Apples, Apples, Apples!

It's apple season on top of tomato season and people are leaving bags just sitting out by the curb. Trees in the public right of way are dropping their bounty on the ground. People are posting on Buy Nothing: "Neighbor's tree is dropping apples in my yard. Please take these or I'll be composting them."

I abhor food waste thanks to my Depression-era parents so all that free food has to be put to some good use, right? And apples are my favorite fruit.

Getting the apples home carries its own stories and memories. The first ones this year grow close to home. There's a wide shared-use path near our house on the way to Squaxin Park. A tree there that produces somewhat bland gold apples with a bit of blush to their cheeks produces early, which was helpful when I wanted to make chutneys in August. I rode my bike down and picked up the ones I could salvage the most from.

My Sweet Hubs, knowing of my fondness for gleaning, spotted a tree producing beautiful snappy green and gold apples on another street as we biked along one day. I stopped and filled my panniers and I've done it again since then. That spot has the apples falling on deep, soft grass so they don't get as bruised as the ones falling on the path. 

The third big batch came from one of those neighbors leaving bags by the sidewalk. I saw them one day and didn't stop to pick them up. A couple of days later as I drove past en route to the office to return a vehicle used for a work trip, there they still sat. I stopped and picked up three of the bags. 

When I got to the office and went to carry them in so I could load them into my panniers to carry home by bike, a scene worthy of Laurel and Hardy ensued. The bottoms of the bags had softened sitting in the grass and apples began escaping and rolling across the garage floor. I'd get some contained and others would leak out a different corner. I chased them down and after many attempts worked out a precarious system of balancing the bags atop a notebook. Made it upstairs, genuinely worn out by the effort, and transferred them into the bike bags at last.

My list of recipes made, and recipes I considered that I may come back to if I spot more apples in the wild:

• Hot & Spicy Zucchini Chutney: 8 half-pints, 9 quarter-pints
• Blackberry Apple Chutney: 4 half-pints, 8 quarter-pints
• Apple Mint Jelly: 4 quarter-pints, made using this Ball recipe found via Reddit but without the pectin because of this Apple Mint Jelly recipe, although I didn't put chopped mint in as the latter calls for because jelly should be clear, not look as if you dropped something into the pot accidentally
• Chunky Caramel Apple Jam: Found this one via the Food in Jars Facebook group. 5 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints. I forgot to add the vanilla at the end and it still tasted great.
• Indian Apple Chutney: 13 half-pints
• Plain old Canned Apples packed in juice: 7 quarts
• Plain old Applesauce: 4 pints
• Maple Applesauce: 7 pints
• Apple Ginger Jelly: I did the prep for this and put the juice in the fridge while I traveled for work. Ended up with 12 cups of juice after the first straining, strained again after I came back and took out around a cup of pulp I added to the apple butter process below. The jelly turned out the most beautiful rosy color thanks to some of the apples having a blush to the peels. Yield: 5 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints

Chai-Ginger Apple Butter

I put the cooked apple/ginger mash from the jelly prep through a food mill, ending up with a bit over 4 cups. The second straining of the juice yielded another cup or so. The pulp was pretty bland, with a hint of ginger. I had in mind turning it into applesauce but I already have several pints so instead I made apple butter. My recipe is a mash-up of:

• Slow Cooker Chai-Ginger Apple Butter 
• Adding vinegar similar to the level of Alison Roman's Apple Butter Recipe in the New York Times
• Using maple syrup thanks to Food in Jars' Maple Bourbon Apple Butter (can substitute apple cider for the bourbon if you make that one)

I've found that apple butter recipes vary widely in how much vinegar they add; I want this to be tangy because it isn't jam, so the Bon Appetit Apple Butter doesn't sound vinegary enough. Other possibilities considered that are also low on vinegar, from Food in Jars: Low-Sugar Apple Ginger Not-Quite-Butter, or another deep, multispiced Apple Butter along the lines of Spiced Apple Butter. 

For spices you'll taste and adjust toward the end, when flavors have concentrated. I started with less than what I list here and increased.

• Cooked-down apples put through a food mill, or applesauce: 4-5 cups
• Apple cider vinegar: 1/2 c.
• Maple syrup: 1/4 c. (I might increase this next time)
• Brown sugar: 2/3 c.
• Ginger: If you didn't cook the apples with a few slices of fresh ginger, stir in 2 t. ginger paste from a tube, or add 1 t. powdered ginger
• Candied ginger: 1/3-1/2 c., chopped fine
• Cinnamon: 1 t.
• Cardamom: 1 t.
• Cloves: 1/4 t.
• Allspice: 1/8 t.
• Pepper: 1/4 t.
• Salt (sea salt or pickling salt preferred): 1-1/2 t.

I used the slow cooker set on low and cooked all day, stirring and tasting occasionally. As it darkened and thickened I decided it was still a bit bland so I increased the vinegar, added brown sugar, and increased the spices to bring the amounts up to what I list above. By 10:00 p.m. I had canned the Apple Ginger Jelly along with a batch of Tomato Chutney (8 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints). I turned the cooker off, went to bed, and started it up again the next morning to cook for another hour or so. 

Before jarring it up for canning I used the immersion blender to break down the candied ginger and a few stray bits of fiber that had made it through the food mill. That worked okay but it isn't silky smooth; a pickier or more careful cook might want to run it through a blender or mill it again, although at this point it was hot and I didn't want to handle the blender business with a thick, hot paste that's likely to backfire.

Yield: 1 half-pint, 4 quarter-pints

Not made yet, but keeping the link handy in case another bag or two falls into my hands:

• Rosh Hashanah Apple Jam with Rosewater: Very fitting since apples are a member of the rose family. I'll be careful if I make this one because I've had some dishes with rosewater that were so heavily floral it was a bit like eating hand lotion

Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)

OK, definitely should have taken a picture of the giant zucchini. It was roughly two feet long and at least 6-8 inches wide at the big end. One of those white and green striped variety, not the solid green. I looked up zucchini varieties and this was a cocozelle.

It sat in the garage fridge giving me guilty feelings for a long time, at least four weeks after Sweet Hubs brought it home from the RC flying club field where someone said, "Who wants a zucchini?" Hubs knows how I love to preserve foods and that I could turn it into something so he said yes.

It sat so long I thought maybe it would have aged out of utility, but no, when I finally brought it out of the fridge on a sunny Saturday after I had bread in the oven and had made some sourdough discard crackers it was as firm as the day he brought it home. I'm saving seeds from this one to plant for next year.

Speaking of seeds, a summer squash this size has seeds big enough to do something with. Enter this recipe for oven-roasted zucchini seeds. But what about the rest of it?

I'd already made a big batch of Hot & Spicy Zucchini Chutney. I love that so I could see making it again but I've also made a huge batch of Indian Apple Chutney and a smallish batch of Blackberry Apple Chutney and I have some Green Tomato Chutney left from last year. I may be over-chutneyed, if such a thing is possible. I still have jars and jars of pickles from last year, so no pickles, and relish is pretty close to pickles so no relish. Time to mix things up.

Zucchini Salsa to the rescue! I found two similar recipes, both calling for cups and cups of zucchini. Conveniently they also called for cups and cups of tomatoes and my garden produces several pounds a day right now, so I was all set there. 

• Zucchini Salsa from Food.com has half the quantity of tomatoes to zucchini, with onions given in terms of number of onions, not chopped cups, which isn't helpful since onion sizes vary; maybe 1/3 the quantity of zucchini?, and 4 peppers, again without giving chopped cup quantities so I'd guess 2-3 cups or 1/5 the quantity of zucchini.
• Zingy Zucchini Salsa from The Vibrant Veggie has 2/3 the quantity of tomatoes to zucchini, 1/3 the quantity of onions, 1/6 the quantity of peppers.

About the peppers: Mine have been coming on, mostly sweet and a couple with a little heat: Padron, which has a nice tongue-tingling quality without burning, and pepperoncini that's pretty mild. Since pepper heat varies across varieties this seems like a great place to customize to your family's Scoville settings with a mix of sweet peppers and whatever else turns your cranks. I started mild figuring I could adjust with the dried chili spices I'd add later.

The two recipes varied in a couple of techniques. 

To drain or not to drain: After salting the zucchini, onion, and peppers and leaving them to sit anywhere from 3-24 hours, do you drain off the juice or not? One did, one didn't. The juice is more to cook down but with the other veggies in there it carries some flavor. 

After around four hours of soaking I drained off about 2-1/2 cups of liquid and saved it in case I ended up cooking down too much. At the end because I used very juicy homegrown tomatoes it had a fair amount of liquid but I didn't want to turn it into completely broken down mush so I called it done. 

Next time I'd salt only the zucchini and drain that, press it to get even more water out, then add the other vegetables that aren't as watery and start cooking. Or I might even start the zucchini cooking on its own, drain the liquid produced after a while, then add everything else. That would allow a shorter cook time with the tomatoes, onions, and peppers to keep some of the individual veggie qualities without being too watery.

Cook time: The Zippy recipe cooks on a low temp for an hour after bringing to a boil, the Food.com recipe for only 15 minutes. If you want the veggies on the raw side you could go for that short cook time but I wanted more melding of flavors and time for the vegetables to break down a bit. That did result in a lot more release of the liquids but it had a chance to boil off a bit.

Proportions: From the comments on the one at Food.com, a lot of people add ingredients and reduce the acid component willy-nilly before canning. I hope everyone's all right over there. I stayed away from too much ad-libbing and improv and paid attention to ratios of ingredients.

This giant squash produced 16 cups of shredded flesh even after taking out the guts with the seeds. Tracking my adjustments to the two recipes, here's where I landed:

• 16 cups shredded zucchini
• 6 cups diced onion; I had white on hand but yellow would work fine, even red
• 2 cups diced peppers; roughly half sweet red bell, a couple of Padrons,one jalapeño, the rest pepperoncini
• 1/4 c. + 1-1/2 T. salt (any kind, table salt, sea salt, pickling salt) sprinkled over the shredded zucchini, onion, and sweet/hot peppers
• 12 cups diced tomatoes (mixed yellow, orange, red, black, striped)
• 2-2/3 cups apple cider vinegar (could use another that's also 5% acidity such as regular distilled vinegar, red or white wine vinegar; lime juice could also be substituted for part of this if it's 5% acidity)
• 1/3 + 1/2 cup sugar (can use white or brown) (I started with 1/3 cup, which was the amount for 12 cups of zucchini, because I wanted to taste first; I ended up adding 1/4 cup and then another 1/4 cup to offset the vinegariness)
• 8 cloves garlic (when in doubt I add extra garlic; you could increase this)
• 1 T. dry mustard
• 1 T. cumin
• 1 t. chipotle (I like a smoky quality to my salsa; you could use chili powder instead)
• 1 t. chili powder
• 1 T. dried cilantro, optional (dried because I had it; I'd rather have chopped up a bunch of fresh cilantro to throw in but not everyone loves it)
• 1/8 t. cayenne (added after I tasted with all of the above)

Put the drained zucchini in a large pot, add the chopped tomatoes and all other ingredients. Or, as noted above, cook the zucchini on its own for a few minutes to release more liquid, drain that off, then add the other ingredients.

Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, then reduce to a simmer. Cook for 30-45 minutes or so. Depending how cooked down and thick you like your salsa you may want to adjust the cooking time to less or more.

Meanwhile prep your jars for hot water bath canning. 

My yield with these quantities: 10 full pints, one pint jar not quite full, but more than 1/2 pint so gosh darn, we'll just have to eat that one right away. (Yes, I could freeze it. Hush.) I processed for 20 minutes.

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!

Oh, so many tomatoes. Little Shop of Horrors in the raised beds. Too much temptation at the farmers' market in early spring with too many varieties. Eleven tomato plants later in early September, I'm picking a growing number of pounds. Every day.

Orange, red, and black cherry tomatoes. Red and yellow grape tomatoes. Heirloom yellow tomatoes. Black Prince (which is a little slower to come on but was an incredible producer for me last year). A fun pink and green striped "tie-dyed" tomato named Pink Berkeley, also slower to produce and one of those that grows a somewhat lobed, lumpy tomato that makes for funny slices. San Marzano and some other kind of Roma/paste tomato. 

At one point after I'd missed picking three days in a row due to workshops and a conference out of town I picked 14 pounds: a giant bowl of all the small ones, a big colander of the big ones.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.

Thanks to Food in Jars I knew not to double any recipes that involve cooking them to a jammy quality. Tomatoes take a long time to cook down, and the juicier they are the longer it takes. Since I have a lot of cherry tomatoes in my mix I have a lot of juice. The most I did was scale up by about a pound, adjusting other elements accordingly. 

I cook in my widest deep saucepan for maximum surface exposure to cook off the juice, or in a new Lodge Dutch oven I sprang for that's now possibly my favorite pot. Hot tomatoes really spit so even though it's tempting to crank up the heat for a fast boil I don't leave it at a full boil. I ramp it up (7 on my induction cooktop, which tops out at 9), then turn back to 6 or even 5.

Recipe #1: Smoky, Spicy, Skillet Tomato Jam by Food in Jars. I tend to hold back on the heat so I didn't put in as much as it called for in crushed red pepper and I substituted Aleppo pepper for the cayenne. Still very tasty.

Recipe #2: Tomato Jam by Serious Eats. The most popular recipe on her site, a sweet and savory version. Sort of ketchup-y in its flavor profile.

Recipe #3: Orange Tomato Jam with Smoked Paprika. To my disappointment (and that of other commenters) "orange" didn't mean a tomato/citrus jam. It meant jam made with orange tomatoes, which are lower in acid than red varieties so the recipe is adjusted accordingly. I had plenty of orange cherry, yellow grape, and yellow heirloom after about three days' picking so I made this. For the record, all tomatoes darken as they cook down so it's sort of a smoky dark orange.

Recipe #4: I wanted that citrus! So I mashed up a couple of recipes and went for spices that sounded good when I tasted them in my head. My sources:

• Tomato Marmalade Recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation
• Tomato Orange Marmalade Recipe from Epicurious
• Tomato Citrus Jam Recipe from Simply Gourmet

Tomato Citrus Marmalade

• Tomatoes: Around 4-1/2 lbs.
• Oranges: 2, cut into eighths, seeds removed, and very thinly sliced, peel and all
• Lemon: 1, cut into eighths, seeds removed, and very thinly sliced, peel and all
• Sugar: 4 cups (too much!)*
• Salt: 1 t.
• Cinnamon: 1 t. to start; added 1/2 t. toward end
• Ginger: 1 t. to start; added 1/2 t. toward end
• Allspice: 3/4 t.
• Coriander: 1/4 t. (could leave this out if you don't like the flavor)
• Mace: 1/4 t. ( could use nutmeg too, or instead)
• Aleppo pepper: Added 1/2 t. toward the end when I tasted

*This was too sweet! I wish I had started out with 2-1/2 or 3 cups of sugar instead of 4. When I tasted at the end after it had thickened up and concentrated the flavors, the citrus was strong but so was the sugar. I know it's needed for the set but not all the Food in Jars recipes use a sugar ratio that's this high.

So I adjusted. I added more cinnamon and ginger, and some Aleppo pepper for a smokeyish heat.

Still too sweet. I opened my spice drawer and stared it for inspiration. Sumac! That adds a sourish flavor and wouldn't be off-putting in this. I added 1 t. sumac and another 1/2 t. Aleppo. More salt is always a good idea; another 1 t.

Tasted again. I hadn't harmed anything, at least. Still kind of cloying. It really needed acid at this point but it had thickened so nicely I hated to thin it and back up. Added another 1 t. Aleppo pepper. It was pretty good by the end but still sweeter than I'd wanted. You could pour this on ice cream and no one would bat an eye.

Recipe #5: Dried Tiny Tomatoes from Food in Jars. This was the day I picked 14 pounds, tired after a full and intense week, and I wanted to move things along as quickly as possible. I kept the orange, red, and black cherry tomatoes and yellow grape tomatoes separate as I sliced and prepared the trays for my dehydrator. Very pretty!

Recipe #6: Slow Oven-Roasted Roma Tomatoes from Food in Jars. Yep, same "wow that's a lot of tomatoes" day.

Recipe #7: A cross between three recipes, with spice ranges provided because I used an initial quantity, then did a taste and adjust when it had cooked down pretty far. The inspirations:

• Sungold Tomato and Maple Jam, Food in Jars: I didn't have the maple sugar she called for, although I had some Demerara sugar left over from a long-ago recipe and that seemed as if it might bring some of the same depth of flavor. I had a mix of heirloom tomatoes, many of them a deep yellow meaning they'd have a similar acid profile.
• Smoked Rosemary Heirloom Tomato Jam, Chef Dr. Mike: This one doesn't include canning instructions and has an onion in it. I didn't trust its ratio of tomatoes to acidic ingredients but I liked the sound of the spice mix. I left out the onion, ignored the business about smoking salt, added ginger to the spice mix, and substituted crushed red pepper for the jalapeño I didn't have on hand. This recipe doesn't call for any sugar, which made me think about making a lower-sugar jam.
• Smoky, Spicy Skillet Tomato Jam, Food in Jars: I'd already made this one so I wanted a change. I took the proportions here of 1/4 c. (4 T.) lemon juice to 2 pounds of tomatoes. I thought my tomatoes might be pretty sweet so I didn't start with the same proportion of sugar. In another of her recipes the ratio was 1 cup of sugar per pound of tomatoes, which would be even higher.

Spicy Tomato Jam #2

• Tomatoes: 5 lb. mixed varieties, roughly chopped
• Sugar: 1-1/2 c. Demerara; I would have used brown sugar if I hadn't had this
• Lime juice/lemon juice: 1/2 c. plus 2 T. (I could have gone with 100% of either juice; I started with lime from Chef Dr. Mike's recipe, ran out, used lemon to finish out the quantity)
• Ginger paste: 1 to 1-1/2 T. (start with 1 T., taste and adjust)
• Cumin: 1 to 1-1/2 t.
• Coriander: 1 to 1-1/2 t.
• Crushed red pepper: 1 t. (more if you want to bring the heat)
• Salt: 1 to 1-1/2 t.
• Cinnamon: 1/2 to 1 t.
• Allspice: 1/2 to 1 t.
• Ground black pepper: 1/2 t.
• Rosemary, fresh sprigs chopped fine: < 1/2 t. (I didn't measure with precision; next time I'd use more)

I tasted when it had reduced a fair amount but wasn't quite to the jammy stage. It had a slight peppery quality and all the other spices seemed to have disappeared. I like spice-forward cooking so I went at it again, adding 1/2 the original quantity for ginger, cumin, coriander, and salt, and 1/2 t. each cinnamon and allspice. 

Next time I might not oomph up the ginger quite that much since it dominates other spices. The rosemary disappeared utterly and I didn't make another run at establishing it amidst everything else that was going on. 

Recipe #8: Marinated Dehydrated Tomatoes by Food in Jars. These are like tomato candy despite the Italian seasoning. They look a little bit like pepperoni slices and I bet they'd be amazing on pizza, or on a cracker or baguette slice with a delicious cheese. I've done two batches of these, the first with 5 pounds of tomatoes, the second with 10.

Recipe #9: Easy Addictive Tomato Chutney: Ended up making this one. Her trick of whizzing the tomatoes in the food processor saved time but made kind of a mush so I did that for half the tomatoes, chopped up the other half, although I'm not sure in the end that it mattered because it all cooks down. 8 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints

Future possibilities as the tomatoes keep coming on: 

• Spicy Heirloom Tomato Chutney by Food in Jars. Yes, yes, I already have quite a large collection of chutneys on hand (zucchini, blackberry, apple, leftover green tomato chutney from last season), but this sounds so good!
• Yellow Tomato and Basil Jam by Food in Jars with the addition of rosemary. I think that will be pretty tasty, although I already have three kinds of tomato jam.
• Basic canned tomatoes so I can make delicious soup midwinter.

What are you doing with all of your tomatoes?

Pears, Pears, Pears!

Starting point: three bags of pears a neighbor left by the street free to any passerby and the timeliness of passing by on my bike with plenty of carrying capacity. I dug into recipes for pears, thinking of the bland, gritty canned pears of my childhood and determined to do something much more interesting.

One of the challenges of fruit preserving recipes is that some measure in number of pounds before prep, some in pounds after prep, and some in cups. Working with gleaned or windfall fruit often means cutting big chunks off to avoid bruises. I have to work my way through the proportions, measure what I have when I'm done with prep, and adjust.

A search for pear recipes led me to:

• Salted Caramel Pear Butter from Ball Mason; made in the slow cooker, which I think gave the sugar a slightly burned edge that I'm not crazy about so I should have turned it down to low much earlier; added 1 t. salt and 2 t. vanilla bean paste toward the end, the former to increase the salt factor and the latter hoping to offset the burned-ness. My home taste tester, Sweet Hubs, said it's fantastic anyway.
• Cinnamon Cardamom Pear Jam from Food in Jars; reduced sugar by 1 c and cinnamon by 1 t, added 3/8 t cardamom
• Gingered Pear Preserves: my version below
• Pickled Pears: my version below
• Pear Vanilla Caramel Sauce: Haven't made this yet but if I score more pears this Food in Jars recipe is first in line because it sounds amazing.

I didn't make all of these in one blow-out weekend. Some of the pears were ripe and I started with the pear butter and pear jam. A week later the rest of them were ready for me to turn them into gingered pear preserves and pickled pears.

Gingered Pear Preserves

Working from Ball Mason Jars Gingered Pear Preserves Recipe, based on the sugar proportions from NCHFP and the white/brown proportions from Serious Eats Pear and Ginger Preserves Recipe, I ended up with:

• 8 cups chopped pears, the yield from approx. 10 pounds of pears with the bruised bits cut out
• 6 T. crystallized ginger, chopped fine (I started with 4 T., increased toward the end after tasting; this is all about personal preferences)
• 2-1/2 T. ginger paste (from a tube; go for it if you want to spend time peeling and chopping fresh ginger; don't put all of this in to begin with so you can taste and adjust)
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 8 T. bottled lemon juice (bottled because that has a consistent acidity level, which is important for safe canning)
• White sugar: 2-1/2 cups
• Brown sugar: 3/4 cup

The gelling time in the Serious Eats recipe was much more accurate for me than in the NCHFP recipe--definitely not gelling 15 minutes into the cook time. It went more like 30 minutes and to be honest I'm not sure I really reached the full gel stage when I look at the movement of the product in the jars. My impatience may have gotten to me at that point; I've done a lot of canning since the beginning of September.

My yield: 4 half-pints, 6 quarter-pints (so cute, that size! and great for gifts)

Pickled Pear Recipe

Some recipes use whole spices, some use ground. Ratios of fruit, sugar and vinegar vary across recipes. The National Center for Home Food Preservation is a trusted source with testing behind every recipe. Their proportion is 8 pounds fruit, 8 cups sugar, 4 cups vinegar, 2 cups water. The thing is, the sweetness of the fruit will vary a bit. Since this isn't a preserve that needs to gel, the sugar functions for flavor balance with the vinegar. That to me says it's safe to reduce the sugar if the fruit sweetness is high. Where I landed:

• Pears: 4 lbs, peeled, cored, cut in slices or chunks or left in quarters or eighths, depending on the size of the pear 
• Vinegar: 1-1/3 c. (I used white wine vinegar; you could use plain distilled white vinegar, or one of the darker vinegars if you don't mind the color effect; could even deliberately go for a pretty rose effect using red wine vinegar or an unsweetened berry vinegar like raspberry vinegar or blackberry vinegar)
• Water: 1 c.
• Sugar: 1-1/4 c.
• Cinnamon: 3/4 t.
• Ginger: 3/4 t.
• Cloves: 1/8 t.
• Mace: 1/8 t.
• Salt: 1/4 t.

Yield: 3 pints that I haven't taste-tested yet.

More Pickled Pear Recipes

• Spiced Pickled Pears by Adventures in Pickling
• Spiced Pickled Pears by Headspace
• Pickle Pears by Pickles Travel
• Pear Pickles by National Center for Home Food Preservation

Future Marmalade

"If you'll save the peel from your mandarin oranges for me, it will come back to you as future marmalade."

Not something you hear at every staff retreat in a typical office building in downtown Seattle.

The more I cook the more I loathe food waste and the more I discover that things I've chucked into compost for years are perfectly good food. A few examples: 

• Stalks of fennel? Pickled fennel agrodolce. It keeps for at least two years with a super-simple technique and no hot-water canning! I went through a bit of fennel overload in around 2021, made a lot of batches of this Fennel Lentil Lemony Salad, and couldn't stand the thought of throwing out all those stalks that also taste of licorice. I still have a couple of jars of agrodolce. I use them in pasta sauces and soups.
• Fennel fronds? Fennel fronds pesto. Great on pasta.
• Cauliflower leaves? Roast them right along with the rest of the cauliflower, crisp them up separately as a crunchy chip, or throw them in the food processor with everything else you're turning into cauliflower rice or a great vegan broccoli-cauliflower soup.
• Broccoli leaves? Chop them up right along with the rest of the broccoli (I've been using the stems in all my broccoli recipes for years and years--peel if super tough, dice) for the outstanding vegan broccoli-red grape salad from Hummusapien's appropriately named Best Broccoli Salad Ever Recipe. Or they could go into the oven with the cauliflower leaves if you're doing a batch of something that involves both and you'll have mixed chips.

So, yeah, future marmalade. In some chat thread I ran across someone saying how much they hate food waste and that they save all their orange peels and then make marmalade. Last year I made a batch of mixed citrus ginger marmalade that I loved (first marmalade ever). Why not plan ahead for future marmalade?

All those lemon wedge garnishes on the side of a glass of Arnold Palmer (half and half if you're in the South), orange slices adorning a plated restaurant meal, bit of lime from some cocktail...I brought them home (learned to carry a plastic bag in all my backpacks and panniers), did the work of getting rid of the bitter white pith and slicing into thin strands, and put them in the bag in the freezer labeled Future Marmalade. 

If I had some mandarins that were starting to head toward soft? Into the bag, segments and prepped peel both. Lemons ditto? Ditto. Turns out I'm not very good at using up citrus fruit quickly so it's a good thing I discovered this food-saving trick.

The beauty of this approach is that making marmalade now means I start with the vast majority of the prep work done in little five-minute increments instead of facing a morning of peeling, slicing, dealing with pith, segmenting (I'm not very practiced at supreming, a term I learned reading marmalade recipes). I did want to make sure I had enough flesh to balance the peel so I bought a couple of big ruby red grapefruit (a citrus not yet represented in the Future Marmalade bag), an orange and a lemon and prepped those.

Another time-saving labor-distributing step: Tender peels are essential to good marmalade. Most recipes call for a long, slow cooking phase for the peels in water alone. One of the recipes suggested prepping the peel and soaking it overnight for a big head start on the softening stage. Perfect. I got that put together, including the bundle of pith and seeds from the fresh fruit in cheesecloth that will release pectin needed for this all to set up, and let water and time work their magic.

One more thing that can save some work: Fresh ginger paste in a tube! I've had so many chunks of ginger root either go bad in the produce drawer or shrivel up in the freezer wrapped in foil. I'd agree that fresh ginger you grate yourself is wonderful, but if that's the step keeping you from using fresh ginger in a recipe I say go for the tube. They sell cilantro in a tube, too, and that's another item I've had to put in the compost heap occasionally because I didn't use it fast enough and also didn't get around to chopping and freezing it to save for future salsa. Life, time, and food prep labor do not always align neatly.

I went back to the original mixed citrus ginger marmalade recipe and read a few more for good measure. The ratios of fruit weight to water and sugar varied a bit across recipes from 1.5 to 2 times the fruit weight. Searching for information I found another would-be marmalade maker on Reddit asking why the fruit/sugar/water ratios vary so much and getting some helpful answers. I knew it would depend on how much sweetness I have from the actual fruit. Given that I have a lot more peel than fruit, that was going to push toward more sugar.

When I read recipes I read a lot of them as well as the comments to check for what others learned following it. In any of the preserves or jams I'm looking in particular at the proportion of main ingredient to other ingredients. All of this helps me develop the tweaks I'm likely going to make. 

For this batch I was planning to pick up the idea of using both fresh and crystallized ginger from My Darling Lemon Thyme. I almost went for the fresh chili addition from Lembit Lounge Cuisine but I'm making a lot of chutneys this year and some tomato jam that involves pepper seasonings so I decided against that. I want some variety in the spicing of my various preserves. I would leap at the cloves and cinnamon used in Recipes by Hosheen but again, chutneys, and I also have a tendency to over-season things so I should have a few items that have clean, fresh flavors that stand alone.

Resourcefully Sourced Multi-Citrus Ginger Marmalade

Flesh of mixed citrus fruits with their juice: 4 cups

Peel of mixed citrus fruits: Started with ~3 pounds, or a one-gallon bag full plus a one-quart bag full (although this included some of the flesh accounted for above). After cooking this turned out to be nearly 8 cups of peel. I decided I didn't want twice as much peel as fruit--that seemed like I'd be overdoing it. I stirred it in a cup at a time until it looked about right and reserved 3 cups of the peel for other uses, thinking I'll throw them into a chutney or have a head start on a future batch of marmalade.

Ginger paste: 5 T. I started with 2 T. based on Garden Betty's recipe with 2 T. ginger to 4 c. fruit, tasted at the end after stirring in the peel and kept adjusting up.

Crystallized ginger: Whoops! That was on the kitchen island behind my primary work zone thanks to my sweetheart's grocery run by bike to get this for me along with other ingredients I need for future recipes. Totally forgot to chop and add it. That's what happens when you're synthesizing multiple recipes and hopscotching from one browser tab to another. 

No wonder I had to keep increasing the ginger paste. Crystallized ginger would have been Just The Thing to take this across the line into AmazeBalls Territory. You know what this means--I have to make another batch pretty soon.

White granulated sugar: 5 c.; I wanted to be sure I offset the potential bitterness created by having such a high peel-to-fruit ratio. One of the recipes I looked at actually used half as much sugar as fruit; I could have started there, but the sugar really is part of the setting-up chemical reaction and I had my doubts.

Actual cooking process

In my 6.5 quart Dutch oven I covered the peel with water and left it to soak overnight. To start the cooking process I added a bit more water since absorbing water overnight meant it wasn't all under water. I boiled it for an hour, stirring every so often and testing the peel until it was very tender. When I drained the peel I had 2-1/2 cups of very citrusy water.

Following the instructions from the majority of the recipes I checked, I put the citrusy water, flesh and juice, sugar, ginger, and packet of pectinizing pith and seeds into the pot. I brought that to a rapid boil and kept it boiling, stirring every so often and smooshing down on the cheesecloth-wrapped packet to push pectin out of it and into the pot. 

Checking the temperature worked better when I let it come to a full boil and stay there rather than stirring it down and introducing cooler air. I cooked it for over 30 minutes and got it north of 210 degrees, maybe around 214 degrees. Not quite the 220 degrees every recipe said to get to but y'know, after a while you just want to be done.

Yield: 6 half-pints and 6 quarter-pints, or 4-1/2 cups of delicious product all told

Citrus Marmalade Recipes for Reference

• Citrus Marmalade, National Center for Home Food Preservation (always a trusted resource for canning instructions so read it even if you make another version; note that they cook peel and flesh together and this won't tenderize the peel as much as a precooking step will)
• Three-Citrus Ginger Marmalade, My Darling Lemon Thyme (uses both fresh and crystallized ginger)
• Orange-Grapefruit-Ginger Marmalade, Garden Betty (the one I followed last year)
• Meyer Lemon and Fresh Ginger Marmalade, Suwannee Rose (the source of the overnight soaking inspiration)
• Meyer Lemon, Orange and Fresh Ginger Marmalade, The Café Sucre Farine (uses commercial pectin, discards the pith and seeds instead of using them for their pectin value; also has you microwave the flesh and peel and let suit for several hours to dissolve the sugar and this technique was too different for me to want to try it)
• Spiced Citrus Ginger Marmalade, Recipes by Hosheen (adds clove and cinnamon to the ginger, which sounds pretty delicious)
• Citrus Ginger and Chili Marmalade, Lembit Lounge Cuisine (adding a fresh chili is an interesting twist)
• Three-Citrus Marmalade, Food in Jars (no ginger, but she said in a tomato jam recipe that as long as you get the proportions right for the main ingredient, acid and sugar, you can adjust the seasonings/spices)
• Orange-Ginger Marmalade, Food in Jars (one of her older recipes; uses a very different technique of just chopping up oranges, peel and all)
• Traditional Seville Orange Marmalade, Delia Smith (good for highly detailed step-by-step instructions)
• The 10 Golden Rules for Marmalade Making , Good Housekeeping (my mom subscribed to GH for years and years and I have a warm spot in my heart for them; these also seem like good tips)
• How to Make Perfect Orange Marmalade, The Guardian (reviews three different approaches)
• How to Make Amazing Orange Marmalade with Frozen Fruit, Food Talk Daily (a UK source so it doesn't describe the canning step; saving this link in case you or I need it someday because we got tired of doing the peeling and threw whole fruit into the freezer, although working with softened peel to cut it into strips sounds slippery and possibly hazardous to me; recipe also works with fresh fruit)
• Citrus Marmalade, Alison Roman

A Year of Poems: September

The back-to-school month, the month that bridges from summer to fall, Warm days, still, but shorter. The slant of light changes, softens. The day may be hot but the night cools the earth. September is here, and the hillsides still abound with fruit on the blackberry bushes I picked in August.

To compile these monthly collections I read a lot of poems I don't link on the page. A poet may mention September as the date of an event but the poem itself doesn't evoke this time of year. Or it's so archaic I just can't get into it. The ones I link speak to me in some way that may or may not be reflected in the specific lines I excerpt here.

My process includes some research as needed. I recently heard someone hesitate as they started to use the term "Indian summer" to refer to the second summer we sometimes get after a frost in fall. I felt the same hesitation, not knowing if that term (like so many in English) embeds a painful history. 

This phrase appears in poems about September and I wanted to know if it gives offense. The words of poetry reflect the understanding and eras of their authors and a poem may have beauty worth savoring, but I stumble on terms that reflect the bias of those times.

Adam Sweeting, the author of a book on the cultural history of the term "Indian summer", tells us yes, it's offensive. In fact, in 2020 the American Meteorological Society issued the recommendation that we refer to "second summer". Sweeting also notes that the idea of a frost followed by a second summer is less likely, given climate change. We're more apt to experience an extended hot period without the cooling temperatures, then plunge abruptly into winter.

I'll indicate below when a poem uses the term.

[Updated to add this] Another term I learned from Island Martha on Mastodon: "Old Women's Summer" is used in Estonia. I couldn't find the background searching so I asked her if it was considered insulting. She said, "Old Estonian women getting a 2nd chance to sit in the sun with their neighbours AND getting credit for it. What do YOU think?" I think it sounds delightful.

"September Meditation" by Burton D. Carley

Perhaps this will be the only question we will have to answer:
"What can you tell me about September?"

"And Now It's September," by Barbara Crooker

The ornamental grasses have gone to seed, haloed
in the last light. Nights grow chilly, but the days
are still warm; I wear the sun like a shawl on my neck
and arms.

"To the Light of September" by W.S. Merwin

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings

"I haven't met anyone who hasn't offered me her humanity" by Gary Margolis

To see a storm

of maple leaves as the tides they are.
The apples, at home, their own kind
of burnishing, rented pear.

"Porch Swing in September" by Ted Kooser

and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.
She is saying it's time that the swinging were done with,

"September Tomatoes" by Karina Borowitz

It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready
to let go of summer so easily. To destroy
what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months.
Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.

"Green Pear Tree in September" by Freya Manfred

He planted it twelve years ago,
when he was seventy-three,
so that in September
he could stroll down 
with the sound of the crickets
rising and falling around him,

"September Sunday" by Lucille Broderson

I've done what I can,
picked berries in season,
cut back canes, snapped beans,
scrubbed down the mud-spattered walls.

"September, 1918" by Amy Lowell

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.

"September Water" by Elizabeth Bohm (click the arrow at page right to get the rest of the poem after what begins on this page link)

In the quiet sunlight of September
The harbor's top is blond and burnished stone,
Any swimmer who cuts that width of stillness
Is scorched with cold to the marrow of the bone.

"September 2" by Wendell Berry

up the birds rose into the sky against the darkening
clouds. They tossed themselves among the fading
landscapes of the sky like rags, as in
abandonment to the summons their blood knew.

"The Imprint of September Second" by Ethan Gilsdorf

Second of September, I ate the last berry of summer,
the sun still dreaming it's July twenty-first,

the blackberry bush stiffened by heat, losing suppleness,
the berry hard as corn, the seed living in wisdom

teeth that afternoon, me glancing at the scene
glancing back at me, red leaves against a hard green grass, 

"Blackberry Eating" by Galway Kinnell

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,

"If a Babylonian astronomical diary in cuneiform on a clay tablet records the observation of Halley's Comet on 22–28 September of 164 BCE, then" by H.L. Hix

why not say cluster of leaves still clinging
to the tip of one branch (the others bare
that bloomed crimson last week) slowly turning
red to brown, 

"September Midnight" by Sara Teasdale (uses the term "Indian summer")

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.

A Year of Poems

• A Year of Poems: January
• A Year of Poems: February
• A Year of Poems: March 
• A Year of Poems: April
• A Year of Poems: May
• A Year of Poems: June
• A Year of Poems: July
• A Year of Poems: August