Poetry and Place

A story with a happy ending, brought to me by poetry:

I had the great good fortune to go on a family trip to England last year, with a stop in Wales. In a bookstore in Caernarvon I picked up a book of poetry, This Common Uncommon by Rae Howells. 

She's following in the footsteps of an earlier Welsh poet, John Clare, who wrote about the effects of the Enclosure Act. Howells' poems describe Clyne Common in loving detail, from the plants and creatures to the people fighting to save it from development. Wales has a national law protecting spaces that hold endangered species and they're trying to preserve their commons, but this one was owned by an English lord who wanted to develop it.

I read the book over the course of a few weeks, resisting the urge to find out what actually happened in the legal battle. I finished the book, read the beautiful last poem "Jays in Love", and promptly searched on "Clyne Commons legal battle."

They won! They saved the commons! Many, many people fought to save it and won.

It isn't that this book of poetry necessarily turned the tide. But it brought me so much joy to know that this place she observed so closely and described so beautifully is still there. The scrubby land the lord had offered up as "replacement value" is a perfectly good place to put houses, since housing is a real need. You can build houses without destroying irreplaceable habitat. And the people who live in those houses can enjoy and appreciate the commons that will still be there, living and breathing. 

Reading the first lines of that article moved me to tears. People loving a place and caring and fighting for it can and do make a real difference in the world.

This story of place has extra resonance for me because my maternal grandfather was of Welsh descent, although I have no idea which part of Wales his family originally came from. Welsh mythology has always appealed to me, and in college as a linguistics major I took a semester of Middle Welsh. Going to Wales meant riding on a train that announced stops first in Welsh, then in English, and hearing Welsh spoken as the primary language in the bookstore where I got this book and a new translation of the Mabinogion, the Welsh mythology I read as a child.

I want more poetry of place. If it's coupled with a victory for the planet, so much the better. Know of any?

Elderberry Jam JK Jelly Because Raccoons

This is neither a jam recipe nor a jelly recipe. It's a jam-into-jelly story and you should not do with your elderberries what I did with mine.

That said, I will go on to say that the jelly turned out fabulous. It's the perfect texture for my jelly tastes: soft and pourable, but at a slow pace, not a runny liquid that didn't really set. It's a glorious deep purple color and it tastes good.

Now for the story. 

One August night as I read in bed I heard a lot of noise outside, like something breaking bushes or wood. What on earth was it?! I didn’t think a human intruder would be that noisy so after a few seconds I had my suspicions.

I turned out my lamp and looked outside. Couldn’t see a thing even after my eyes adjusted. Turned on my phone’s flashlight and shone it out through the screen. Couldn’t see a thing. Put on my robe and sneakers and went outside, where I discovered a mama raccoon who was BREAKING my elderberry bushes’ branches to get at the ripe berries! I had guessed raccoon but the woody noise had been a bit of a mystery since we don’t have a brush pile out there.

She made a very ominous low rumbling sound. I realized why a second later, as an immature raccoon edged past me on the fence about three feet away. She was clearly saying “Don’t you dare hurt my baby!” I won’t, Mama, but get away from my berries! Once the baby made its way to her we had a staredown for a few minutes. She backed slowly away but didn’t really want to go. Even after I turned off my flashlight I could see glowing eyes watching me, the mama’s eyes higher than the eyes of the baby crouched in front of her.

The next morning, some very sad elderberry bushes awaited. I trimmed off one truly broken branch. With a couple more I’m going to try taping them up as if I’d grafted the branch and see what happens. I’d been planning to harvest anyway. Time to make elderberry jam! Or is it?

Elderberry safety warning!

Elderberry canning comes with safety warnings, though. The University of Wisconsin is quite clear on this point. Their "not safe for canning" headline is discouraging, but that's not really what the article tells us. It says weigh ingredients and make sure you add enough acid!

"For Jam, the weight ratio of elderberry pulp to sugar must be no more than: weight of fruit/ weight of sugar = 47/55 = 0.85. For every 16 ounces (1 pound) of fruit pulp for Jam, your recipe must include at least 18.9 ounces, by weight, of sugar. It is not acceptable to use dry measure cups or assume that a 1-cup measure of fruit or sugar weighs 8-ounces, it will not. You must weigh ingredients."

There's more information there about making jelly, adding lemon juice, not using honey, not reducing the sugar ratio. (You can add more than the recipe calls for, never less.) Read the article if you're going to can elderberry jam or jelly. Honestly, this makes me wish I'd chosen a different food-producing plant for that corner. After the Incident of the Raccoons in the Night, I'm actually thinking about pulling out the bushes (I planted one and it sent out a volunteer so I have two) and putting in something else. Probably also raccoon-tempting, but more conducive to canning.

Elderberry Jam

I had 4.75 pounds of elderberries after all the cleaning, from this saved-from-the-raccoons batch and ones I'd harvested earlier this year and last year. Elderberries keep coming on so it's a while before you're done with them.

Cleaning tricks: Freeze them first. Hold the stem over a big bowl and geeeently run a fork down the twigs. Berries will pop off. Some of the annoyingly minuscule stems will too, and you need to pick out as many of those as you can spot.

My rooky error at this point! I forgot that when you double a jam recipe you really add to the cooking time before reaching the jelling stage. You're (I'm) better off making two smaller batches rather than one big batch. Uh-oh. I'm committed now, though, because at this point I'm using my Dutch oven to cook the batch of apple hot pepper jelly. I made the juice yesterday and left it to drain overnight and I already had it on the stove. So now I can't split this batch.

With the University of Wisconsin guidelines in mind, and an online percentage calculator to do the math for me, I worked out that 4.75 pounds was 85% of 5.58 pounds. Round up, not down! 5.75 pounds of sugar it is. Got a bit edgy here: I used 5 pounds of white sugar, .75 pounds of brown sugar, after checking that it is indeed okay to substitute. I wanted that slightly caramel edge that brown sugar brings.

How much lemon juice, needed to help it gel since elderberries are low in pectin? The Creative Canning Elderberry Jam recipe gave me a ratio: 1/2 cup of lemon juice is 20% of the 2.5 pounds of elderberries she had. That meant 0.95 cups of lemon juice. Call it a scant cup, filled to the line or a skosh below. (If you measure by the titch instead of by the skosh, that's fine.) 

And now to get a gigantic pot of elderberries to boil....

They do foam up quite nicely, as promised/warned, and I was glad I had them in my deepest stockpot.

But after 45 minutes of cooking, stirring often, I still had pretty chewy elderberries. It was getting late, I'd already made the apple hot pepper jelly, I wanted to be done.

Pivoting to Jelly

Again, not the recommended jelly method. I should have cooked the elderberries without sugar, left them to drain overnight, then mixed the juice with sugar and lemon juice. The Extension site also noted that jelly required a higher sugar:fruit ratio than jam and I now didn't have a way to measure that because the sugar was in the jam pot.

Onward. I drained the elderberries in my jellybag strainer, not letting them sit overnight, just waiting for the drips to dwindle to an occasional one rather than a stream. I put the juice in my Dutch oven (clean by now), added another 1/2 cup sugar figuring I'd already rounded up the sugar when I thought I was making jam, brought it to a boil, and let it cook, skimming the foam off. 

I test readiness both with a thermometer for temperature and by dipping some juice, holding the wooden spoon on its side, and watching how the liquid behaves as it runs off. If it's dripping fast like water, it's not ready to jell. If it's in slow syrupy drips, or better yet running together to form more of a sheet, it's ready. I got t his juice to the slow syrupy stage and called it good enough.

Into the jars, into the hot-water bath for 15 minutes, and done.

The next day I opened the one quarter-pint that had come up a tiny bit short when I filled the jars. To my surprise and delight I had gorgeous jelly. A deep purple, a pourable but jelled consistency, and a taste that for me was a lot more rewarding than those chewy, somewhat woody berries. It has an astringency unlike my other jellies but I like it. 

Maybe I don't get rid of those bushes after all. Although I do think next year I'll try elderflower jelly so as to avoid tempting the raccoons.

Again, this is not a recipe. This is what happened because raccoons.

Yield: 5 half-pints, 10 quarter-pints.

Apple Hot Pepper Jelly Recipe

My Hot Pepper Jelly made with a mix of 50% sweet bell peppers, 50% a mix of various mild to hot peppers from the freezer, was a hit in our household. Acquiring a big batch of gleaned apples made me think about creating a variation with an apple base. Could be jam, could be jelly. Getting the gift of peppers from friend Mitzi, a regular Buy Nothing connection, made this an even better idea.

Source recipes

Apple Hot Pepper Jelly, The View from Great Island: Fastest and easiest since it calls for starting with apple juice or apple cider and using red pepper flakes for the heat. Note of caution: Commercial apple juice doesn't have as much pectin as what you make at home, per the National Center for Home Food Preservation. This recipe calls for pectin to make up for that. Parking this for someone who might want a shortcut recipe; I didn't use anything from this.

Apple Jalapeño Jelly, Hola Jalapeño: A recipe developer after my own heart: She made this because she picked a bunch of apples. Her pepper combo sounds pretty hot so I might tame it a bit. Bonus: Cheddar Pie Crust Cracker recipe here too. What a tasty-sounding combo! She goes straight from making juice to straining through a sieve and using it. I know from experience this doesn't produce as much juice as leaving the mash to drain overnight in a jelly bag.

Jalapeño Apple Pepper Jelly, Stemilt: Includes optional addition of cranberries for color and flavor. Someone in the Food in Jars Facebook group suggested cranberry jalapeño jelly a while back so this one is intriguing to make again when I have cranberries on hand. It calls for 3 cups of white vinegar, though, and that sounds too sharp for my taste. It does include a handy ratio I've come across before for jelly: 7/8 c. sugar for each 1 c. juice. This one includes the option of an overnight drip for the juice.

I ended up mostly following the Stemilt recipe despite my misgivings about the vinegar. Hola Jalapeño leaving out the overnight drip won't cut it.

"Feeder" ingredients you could live without:

• I had some leftover commercial apple cider to use up from a container I'd used to provide liquid for the Salted Caramel Apple Butter and some earlier recipes. I used this in place of the water Stemilt's recipe called for. Hola Jalapeño had noted that commercial apple juice doesn't have the pectin of homemade. 
• I had a big bunch of peels and cores left over from prepping apples for the Indian Apple Chutne I'd made earlier. I saved them specifically for their pectin contribution and figured that would take care of the potentially lower pectin level in the commercial cider, along with the other apples I quartered and threw in.

Stemilt called for 6 jalapeño, stems and ribs removed to tame 3 of them, 3 of them with stems/ribs left in to hot it up. I went with 5, figuring I'd taste the resulting juice and adjust. This and my 4 pounds of apples, peels and cores with 3 cups of cider, 3-1/2 cups of white vinegar, yielded 3 cups of juice. They suggested adding water to bring it up to 4 cups. I opted to leave the rich flavor I had produced rather than water it down.

The juice seemed just right for heat, but the cooking stage tamed it a bit. Next time I'd go with 6 jalapeños, thinking of it as 2 per cup of juice, and maybe chop one more to provide tiny bits floating in the jelly. I didn't make any chopped pepper bits this time around, opting for the clear (and therefore sneaky) jelly. My Mad Hatter peppers are sweet with only a tiny bit of heat and they're ripe now. They'd add a nice touch of red without the kick of a Fresno or cayenne. Next time!

Yield: 8 quarter-pints

Cran-Rasp-Orange-Berry Jam

Inventing new jam flavor combinations and cleaning the freezer go hand in hand, at least for me. This recipe resulted from having a bag of frozen raspberries from last year's harvest and a container of a cranberry-orange sauce I made for a family meal that produced more than we could eat. I've seen cran-raspberry juice in the store and this seemed like a natural combination. My search for recipe inspiration confirmed the idea.

Two things I think about in jam inventions: naturally occurring pectin in the fruits and berries I'm using, and overall acidity in the recipe for safe canning. I'll read a recipe written for a single ingredient like raspberries to learn whether that jam can set without added pectin. If it can, then something with more natural pectin should marry quite nicely. I don't want to use pectin because I don't want my jam to end up like a block of gelatin.

Two charts I found to help with this particular combination: A UK pectin and acidity chart that doesn't include raspberries(!) and an article from Fruits Knowledge World that focuses on pectin and provides a helpful summary bullet list.

Another handy spot: CoolConversion to calculate how many ounces or grams or cups you have when you have the measurement in some other metric. This came in handy figuring out that my 6 cups of frozen raspberries was just a tad more than the 30 ounces in the Food in Jars recipe below.

Source recipes

• Cranberry Orange Sauce, A Mindfull Mom (pause your ad blocker for the site to load)
• Cranberry Raspberry Jam, Food in Jars: Genuinely didn't find this until after I had my frozen sources defrosted and was working on ratios. She uses fresh cranberries with frozen raspberries.

Ingredients

• Cranberry Orange Sauce, 2 cups. If you don't have this on hand, follow the Food in Jars Cranberry Raspberry Jam recipe and add the orange zest, OJ concentrate, cinnamon and nutmeg from the sauce recipe
• Frozen raspberries, 6 cups, which is close to the 30 oz. in the Food in Jars recipe
• White sugar, 2-1/2 cups
• Triple Sec or other orange-flavored liqueur, 2-4 T. (optional)

Defrost the frozen ingredients. What you do next depends on whether you're starting with fresh or frozen cranberries instead of the sauce, which has already been cooked and has broken down the cranberry skins.

If all ingredients are whole, not precooked, mix them with the sugar and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to medium heat and cook. If you're starting with the leftover cranberry orange sauce, you could give the raspberries 10 minutes of cook time, then add the sauce. Doesn't hurt to just dump it all in and start, though.

Stir frequently until the jam thickens, approximately 25-27 minutes total. 

Toward the end of the cook time, stir in the Triple Sec if you're adding it. It doesn't add a strong orange flavor; I just find it fun to add, but it isn't needed. Taste and adjust. Spices don't affect food safety or canning time. Do you want a stronger hint of cloves? Another spoon of OJ concentrate or more orange zest?

Follow safe canning practices from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Process the jars in a boiling water bath, starting the timer when the water returns to a full boil after you lower the jars in.

Yield: 4 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints

I usually include pictures of beautiful jars full of deliciousness. This time I'm showing some of the wreckage from running a jam batch alongside an applesauce batch.

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