

Check the recipe index for more tasty preserves!

Marinated Chick Pea and Celery Salad

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 08:40:23 GMT

Everyone should have a simple potluck/lunch/pantry dish in their repertory. One that can impress with just a few ingredients, doesn’t need to be refrigerated immediately, and just gets better as it sits. This is mine.

Once a month (or thereabouts) my extended family gets together for dinner. We used to only gather for major holidays, but several years back, I realized that no one was getting younger and that we needed to take advantage of our proximity and spend time with one another. Having added our two boys to the mix makes this feel even more important than it once did.

These evenings are mostly potluck, with everyone volunteering to bring something that they want to eat (cohesion is secondary). In the past, I was pretty good at communicating with my various cousins and aunts what I was going to bring but last month, I failed miserably. Everyone would have given me a pass (and knowing my family, there would have been plenty of food even if I hadn’t managed to bring anything). But I wanted to bring something.

Looking at the fridge and pantry just an hour before we needed to leave, I realized that the pickings were slim. But there was still enough to build a satisfying little marinated salad of chick peas, chopped celery, and diced sweet onion. I pulled down my copy of Preserving by the Pint and made a version of the Herb Vinaigrette (swapping in dried oregano for the basil in the original recipe). I really do cook from my own books!

This blender vinaigrette recipe came to me from my mom’s best friend Maria and is such a great, versatile dressing. I will often make a batch over the weekend to have in the fridge. Knowing it’s there makes me want to take the time to make a salad for lunch rather than defaulting to peanut butter toast.

From there, it was a matter of combining chick peas, celery, and onions, and bathing in the dressing (I used half a batch). It was good and well-received at the potluck, but the leftovers continued to soak up flavor and goodness and were even better the next day.

Yield: 4

Marinated Chick Pea and Celery Salad

Prep Time 5 minutes

Total Time 5 minutes

Ingredients

2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 can chick peas, drained
3 ribs celery, minced
1/2 sweet onion, diced

Instructions

In a blender, combine the olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, garlic cloves, dried oregano, dry mustard, salt, and pepper. Blend until just incorporated.
Combine the chick peas, celery, and onion in a large bowl and pour approximately half the dressing over the top.
Let the salad marinate for at least an hour before serving.
The salad will keep in the fridge for up to three days and the leftover dressing is good in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Check the recipe index for more tasty preserves!

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