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Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe

Invasive so-called Himalayan blackberries clamber over much of western Washington's terrain. Dubbed "Himalayan" by Luther Burbank as a marketing move even though they probably originated in Armenia, these blackberries aren't the thornless variety he had hoped to breed by a long shot. Not even close; when I pick them along the roads near my house I wear long sleeves, some hiking pants with a smooth finish, and a glove on one hand to push the vines back.

Like my gleaned apples, they're free for the taking so I end up thinking up things to do with them. 

  • Fruit leather: I have a batch waiting in the freezer for me to decide whether I'm turning them into fruit leather along with plums I got from a Buy Nothing offer.
  • Flavored vinegar: I soaked a big batch in white wine vinegar to make this for gift-giving. I used a sugar-free blackberry vinegar recipe, although other recipes involving sugar would be fine if you'd like to start with a sweeter base. I didn't take the longer-term route of extracting and then fermenting blackberry juice to turn it into vinegar. I hung onto the soaked blackberries and used a bunch of them in the chutney, which provided vinegary quality. Now pink, with much of their color along with flavor transferred into the vinegar, a few of them wait in the freezer for a future something or other.
  • Blackberry chutney: If you've read my other recipe roundups about tomatoes, apples, pears, zucchini, and green tomatoes, you know I love me some chutney! So of course I had to riff on a few recipes I found. This turned out not to be as tangy as most of my other chutneys, more along the lines of a complex jam than anything. Well worth putting on a cracker with some cheese though
Blackberry Chutney Recipes

Where I started for inspiration, considering proportions of ingredients, whether or not it included apples (most did and that seemed like a good medium to carry the blackberry flavor), and the spices used:
I had a lot of blackberries even accounting for the ones waiting for fruit leather so this recipe uses large quantities. All the reference recipes use about a third of the quantities here. I scaled up and checked the spicing levels along the way.

Blackberry Apple Chutney
  • Blackberries: 1,300 grams (mine were soaked in vinegar; refer to note with the vinegar amount)
  • Apples: ~415 grams, approximately 3-4 apples depending on size, diced small
  • Onion (red or yellow): 400 grams, diced small
  • Brown sugar (white okay; brown sugar gives a caramel element): 450 grams
  • Apple cider or any other vinegar with 5% acidity: At a guesstimate, 350 grams; taste and adjust after it's all cooked together. I used blackberries soaked in vinegar so the vinegar amount is based on proportions from the source recipes
  • Garlic: 3 cloves, diced or crushed
  • Ground cumin: 1/2 t.
  • Crushed red pepper: 1/2 t.
  • Fine salt: 1 t.
  • Cinnamon: 1 t.
  • Cloves: 1/4 t.
  • Optional: Zest of 1-2 oranges
Yield: 4 half-pints and 8 quarter-pints

Prepare jars for canning following best practices such as those on the National Center for Home Food Preservation or Food in Jars.

Dice the onions and start them cooking at a gentle heat. After five minutes add the apples, blackberries, and spices and cook until the fruit is soft. Depending on the apples this will run around 15-20 minutes. Add the vinegar and sugar. Stir the sugar in and allow it to dissolve. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring often. At about 10 minutes taste and adjust sweet/sour balance by adding a bit more vinegar or sugar to your taste. Cook until you can drag a wooden spoon through the base of the chutney and leave a clear trail in the pan before the thickening liquid fills the line back in. 

Ladle into sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for 15 minutes. For best flavors, wait at least two weeks for the chutney to mature before using.





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A Dusty Collection: Poems about Dust

I'm not the world's most meticulous housekeeper. If I look at a dusty surface and feel guilt for not dusting more often, I'm missing the chance to think of it, or of myself, as a collection of protozoa, ocean salt, stardust. Made up of so many tiniest fragments of ourselves and our lives, dust is unavoidable, metaphorical, even astronomical in these poems. Put down that duster and read a while.

Photo of a ray of sun from upper right to lower left illuminating a cloud of dust in an old room with wood walls that looks as if it might be a stable or barn.

"The Dust Speaks" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I am the memory
of everywhere you’ve been
and I am the memory
of what you do
and I come from places
you’ll never go.

"Dusting" by Marilyn Nelson

Thank you for these tiny
particles of ocean salt,
pearl-necklace viruses,
winged protozoans:
for the infinite,
intricate shapes
of submicroscopic
living things

“The Joy of Sweeping” by Maya Stein

the settling of dust
or its disturbance,
the silence
or the song.

“View with a Grain of Sand” by Wislawa Szymborska

We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.

"Belonging" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

we are the dust, the dust that hopes,
a rising of dust, a pitch of dust
the dust that dances in the light   

"Porcelain Musician in a Child's Bedroom" by Brenda Hillman

dust, the noun & verb that is
   a thing & isn’t, drifted, its dreamy
abstract qualities sent
         off with a cloth till nothing
    said you had to or you didn’t,—

"Memo to Self Re: Meditation" by Ron Stone

Slowly learn the lesson about who you are:
dust of the earth, dust of a star.
The stuff that is you has always been here
fulfilling its purpose in losing its Self.

Until you.

"In Any Event" by Dorianne Laux

Nothing is gone forever.
If we came from dust
and will return to dust
then we can find our way
into anything.

"Stardust" by Kay Ryan

something like
sugar grains on
something like
metal, but with
none of the chill.
It’s hard to explain.

"Saltwater" by Finn Butler

Everyone who terrifies you is 65% water.
And everyone you love is made of stardust,

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A Year of Poems: November

I have a particular reason for appreciating November: It's my birthday month. According to my mother I was supposed to be an October baby but I hung in there an extra month. In a fun twist of fate that meant I ended up being born on Election Day, and then when I was elected for the first time to the Idaho state legislature it was on my birthday. Quite a big present from the voters of Kootenai County, Idaho!

November has come to mean more to me beyond my birthday and Election Day, in particular becoming the birthday month for my first baby, Eldest Daughter. 

As the poems below describe, for all of us in the Northern Hemisphere it's the month when days really feel shorter, sun really rises later, autumn really does turn around and hand us into the cold arms of the waiting winter.

"Monday" by Cindy Gregg

On this first day of November
it is cold as a cave,
the sky the color
of neutral third parties.

"Why You Should Go Outside at 4:40 am in November" by Rosemary Royston

Because it is more silent than you can imagine
and above you the moon is a nickel
glinting from the unseen sun,
surrounded by broken crystals.

"Enough" by Jeffrey Harrison

It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning
warm enough for you to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path.

"Praise Song" by Barbara Crooker

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there's left:

"November for Beginners" by Rita Dove
(Bonus for me: The site where I found this posted it on my birthday)

Snow would be the easy

way out—that softening
sky like a sigh of relief
at finally being allowed
to yield. No dice.

"The Crazy Woman" by Gwendolyn Brooks

I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

"Like Coins, November" by Elizabeth Klise Von Zerneck

We drove past late fall fields as flat and cold
as sheets of tin and, in the distance, trees

were tossed like coins against the sky. Stunned gold
and bronze, oaks, maples stood in twos and threes:

some copper bright, a few dull brown and, now
and then, the shock of one so steeled with frost

it glittered like a dime. 

"November" by Maggie Dietz

Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge

On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster
Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin,
Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters.

"November" by Ben Howard

These last warm days are telling a funny story
whose punchline never comes. You could put your hand
on the iron railing of your neighbor's steps
and feel, in its frigid core, the steadiness
of winter.

"November" by Lucien Stark

 First frost, the blue spruce
against my window's shagged, 
and the sky is sombering. I

draw close to the fire, inward
with all that breathes.

"November" by Jay du Von

And the earth was heavy, the roads
soft with yellow mud and lined with coming
and going. Always the days were shorter
and now the evening came far on the road
to meet us.

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Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.

Twenty-two and a half pounds, to be precise (ish). That's how many green tomatoes I picked on Oct. 19 on a rainy day at the end of the growing season. Around 12-1/2 bigger tomatoes of various varieties from Roma to San Marzano to Black Prince to an heirloom yellow one, about 10 pounds of cherry and grape tomatoes. These plants have been prolific all summer long and I've already processed a lot of tomatoes.


What to do, what to do. 

A search yielded a number of options:

  • Fermented Green Tomatoes: A comment on Reddit/Canning suggested these might resemble green olives, I assume in appearance rather than flavor.
  • Pickled Green Tomatoes: Small Batch Pickled Green Tomatoes by Food in Jars, Pickled Green Tomatoes by Creative Canning with several spice options; Crunchy Pickled Green Tomatoes by Brooklyn Farm Girl, a quick pickle version that will need to be kept refrigerated so nope, not good for lots and lots of tomatoes; Pickled Sweet Green Tomatoes by National Center for Home Food Preservation
  • Green Tomato/Tomatillo Chutney from Brooklyn Farm Girl: I still have around 3 gallons of tomatillos from last October's final harvest and this would be a way of using them up. But do I really want to add any volume at all to 22-1/2 pounds of green tomatoes?!?!
  • Relish: Not my favorite condiment 
  • Salsa and some other ideas, but that salsa recipe reads a lot like salsa verde and I still have some of that left from last year along with all those tomatilloes
  • Cake?! : Not a recipe for long-term preservation, but interesting
  • Green Tomato Ketchup: I know from experience this will take for-absolutely-ever to cook down but I have so many tomatoes I'm tempted to try it out, and maybe it could work in a slow cooker. Several recipe options: Mamta Gupta's Green Tomato Ketchup; Green Tomato Ketchup by From the Larder (which calls for British Mixed Spice and she kindly includes the recipe for that; it sounds great for oatmeal, quick breads, baking, other uses); a 1940s Green Tomato Recipe from Gourmet; a Quebec Green Tomato Recipe posted on Reddit that says to soak the tomatoes and celery in salted water overnight so that would mean planning ahead and a quantity of "20-25 green tomatoes" with no reference to either weight or volume so that's a bit vague; a Green Tomato Recipe on Spruce Eats; and then there's the seasoning mix suggested in my edition of The Joy of Cooking, copyright 1975 (which matters because they changed things for more recent editions) for Tomato Catsup that could presumably work in a green tomato ketchup, although I'm surprised they didn't have a recipe involving green tomatoes. Looking for more versions of the Quebecois recipe, I learned that for some people, particularly in the American South, a reference to Green Tomato Ketchup labels something that's more of a chutney or even chow-chow, which I made last year with some of my green tomatoes and which includes cabbage as an ingredient. If I go this route I'm going to make a smooth ketchup/catsup more similar to the red kind in texture.
  • Dehydrated Green Tomatoes: I just loaned out my dehydrator to a friend who needs to process 50-60 pounds of chantarelles so this won't work for me, but something to bear in mind for the future. Drying Green Tomatoes by Healthy Canning mentions reconstituting them as “Pomodori verdi secchi in olio di oliva”, which sounds good. Good discussion on Garden Web of drying green tomatoes and other produce with some tips and ideas for use. Video on slicing them with a mandoline and making "chips" with a bit of sugar and salt.
  • I could throw them in the freezer until I decide what to do with them, or can them plain for future reincarnation mid-winter when I want to fill the house with the scents of summer.

Last year I'd made green tomato chutney and that was delicious. I have several kinds of chutneys already, although I'm never opposed to having more on hand. Thanks to Mamta Gupta  I learned that the word "chutney" comes from the Hindi word Chatni, "a tangy and spicy sauce/paste that makes you smack your lips." Yes indeedy.

Lip-smackin' goodness, here I come. The list of recipes I worked from to develop mine below, with a note on whether it includes a specific element beyond green tomatoes and onions:

Handy tools: My food processor with the sharp blade serves as one of the key tools for dealing with this many tomatoes and associated ingredients. I picked this little trick up from a ripe tomato chutney recipe and realized I'd been doing a ton of unnecessary hand slicing and dicing for things destined to go into a pan and break down as they cooked. Integrity in hand-crafted artisanal slicing and dicing truly not required.

Another trick I came up with on my own: Using my strawberry capping tool to nip the stems off the tops of tomatoes. I don't core tomatoes and the little bit of skin at the top where the stem attached softens in cooking so I'm not worried about making sure I get every last bit out.

Spices: Most of the recipes I found had fairly low key (boring) spice combinations, not nearly as inspiring as the ones for chutneys made with ripe tomatoes and other ingredients. Dried spices don't affect canning safety so I looked up a few chutney recipes like this Green Tomato Chutney from Swasthi's Recipes (not designed for canning) and this Green Tomato Recipe from Mamta's Kitchen that provided a lot more inspiration. The Food in Jars recipe was also seasoned in a more interesting way than others, one of which just offered up chili powder and salt. Excuse me, do you know where chutneys come from and what makes them delicious??

This looks like a long list of spices and it is. My garam masala was a bit old so I reinforced it with some of the spices that are typical ingredients in this tasty spice blend. You could certainly start with just the seasonings from any of the recipes linked above and decide for yourself what to increase or add.

Fruit: For some reason, several of the recipes didn't call for raisins, which I 100% associate with chutney. Food.com was the exception here. I like to use dried cranberries for some or all of these, and this time I also went for some dried dates. (Yes, home botanists, tomato is also a fruit.)

Photo of a large silver pot on a black cooktop full of bright green chopped tomatoes, dried cranberries, and onions.
Quantities and ratios: Quantities can be adjusted based on tomatoes as the core ingredient, bearing in mind that bigger quantities take a lot longer to cook down. 

The ratios were very different between a couple of sources. For comparison:

  • Food.com: Tomatoes 10 lbs., Apples 3 lbs., Onions 3 lbs., Raisins 1 lb., Brown Sugar 1.5 lbs, Vinegar 1 qt.
  • Culinaria Eugenius adaptation of Ball: Tomatoes 16 cups, Apples 16 cups, Onions 3 medium (resulting in maybe ~3 cups?), Bell Peppers 3 medium (~3 cups?), Brown Sugar 6 cups, Vinegar 4 cups
  • Food in Jars: Tomatoes 6 cups, Onions 1-1/4 cups, Brown Sugar 1-1/2 cups, Vinegar 1 cup
  • Lovely Greens: Tomatoes 1 kg. or ~6 cups, Onion 1 kg or ~6 cups, Brown Sugar 500 grams or ~2.5 cups, Vinegar 1 liter or ~1 qt.
Photo of a silver pot on a black cooktop,l. The pot is about 2/3 full of a brown chunky sauce with splatters of the sauce visible on the white countertop around the cooktop.
Clearly a somewhat flexible set of proportions for the tomatoes, onions, and apples. Smashing all these together I decided this would have to be a taste-and-adjust on proportions to get the right level of tanginess across tomatoes/onions/apples/peppers, building on the ones from Food in Jars and Culinaria Eugenius for sugar and vinegar. 

Sugar and vinegar: Sugar levels are mostly for flavor since this isn't a jam in search of pectin setting qualities, vinegar is for food safety, and both of the recipes I relied on have a ratio of sugar 1.5 to vinegar 1. I started with 4 cups of vinegar, 4 cups of sugar, so I could taste and adjust the sweetness factor.

Photo of a silver pot on a black cooktop surrounded by white countertop and backsplash. The pot holds a chunky brown substance with the wooden handle of a utensil projecting above the rim. To the right of the cooktop, a rack covered with a white kitchen towel, splatters of the brown substance on the counter, and a collection of spice bottles against the backsplash.
I also had to deal with the quantities I had available to me. For apples I used some of those I canned earlier this year.

Green Tomato Apple Chutney Recipe

Read this first: Start this recipe early in the day when you have time to tend it and stir often. 

Read this too: Wear an oven mitt when you stir the pot. The mixture will tend to splatter but you can't keep a lid on it or it won't cook down the way it needs to. Hot tomato is very very hot and will burn you. It may look tame, then when you start to stir and loosen the solids the liquid part will suddenly boil up like wild and throw hot tomato droplets at you. Every. Time. You. Stir. Ask me how I know.

This volume completely filled my biggest stockpot. It's a lot.
  • Tomatoes: 16 cups chopped
    • This was the output from around 6 pounds, whirled briefly in a food processor to create a diced size or chopped by hand if you want to do this the hard way. No need to remove skins.
  • Onions: ~7 cups, finely chopped
    • For me this was output from 4 truly giant yellow onions, close to 3 pounds, also whirled in the food processor but not until reduced to onion paste.
  • Apples: 4 cups home-canned with the juice they were canned in
    • No need to chop as these will fall apart into applesauce. If you start with whole apples then yes, reduce to dice. Your call on whether to peel or not.
  • Green bell peppers: 4 cups finely chopped, approx. 1-1/2 pounds, output from 3 really giant ones
    • You could substitute hotter peppers for some of this if that meets with your family's Scoville settings
  • Dried fruits: 2 cups, chopped if they're big to create pieces the size of raisins
    • I used dried cranberries and dates
  • Optional: Crystallized ginger: 1/2 cup, chopped fine, mostly because I had some left from earlier recipes like my version of Chai Ginger Apple Butter
  • Optional: 2-4 T. chopped mild to hot peppers
  • Vinegar: 4 cups of a vinegar with 5% acidity
    • I used 2 cups each of red wine vinegar and white wine vinegar; you could use apple cider vinegar
  • Brown sugar: 4-1/2 cups
    • Taste and adjust when the volume has cooked down a bit. I started with 4 cups and added the additional 1/2 cup later.
  • Garlic: 8 cloves, crushed, grated, or chopped fine
    • Feel free to add more!
  • Salt: 2 T.
  • Garam masala: 1-1/2 T.
  • Curry powder: 2-1/2 T.
  • Powdered hot mustard: 1-1/2 T.
  • Ground black pepper: 2 t.
  • Crushed red pepper: 1-1/2 t.
    • Adjust this amount for the heat level you want
  • Cumin: 1 t.
  • Powdered ginger: 1/2 t.
  • Cinnamon: 1/2 t.
  • Coriander: 1/2 t.
  • Cardamom: 1/2 t.
  • Cayenne pepper: Pinch or two, maybe a dash
  • Nutmeg: Dash
Stir all ingredients together in a large non-reactive stockpot, or divide between two smaller pots so it can cook down a bit more quickly. 

Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, then reduce to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, stirring often, at a simmer over medium-low heat 2-3 hours or more, or until it has reduced by approximately half. Wear that oven mitt to stir! Be sure to stir completely from the bottom and scrape across the entire bottom of the pot to avoid any scorching of the ingredients.

It will thicken and eventually be scoopable, more like jam than soup. If you get tired of waiting for that phase and it's reasonably thick with a fair amount of the liquid cooked off, no one can stop you from canning it at that stage. I don't think mine had truly reduced by half when I was four hours or more into the cook time but it was late and I was tired so into the canner it went.

When you start seeing it thickening enough that you think this marathon may finally end, prep for hot water canning. Get your canning kettle started toward boiling, sterilize the jars in an oven at 250 degrees for at least 10 minutes, and warm the jar lids in hot water. For more details on hot water bath canning consult the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Process quarter-pints and half-pints 15 minutes and let sit for 5 in the rack above the hot water before removing to a baking rack covered with a towel.

This was my first time trying out one-piece canning lids, following instructions from Food in Jars. They look so nice! And they pinged just fine, some of them before I even took the jars out of the canning kettle, which is always a good sign of lid quality. I got these from Fillmore Container and they're going to become my standard. Much more attractive when I gift a jar to someone, with more utility.

My yield from quantities above: 16 half-pints, 14 quarter-pints. 


That's probably enough chutney considering I already have zucchini chutney, apple chutney, blackberry chutney, and a couple of jars of last year's green tomato chutney on hand. I'll eat it with cheese on crackers, spread it on sandwiches, maybe put it on scrambled eggs.

As I said, lip smackin'!

And I still have pounds and pounds of green tomatoes.

Photo of a screenshot showing a layout of labels with an ornamental script typeface and a tiny photo of a green tomato. Script reads Green Tomato Chutney from the kitchen of Barb Chamberlain 2024

I like putting a tiny illustration representing the contents on my canning jar labels. This helps me find things at a glance when I'm looking at my garage shelves packed with food in jars.


 



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Keep It Growing: Poems about Gardening

We moved into our Olympia house four years ago in late November, too late to do anything about yard or garden. The first spring brought recognition that we were the proud owners of an awful lot of false dandelion, burdock, and a layer of clay, none of which was particularly conducive to the kind of vegetable gardening and naturescaping that I hoped to do.

That meant a year of gardening in pots (tomatoes and herbs) and using my Grampa's Weed Puller weekend after weekend. I plugged the holes with a bit of compost and clover seed, seeking to add some health to the soil and habitat for pollinators when it bloomed. On the side of the property that gets the best sunlight we began laying plans for gardening in raised beds. My sweetheart worked to level the ground for a terraced set-up that will eventually hold six beds. We put in two raised metal bins on another side of the property suitable for growing greens.

Fast forward and I have three of the planned six beds on that sunny side. The raspberries and tayberries we put in next to the house are thriving; the raspberries I didn't prune last fall even gifted me a second late crop of some big, beautiful jewels. The elderberry bush put on so many berries this year that unfortunately the sheer weight broke off a major branch, but the bush has already propagated a little neighboring bush. The nectaplum (a nectarine and plum hybrid), hazelnut, and almond trees are well established and will start producing sometime in the next few years. 

Photo of wooden raised garden beds full of tomato vines supported on tall wooden trellises. The vines hold yellow, orange, and red tomatoes of various sizes.

And the tomatoes in those beds! Whoa. Definitely should have planted them with big strong trellises to climb on. I had to muscle those much-needed trellises in late to get the vines up off the ground and somehow got away with it, but next year they'll be trained from the beginning.

As I start each morning with poetry, naturally I find poems that celebrate the earthy abundance of gardening. Before this year's harvest of vegetables and herbs ends, I'll share this harvest of poems.

"Believe This"
Richard Levine

....All morning,
muscling my will against that of the wild,
to claim a place in the bounty of earth,
seed, root, sun and rain, I offered my labor
as a kind of grace, 

"Tender"
Jose Antonio Rodriguez

But about the strength and will to cradle the plants
Outside—the pruning, the watering, the sheltering

In found tarps and twine against the coldest nights.
To lean into the day’s hard edge,

And still find that reserve of tenderness
For the bougainvillea, the hibiscus, the blue morning.

"Patriotism"
Ellie Schoenfeld

My country is this dirt
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots.

"Gardening as a Form of Worship"
Bruce Taylor

To bring us to our knees.
To bring us back to quiet.
Inclined as we are
to this labor and attention.

"Vegetable Love in Texas"
Carol Coffee Reposa

Farmers say
There are two things
Money can't buy:
Love and homegrown tomatoes.

"A Warm Summer in San Francisco"
Carolyn Miller 

Although I watched and waited for it every day,
somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached
the peak of ripeness.

"Slower"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

They are beautiful, the Japanese eggplant,
dangling beneath wide fringed leaves.

"Therapy from the Garden"
Glenn Morazzini

From the lettuce there is common sense for narcissism:
acceptance as side dish, garnish for a meaty sandwich.
If that leaf isn’t the dose, there’s always the soil
people shovel and level, rake and make wishful with seed,

"An Observation"
May Sarton

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.

"The Seven of Pentacles"
Marge Piercy

as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,

"Towel and Basin"
Michael Escoubas

This morning I plodded in pajamas
and bare toes toting my full water pitcher,
prepared as an offering for my
hanging blue Fan plant. The tall
grass washed my feet as Jesus might.

"Practice" 
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I plunge my hands into the soil
and tug on the long white bindweed roots
that cling to the cool damp dark.
Never once have I pulled the whole plant.
Always, the bindweed comes back.

"More"
James Crews

I know it’s summer when we wade out
into the field and pick these crisp wonders,
tiny cucumbers bleached of their green
as if they’ve already seen too much
of this dazzling light, and can take no more.

"Planting the Sand Cherry"
Ann Struthers

It is important for me to be down on my knees,
my fingers sifting the black earth,
making those things grow which will grow.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Each firm, red-skinned round
I pull from the earth is a small proof
of how things can grow in the dark—


Summer ends with a chill over the garden,
breath of coolness to make the spinach
and lettuce happy. I pick another bucket
of tomatoes, more chewed each harvest,
and welcome the wildlife to this messy table


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A Year of Poems: October

Compiling these lists helps me anticipate the change of season by reminding me of the beauty in each month. Fall is my favorite season in many ways and October embodies it beautifully. We are leaving summer, summer is leaving us as autumn shares her glory and we soak up the sun while we can.

As with all my poetry collections, I share a few lines, not necessarily the first ones, to give you a taste of what you'll find if you follow the link to savor the whole poem.

"Outside" by Dolores Stewart

October.  Its brilliant festival of dry
and moist decay.  Its spicy, musky scent.

"A Leaf" by Bronislaw Maj

A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades.

"Some October" by Barbara Crooker

Some October, when the leaves turn gold, ask
me if I've done enough to deserve this life
I've been given. 

"Into this Foggy Morning Comes a Song" by Judith Heron

driven by no other instrument than dew
how it gathers into one small drop
falls from a fading apple leaf

"Ode to October" by MK Creel

October lulls us with
its smoky, cinder scent—

leaf pyres, Hickory bark,
pine sap and pith. 

"Reel" by Barbara Crooker

It's half-past October, the woods
are on fire, blue skies stretch
all the way to heaven. 

"Early October Snow" by Robert Haight

The pumpkins, still in the fields, are planets
shrouded by clouds.
The Weber wears a dunce cap
and sits in the corner by the garage
where asters wrap scarves
around their necks to warm their blooms.

"October's Bright Blue Weather" by Helen Hunt Jackson

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

"October-Midst" by Eve Merriam

The mornings careless, sun-sprawled, radical with light,
roller-coaster air; plunging to bottomless bright
then giddying climb to shattering sky-sight
blue!

"Flathead Lake, October" by Geraldine Connolly

so too, autumn descends,

to steal the glistening
summer from our open hands.

"October" by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.

"October 10" by Wendell Berry

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

"Mystery" by C.G. Hanzlicek

Roots, the leaves turning,
The spiders hard at their geometry lessons,
The seed that obeys perfectly
Its own limits,
The worms turning among the leaves,
Turning the leaves to compost,

A Year of Poems

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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:
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

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

Vintage-style seed packet labeled Cocozelle Zucchini with a watercolor illustration of a yellow summer squash blossom and several green and white striped long 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.

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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 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.
Photo of small plastic bags holding tiny dried tomatoes, labeled Dried Cherry Tomatoes, Dried Orange Tomatoes, Dried Black Cherry Tomatoes, Dried Yellow Grape Tomatoes
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. 

Photo of a round rack in a food dehydrator holding dried roma tomatoes, with traces of orange-tinted oil on the tray
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?



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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.
Watercolor painting in older vintage style of two ripe golden pears with their stems and a green leaf

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


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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.

Photo of a large blue Dutch oven with a white interior on a stove. It holds a yellow and orange mix, with a wooden spoon resting in the pot. Next to the cooktop, a large glass measuring cup full of shredded orange and lemon peel with a pair of tongs resting in it.

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. 

Photo from above of yellow and orange marmalade cooking inside a blue Dutch oven with a white interior. A large bundle of cheesecloth floats in the marmalade and a wooden-handled rubber scraper rests in the pot.

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

Photo of jars labeled Citrus Ginger Marmalade stacked to make a pyramid

Citrus Marmalade Recipes for Reference



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