maybe i would ride in it's pocket

There are some things I want so bad, that I've pictured happening so often, that I'm always a little fuzzy as to whether my mental images are from real life or not. 

Like, "This can't be true, but the picture's so real... is it true? 

No. 

But maybe...?"

One of these things is to see a kangaroo on the side of the road. 

Friday lunchacha

My birthday is normally on the first day of summer, so I always say that summer is my favorite season. My heart knows this is not true. Fall is my favorite, because of HARVEST! I don't grow much produce myself (although I bought brocolli and beet seedlings today -- fingers crossed they don't die) but I love love love all the wonderful bounty at the markets. The flavors, the names, and and especially the colors. The deep purple of eggplant has been beckoning lately, and with all the eggplant dishes popping up in my favorite food blogs, I bit. I started with the Eggplant Salad Toasts recipe from Smitten Kitchen as inspiration, but changed it dramatically. Please change this recipe to suit your own palate. Add some chopped olives or mint at the end. I might take Deb's advice and mix the leftovers with some sort of grain (quinoa, steel-cut oats) for a yummy salad. You could also bake this into a frittata. In short, this is a great salad to have on hand for eating all week long.

For my quiet at-home Friday lunch, I made this and ate it with some Green Curry Chicken from last night's dinner. Photo and recipes follow.

Community

I've been pondering community lately. As someone who attempts to follow the words of Jesus in my life, I feel convicted to foster community... somehow. I don't live on my own, I have few possessions, and my financial budget is small. I've moved around quite a bit the last few years, and thought my current town is my hometown, my good friends now live far away or we are no longer such good friends. My heart wants to live and love with those who are like me. Don't we all want that?

The idea of not only having a social network for mental and emotional sharing and support, but a commune-like community where property and time is shared, is intriguing to me. I'm just starting to vocalize all this rumbly-tumblyness inside, so forgive me if I ask more questions here than anything else.

Where do I even begin? Even writing this, there's so many directions my heart says to go. "Social justice" is a popular phrase, and I want to know how to work for social change within a framework of God's love and truth, not as an addendum. There are two websites I've been following lately that I'll recommend: Rowdy Kittens and Shareable. Both of these sites discuss using our time, goods and resources for not only our own betterment, but the betterment of those around us. A former pastor used to tell about people who would come up to him and say "You [meaning the church] should do x or y or z". He would tell them "Go for it!". This is a more direct way of saying "Be the change you wish to see in the world".

The hard thing is moving beyond past hurts. I've been involved in so many community efforts, in some way or another, in the past, and have been hurt. Who hasn't? Trying to even write down, right now, what I'm thinking, brings back memories of hurtful times. What if I get hurt again? What if I hurt someone else? What if I fail? This spring I discovered in me a huge fear of failure. I had enrolled in a class that turned out to be much harder than I had anticipated. I failed tests. I felt like a failure. (I'll admit, I made that jump from "failing at something" to "I am a failure" very quickly.) I passed, but that fear was an unwelcome discovery. Yet like my class, where my options were either give up and never know what could have been, or try and maybe something positive will come out of it, I must try SOMETHING.

The idea of sharing resources is especially interesting to me right now. I have a lot to say about STUFF, but for today I'll end on a good note. If anyone wants to borrow my canning supplies, or anything else I have, please ask. 

For canning, I have:

a water-bath canner with rack

an instant-read thermometer/timer

a jar lifter

recipes, tips, and books

knowledge

I am also happy to teach you how to can. 

If you have a similar conviction, let's put our brains together! What are ways that you know of, or desire to see put into practice, to live in communion with others?

Scraps

There's a right way and a wrong way to deal with random bits of food. The wrong way is the way of... someone close to me. Someone whom I love so so much. Someone who rhymes with "scmother". This way involves putting a large Tupperware container in the freezer, using it to create a stratum of progressive leftovers. When the container is full, defrost, dump in a pot, cover with water, salt to taste, and call it soup.

The ensuing rebellion at this gruel ensured that 'leftover soup' did not happen again.

(I should take a brief parental detour here and let you know that we children did not run the household. However, having simple majority, sometimes our outcries counted as a democratic decision. If the vote was split, but mom liked the controversial dish, a repeat was likely. We still have yells about something known as King Ranch Chicken. I am in the "like it" camp; Homesick Texan has a yummy sounding recipe on her site.)

(Another parent/food/geocultural bunny trail: One time we were gifted with a casserole that, apparently, was called Fish Saute. Being children of Seattle, we always thought it was called Fish Latte. Even typing this out, that's where my fingers went. 

Fish Latte. It'll be the Flavor of the Day at some drive-thru coffee stand in Monroe soon. If I'm right about that, you all owe me twenty bucks.)

Okay, back from... wherever that went. Oy vey. I spent my Saturday night* examining different ways to use fruit (specifically pear) scraps. One is straightforward pear butter. The other way spawned two recipes, one for canned cinnamon pears and one for pear-scrap apple jelly. Unless you like canning (I find it soothing) or you're bored out of your gourd and want to spend three hours with pears, I recommend splitting these methods up. It's a lot of pear time.

*If the idea of me at home experimenting with pears on a Saturday night makes you sad for me, please know that earlier in the day I had a date. Part of the date unexpectedly involved watching police with assault weapons lock down parts of the city and search for an armed suspect. We also strolled through an open-air flea market and had coffee. So, my day wasn't so very spinstery. 


Recipes ahead!

Library Round-up

Recently I joined a members-only website, and in the profile section you're asked to list "5 things you can't live without". The goal here is not to be too literal (none of us can live without water, or air, thanks), but to be clever and stand out a little, while being truthful. I put 'library card' for one of my essentials. Our local library is a seven minute walk away. I've had my card number memorized for years (and have no idea where the actual card is). This knowledge came in handy last year at the Minnesota State Fair. The day I visited, you got a discounted admission ticket if you showed your library card. The young man working the booth let me recite mine instead; I think I may have astonished him.

I thought I'd highlight several titles I've enjoyed (for free!) from the library lately. But first, here's my brother at the main branch of the Seattle Public Library. It's an astonishing building, both architecturally and literarily. Rem Koolhaas was one of the principal designers. It has lots of glass and steel. There are exterior shots here; this site also shows off the four-story "continuous staircase". Parts of each level have slightly sloped floors, and as you follow the slope up or down it takes you all through the four levels non-fiction. There's also a giant conveyor system for returning materials, which my brother thought was "awesome".

Reduced-sugar jams and a GIVEAWAY!

 As a thank-you for reading, I'm giving away a jar of this delicious jam, plus a surprise baked good to spread it on! To enter, leave a comment telling me about your best improvised recipe, and check back on Friday for the winner!

If you like to can your own jams and preserves, you may, like me, be aghast at the amount of sugar you quickly go through in putting up your spreads. Most pectin requires a certain amount of sugar to gel, and some recipes don't even use pectin, but have you boil the fruit until it reaches the gelling point (220˚ at sea level). 

There is another way. Pomona's Universal Pectin uses calcium to cause the pectin to gel. If I were more of a sciencey person, I would explain to you how this works, but I use words like "sciencey" so obviously I'm not. What I know is that this calcium magic allows you, the consumer, to use lower amounts of sugar or even other sweeteners in your recipes. The informative guide sheet included in each box of pectin also gives clear instructions on how to develop your own preserves recipes. I recently put on my big girl pants and did just that. I was inspired by this article on "Bachelor Jam", which is simply fruit and sugar layered in a crock, covered with a high-proof alcohol, and let to sit. As tempting as that sounds, I wanted something with a lower ABV (alcohol by volume) percentage. Some kiwis were getting soft, the ancient triple sec in the fridge needed to be used up, and thus, Bachelorette Jam!

Bachelorette Jam 

You don't need to worry about peeling the fruits (except kiwi). After everything had simmered for a while and gotten soft, I ran it all through my Foley food mill, but if you don't have a food mill, you could just chop everything really small to begin with, or blend it after some simmering. I like the applesauce-like texture a food mill makes.  

1 pint blueberries

2 kiwis, peeled

1 1/2 apples

1/2 nectarine

1 pear

1 peach

zest and juice of 1 orange

lemon juice

1 c honey

Pomona's Universal pectin and prepared calcium water

1/2 c triple sec

Prepare your jars and bring the jars and rings to a boil. Let them simmer while you make the jam. Soak the lids in a bowl of very hot water.

Wash the fruit. Dice into approximate 1/2" pieces and measure. For each cup of fruit add 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice. (I had 6 cups of fruit.) Stir the lemon juice and all the fruit together in a deep and wide pot. Bring to a simmer and let simmer with a lid on until the fruits are soft. Put through a food mill, or blend in a blender or food processor. Return to the pot. (I dumped the stuff left in the food mill back in, as it was pretty broken down, but you can discard it if you wish.) Stir in 1 teaspoon of prepared calcium powder per cup of fruit.

Stir 3 teaspoons of pectin powder into the honey. Bring the fruit to a boil (212˚) and let boil while stirring in the pectin-honey. Stir vigorously and let cook for two minutes to dissolve the pectin. Return to a boil and remove from heat. Stir in the triple sec.

Pour the jam into the prepared jars to within 1/4" of top. Remove the air bubbles with a chopstick or small spatula, and adjust headspace as needed. Wipe the rims, apply the lids, and screw the ring on until hand-tight. Put the filled jars back into the water bath and return it to a boil. Once it starts boiling again, process for ten minutes. Lift the jars straight up out of the boiling water and let cool. Remove the rings, check the seal, wipe the jars, and store with the rings off. Don't forget to date and label your lids!

Makes 7 half-pint jars

Since this recipe has so many ingredients, I made pretty labels so I remember all the kinds of fruit. I found many great options here; for this recipe, I used Martha Stewart's fruit labels, customized in Pages.