alemany farm canning class: recipes and tips

sugar plums at cannard farm :: june 2007

this past sunday,

michelle

and i taught a basic canning class at

la cocina

to a fantastic group of apprentices from

alemany farm

. both are organizations we are thrilled to work with, and i think i can safely say that we canned a crazy amount of stuff and had a lot of fun doing it.

the apprentices have spent all year learning about different aspects of urban farming, and they spent the morning picking the produce we canned, so it was a really meaningful day for all of us.

michelle gave a great talk about the history of canning and canning safety, and i talked a little bit about the different processing methods. then, we all jumped right in and started working.

we had a great variety of produce to work with, so we made several kinds of goods:

•refrigerator pickles with lemon cucumbers

•dilly beans

•blackberry jam

•plum jam

•apple sauce

•long-cooked green beans

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

if you're interested, here are the recipes and methods for making these canned goods:

blackberry jam

.................................................................

freshly picked wild blackberries

sugar

salt

freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice

.................................................................

first, sort through the berries and pick out any stems, moldy bits, debris or worms.

then, weigh the berries. blackberries are low in pectin, and lowish in acid, so the jam is gonna need a little tlc to set. i usually start by adding 25% sugar by weight. this means, if you have 4 pounds of berries, add 1 pound of sugar.

macerate (coat) the berries in sugar and let them sit for a while until they start to give off liquid, about 30 minutes. then, place both the berries and the juice in a heavy-bottomed, non-reactive pot and bring to a boil, stirring from time to time. skim any scum off the top with a ladle.

when the berry mixture has boiled, remove it from the heat and strain out the berries. set them aside, and return the liquid to the stove. return the juice to a boil and cook it over high heat, stirring frequently, until the temperature has reached 225 degrees F on a candy thermometer, or until it is the consistency of jam. you can check this using the "scrape the side of the spatula with your finger and see if it drips or not method." taste the jam, and adjust the sugar if needed. you can also balance the flavor with a little salt and a squeeze of lemon or lime. as the fruit cooks, continue to skim scum off the top so that you're left with a glassy jam.

at this point, add the fruit back to the pot and return the mixture to jam consistency. stir a lot, because it will want to stick!!!

when you are satisfied with the consistency and flavor of the jam, you're done! just remember that food tastes sweeter when it's hot, so you'll need to add a tiny bit more sugar than you think if you plan to eat your jam at room temperature, or cold from the fridge.

can away!!

plum jam

.................................................................

fresh plums (we used some santa rosas, and some other plums)

sugar

salt

.................................................................

wash the plums and remove any stems or leaves. wedge the fruit into 1/2-inch slices, discarding any rotten or bruised parts, as well as the pits.

weigh the fruit. plums have a

lot of pectin,

so this jam is gonna be pretty quick and easy to make. i usually start by adding 25% by weight. this means, if you have 4 pounds of plums, add 1 pound of sugar.

macerate (coat) the fruit in sugar and let it sit for a while until it starts to give off liquid, about 30 minutes. then, place both the plums and the juice in a heavy-bottomed, non-reactive pot and bring to a boil, stirring from time to time. skim any scum off the top with a ladle.

when the mixture has boiled, remove it from the heat and strain out the plums. set them aside, and return the liquid to the stove. return the juice to a boil and cook it over high heat, stirring frequently, until the temperature has reached 225 degrees F on a candy thermometer, or until it is the consistency of jam. you can check this using the "scrape the side of the spatula with your finger and see if it drips or not method." taste the jam, and adjust the sugar if needed. you can also balance the flavor with a little salt. as the fruit cooks, continue to skim scum off the top so that you're left with a glassy jam.

at this point, add the fruit back to the pot and return the mixture to jam consistency. stir a lot, because it will want to stick!!!

when you are satisfied with the consistency and flavor of the jam, you're done! just remember that food tastes sweeter when it's hot, so you'll need to add a tiny bit more sugar than you think if you plan to eat your jam at room temperature, or cold from the fridge.

can away!!

applesauce

.................................................................

apples

sugar

salt

cinnamon

clove

water

blackberry schmutz (optional)

.................................................................

(note: we didn't can this particular recipe of applesauce, so i didn't bother to measure the sugar. i do not recommend using this recipe for canning, since apples can be pretty finicky if not treated precisely right. if you want to can applesauce, please refer to a tried-and-true recipe or the usda guidelines to prevent unnecessary explosions in your larder. thank you very much.)

wash, peel and core the apples.

sprinkle them with a little sugar, a pinch of cinnamon, a clove, and a pinch of salt.

put it all in a heavy-bottomed, non-reactive pot with some water and start cooking and stirring. cook and stir over medium heat until the apples have broken down completely and no raw chunks remain.

season with sugar and salt as needed.

if you have some leftover blackberry schmutz, you can add that in for a lovely rose colored sauce. if not, it's perfect the way it is.

keep refrigerated.

Pickled Lemon Cucumbers

makes about 2 quarts of pickles

.................................................................

3 pounds lemon cucumbers

for the brine:

1/3 cup of kosher salt

1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoons mustard seeds

2 teaspoons turmeric

2 teaspoons celery seeds

7 peppercorns

2 cups water

2 cups apple cider vinegar

.................................................................

In a non-reactive pot, pour in vinegar and water. Add sugar, salt and spices and bring to a simmer over medium heat. If it suits you, add a chili or two to spice it up. Take care to stir the brine to ensure that the sugar and salt dissolve. After 5 minutes of simmering, remove from heat and cool. Taste it, maybe more salt or sugar to balance?

While brine is cooling, wash and trim ends off of cucumbers. Wedge cucumbers into sixths and pack into quart jars. When brine is fully cool, pour over cucumbers and refrigerate. Pickles should keep for a few weeks.

Feel free to experiment with type of vinegar, spices and salt and sugar.

Due to the delicate nature of these cucumbers, we recommend a cold infusion to preserve the integrity and crunch of the pickle.

Dilled Green Beans

makes about 4 pints

.................................................................

2 pounds of tender beans

handful of dill sprigs (or tarragon?)

4 cloves of garlic

some cayenne pepper, perhaps?

for the brine:

2 cups of water

2 cups of apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup kosher salt

.................................................................

Pack beans tightly and uniformly in sterilized pint jars, stem ends down. To each jar, add a garlic clove, a few sprigs of dill, and a pepper. Layer it, make it look pretty.

Combine water, salt and vinegar in a non-reactive pot and bring to a rolling boil. Pour over beans and leave a 1/2 inch head space. Wipe rims and adjust lids, screwing them finger tight. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Remove from water and wait patiently for seals to form. Eat!

Adapted from “Preserving”

Long Cooked Green Beans

.................................................................

This is what we do with those tough but delicious beans.

Some beans

A lot of extra virgin olive oil

A few chili pods

Some garlic cloves

.................................................................

Wash and tail the beans. It’s cool even if there are some beans with mature seeds inside because it cooks for so long. Pour a good glug of oil in a pot. Enough to cover the bottom of the pan, maybe even 1/4 inch thick and turn on to medium heat. Add the chilis to the pan, and fry to infuse the oil with chilliness. Put in beans and stir to coat with oil. Cover and lower heat. Add some salt. Every few minutes, check on the beans and stir to make sure that nothing is sticking too intensely. Scrap up any carmelized bits and if necessary, add a splash of water. After about 45 minutes to an hour, when the beans are soft, add some chopped or slivered garlic and sauté for a few more minutes. Adjust seasoning, if necessary. Delicious!

feel free to write with any other questions, guys!

also, check the sidebar ----> for a list of essential canning books and tools!!

--michelle and samin

my other bart nagel fave:: july 2009

i think i'm becoming a yoga geek.

for at least ten years, my mom has tried to get me to do yoga to help with the alignment problems i've had since birth. precisely because she was telling me to do it, i felt the need to resist. doesn't every child think this way?

when my bff (best food friend) asked me to come to a class with him two springs ago, i said yes, hesitatingly. i was thrown off by the singsong chant at the beginning of class, and the somewhat touchy-feely language employed by the teachers ("from the light within my heart to the light within yours, namaste.")

it's taken me over a year of practice, and experiencing the way that yoga can help heal my bootcamp injuries, to see that my mom was totally right.

and now, i can't stop reading, learning, practicing, chanting (!) and thinking about it. i even bought a scary humongous poster of every pose in my style of yoga and hung it in my bathroom to stare at while i brush my teeth. i eat up the touchy-feely language. i follow yoga tweets. i read wikipedia entries on gurus who lived centuries ago and were the teachers of teachers of teachers of teachers of my teachers. it's getting out of control.

the thing is, physically, i'm not really that good at it. at all. yet i've reached a point where i've realized that that's not what it's about. it's a good place to be.

me, july 2009:: by the inimitable bart nagel

i was honored a few weeks ago to finally have my portrait taken by bart nagel, king of puns. robin said that this shot makes me look like a tough-ass. love that. (i'm considering letting the cooks roast me (and chris) at our goodbye party. would i cry? what could they say about me that i don't already know about myself? that i'm nuts and i get sugar highs whenever chelsea brings cookies in? or that i'm grumpy in the morning until i eat my breakfast? or that i bicker with marco every morning for 2 hours while he fries potato chips "according to his grandmother's secret recipe?" there's also my temper. and my arguments with chris. a while ago, doug asked if chris realized that i spend half of the day standing around and talking about nonsense instead of working. it's true, but as matt said, i spend the other half of the day functioning at such a maniacal pace that i get twice as much work done as anyone else. i'm dying to know what else they've got up their sleeves.)

i've got a few tricks up my sleeve for the next couple of months: canning classes, articles, urban farm to table workshops with veller around the country, and odd jobs here and there in kitchens you may or may not have heard of. i'm pretty excited (and a little bit scared). my first priority, though, is to get all of my cooks and dishwashers situated in happy, healthy kitchens around the bay (and one in LA). i've never worked with such a close-knit group of people, and i'm going to miss them all more than i could ever express.

ced, matt, will and michael at novella's dinner, june 2009

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

--Wendell Berry

:: :: ::

in this moment, i have to look for beauty in bits and pieces, like this poem, or the smiles on the faces of my cooks today, a day i've both dreaded and anticipated for some time now.

for months, i have carried on my shoulders the weight of a struggling restaurant. today, we let go. today, we announced that eccolo will close on august 22nd, after five final nights of special dinners where we'll cook the foods we love to eat, play the music we love to listen to, and invite our closest friends and neighbors to celebrate the midsummer bounty with us.

the past five years have simultaneously been the most challenging and rewarding years of my life. i've made a lot of terrible mistakes, but i've tried to avoid repeating them. i've also had some fantastic successes--experiences so incredible my feeble imagination could have never dreamt them up. i've grown as a cook, but more importantly as a human being. to those i've hurt or offended, i apologize from the bottom of my heart. and to those i've helped or inspired, i hope you will pass it on to someone else.

i don't know what i'll do exactly. i'm going to help out at chez panisse for a little while, do some canning projects with local farms and restaurants, teach some workshops with novella, and write. full-time restaurant work is not how i'm meant to spend my life--that much i know. unfortunately, i don't know how i am meant to spend it. i do know that there will always be good food, good friends, and beautiful words in my life, though.

i face my real journey now--my real work lies ahead.

sunny slope farm figs with chris lee's prosciutto :: photo by diana sanchez

i hope you are all well. i'm doing my best to balance all of the difficult and hectic stuff in my life right now by being as calm as i can possibly be.

there have been a few big disruptions in my life lately (miss you, a), but somehow i've managed to keep things mostly afloat. i'm anticipating the next year or so of my life to be full of a lot of huge changes, and the only way i've found to face all of it is to simply wake up each morning and try to have the best day i can have.

i'm not perfect. it's not always successful. but i'm trying.

has everyone seen asiya on the cover of sfmag this month!?!?!?!!! (i heard a rumor about what might be on the cover next month, and lemme tell you, it's GOOOOOOD!)

salon on canning

i'm not exactly sure how bill and nicolette niman have found the time to become the experts in residence at chow (uh, in between being a rancher/entrepeneur and rancher/author/lawyer and parents of a lovely little boy born on easter sunday), but this thread has a lot of fantastic tips for making well-informed choices about what to eat and how to do it affordably (jen, i'm thinking of you and gary here).

in case you haven't heard, good evening is ending at the end of the month. so try and make it over there in the next two weeks if you haven't already (i'm speaking mostly to myself here).

free screenings of food, inc. around the country next week. take this opportunity to go, and take a naive eater with you!!!

let's catch up a bit

iran:

i'm heartbroken to see that news about iran has practically fallen off of the front page. it's really discouraging to see that the cruel and dirty tactics employed by those in power in iran are working, but in my heart, i know that my generation isn't going to back down.

so many times over the course of my life, i've looked at my brothers and realized that it was essentially the toss of a coin that brought us to the states and gave us this (relative) life of luxury and freedom here while our cousins were left in iran. i'm well aware that if just a few things had been different, i might have been protesting in the streets myself this month.

marjane satrapi, who wrote the persepolis books, had a sweet op-ed in the nyt yesterday.

canning:

lately i've mostly been canning just to save things that might be going bad, less so than with the intention of putting up food for later. apricot jam yesterday, red currant mostarda (an italian sweet-spicy-sour condiment for meats and cheeses) the day before, and red currant jam last week. we've also been experimenting with indian-style beet relish and turnip kimchee.

i'm still waiting for my beloved dirty girl early girls, so it looks like tomato sauce season will be late and long this year.

outstanding in the field:

this week we had a dinner at green string farm with outstanding in the field. though i was really nervous about being organized enough to serve 100 people a five-course dinner in the middle of a field, everything ended up working out beautifully. (i cannot thank ross cannard enough for everything that he did to make this possible.)

the fantastic baker mike zakowski made loaves upon loaves of special breads for the event, and then baked flatbreads for the first course in the wood oven that bob built in front of the barn.

one of the most special people i speak to on a weekly basis, cindy callahan of bellwether farms, came and spoke about her perfect cheeses, which we use day in and out at the restaurant.

we served:
sunny slopes farm figs with chris lee's prosciutto (complete with a berkel slicer)
vella cheese co.'s oro secco with red currant mostarda (made with gs farm red currants)
summer vegetable salad with fresh coriander vinaigrette and marinated sardine flatbread (veggies from gs farm, star route, and martin bournhonesque. fresh coriander from county line)
roasted zucchini lasagna with sheepsmilk ricotta (zukes from terra firma. basil from gsf)
gs farm goat (spit-roasted and braised) with green beans, cherry tomatoes and shell beans (from martin, gs farm and terra firma)
hand-cranked peach leaf ice cream with roasted apricots and fresh boysenberries (all fruit and leaves from gs farm. can i just say how delicious peach leaf ic is?!)

breads from mike z.
wines from cline

nearly every one of our cooks volunteered time to make this event a success. the generosity of spirit that these guys and girls have never ceases to amaze me. i am so proud of and have such great appreciation for my cooks. thank you so much.

unfortunately, i was running around like a crazy person trying to avoid disaster the entire day, so no photos. luckily, diana sanchez (our fantastic server and a terrific photographer) was there to capture the entire day. she said i could post some of her photos when she gets them to me. i can't wait.

coming up:

i'm going to be blogging and tweeting from the roots of change summit next week. super excited.

i'll be teaching a canning workshop at hoes down this year. i think we'll do tomato sauce and perhaps some sort of jam...we'll see what's in season come october.

a little birdie (hee hee) told me that soul food farm is planning to start a chicken & egg CSA. please email alexis to show her your support if you'd be interested in joining. her pastured eggs are like a dream, and the heirloom pastured chickens are really, really tasty. and since chicken and eggs are staples in most households, i think this is a fantastic idea! she wants to make her stuff available to everyone, instead of just restaurants and shops, so let her know that you want in. trust me, there is no better egg in california.

forgive me, but i need to take a little break from all of my iranicizing. not because i'm not aware of what's going on, but because i'm too aware. it's overwhelming.

i want to catch you all up on what's been going on here for the past couple of weeks:

there were 700 or so jars of apricot preserves at yes we can, which we made at la cocina, whilst ryan farr taught handfuls of laypeople how to make emulsified sausages.

there was the couscous royale at asiya's goodbye party, where i finally met jessica, the woman behind rabbits and wrinkles.

a week later, there was an educational day of canning cherries and cherry jam for green string farm, wherein i realized that cherry jam could never be a money-making enterprise. fifty pounds of pitted cherries yielded 46 8-oz jars of jam. i don't even want to think about the math involved in that.

there was the day we went over to veller's house to kill four rabbits for our dinner celebrating the release of her book. this is the least graphic photo i had. notice the fraying nylon string veller saved from her hay bales and rigged up to the tree for hanging the rabbits to skin.

but as one might imagine, the cage the rabbits were in wasn't the most secure apparatus, so one bunny had escaped two nights before the big day. he was last seen at the liquor store down the street. we searched for him for 20 minutes to no avail, so we made do with three bunnies. as soon as we left, veller said, the smart guy showed up but she couldn't catch him.

there was my lunatic idea to cook a dinner using as many backyard and urban farmed and foraged ingredients as possible to celebrate the release of novella's book, which meant that i somehow had to find dozens of backyard farmers, figure out what and how much they'd have available the week of the dinner, set up drop-off times and make time to forage and harvest, and somehow write a coherent menu around it all. it was the most involved, challenging, invigorating and fruitful experience of my cooking career.

the dinner couldn't have been more lovely:

chris cutting into the prosciutto made with novella's pigs

novella's olives (which we served with the prosciutto)

cucu sabzi, a persian frittata (my mom's is better) i made with all of the leftover foraged herbs and greens

the second prosciutto (CL got a little carried away)

CL slicing prosciutto on the beautiful berkel slicer emilio lent us for the night

the experience of seeing those rabbits on the farm over the past several months, killing, skinning and cleaning them up, then cooking with them was something i hope all cooks have at some point in their lives. chris and cedric did a fantastic job with them. we dried sunny slopes farm apricots and made a moroccan-inspired stuffing. those are little heirloom carrots from novella's farm on the outside, with fresh chickpeas from catalan farm.

all in all, it was a fantastic night, with so many of our friends and neighbors present. the sense of community was so strong that night, with nearly every table scouring the menu for the ingredients that had come from their own yards. perhaps the most special contribution was the incredible sack of mulberries from suzanne's neighbor's yard in south berkeley. thank you, everyone, for filling that night with such authenticity and love.

and finally, yesterday there was the discovery of lola's ice creams & sundaes (via aaron), a sort of beautiful ice cream version of the moro books (not much of a surprise since they come from the same publisher). i might just have to get that for myself.

an email from iran

this email was sent by a family friend in iran. i apologize for the strong language.

guys,
quick email about the situation here....vaaaaghean disaster....in a good way though.....never has iran experienced such chaos since the revolution more than 30 years ago....people have SO much anger towards the government...what they published is:

ahmadinejad ~24 million
mousavi ~13 million
karoobi < 1 million
rezai < 1 million

what seems to be true is:

mousavi 19 million
karoobi 13 million
ahmadinejad 6 million
rezai ~3

Poeple go about their day as normal but come around 4, 5 pm....taxis stop going to famous public squares, stores close, the streets become full of people....pictures that you see on line tell the story....these mother fuckers beat women, girls,...with sticks...2 nights ago they stormed in to the students dormatory and tore down everything they could....students blocked their dorm room with closets but they broke in and beat the shit out of the poor students...videos are on line....but the ironic thing is that this time people aren't backing down....young people keep going on the streets fighting with these animals...every once in a while they get a hold of some of them and beat the hell out of them.

the government tries to portray this as "200, 400 people that are making disturbance in our city".....but yesterdays rally at azadi square showed it was more than 200...in fact a 6 lane street for a stretch of 5 miles was FULL of people !!!!!! i could barely breath! probably over 2 million people showed up and this was when mousavi could only communicate through people and not through text and TV....I cant iimagine if he gets a hold of the TV, radio, newspaper....wow! revolution baby! ;) but of course they have more security around "seda sima" than ahmadinejad himself!

Everything the government says is a lie....ahamdinejad was at a news conference telling christian amanpour that "shahre ma kheily amne" and then BBCPersian showed a clip where the gaurds are beating people....this man has no idea what these people are capable of...he thouhgt he could get away with it and only in the past 2 days has the whole government realized the depth of shit they've been under...Guys im telling you if this thing turns around in our favor I see Iran changing for the first time in 30 years! Everynight the streets are full of cars with people showing peace signs and supporting each other...the chaos has started in small cities as well and over there not only are people more fearless but they have less gaurds there to control people....

I got chased by fucking "basiji" on bikes a couple of times...missed me by 20 meters otherwise they have butans (dont know if i spelled it right but I'm talking about the fucking hard sticks) and i'm guessing i would have had a few bruises;) they have paint balls and shoot them at people.....people have their doors open so those on the streets can come and hide but they bust in if they can and break doors down and beat whomever is in the appartment irrelevant of age, sex, ....

Unfortunately we are losing a lot of young people, students but if they keep this movement another few days longer this regime , the whole ahamadinjeda group will fall down...and maybe the supreme leader....

sorry for the long email...now tell me...HA-U-doowen?
;)

i promise i will stop soon

but, come on, how could i not be excited for her?!

ol' veller was in the office with us today, helping to make some silly flyers for the special dinner when one of her fancy entourage peeps emailed her the official farm city nyt book review. it's amazing!!!

after all of her self-googling, as she called it, she and chris went down to check on the prosciutti they're going to crack open at the dinner on tuesday with his special italian horse-bone. i stayed upstairs and knocked my head on the desk, trying to figure out a use for the 432 pounds of loquats i've managed to round up.

there's a lovely article on asiya and foraged fruit in the nyt tomorrow, which i managed to sneak my way into.  i also somehow got them to let me write a recipe (which i must admit, was inspired by chelsea, a.k.a. EBCB): cherry and spring onion salsa.

i think we'll have halibut with cherry salsa on tomorrow's menu to celebrate!

and, we'll be serving that sidewalk nocino next tuesday at the urban farming/foraging dinner with novella.  come down to taste some!

grace

grace chuch, nyc  may 2009

grace has been popping up a bit in my life lately: even though i am going through some difficult stuff, there is beauty all along the way.  there were the amazing trees in full blossom outside of grace church in new york, which i kept happening upon, day after day during my trip there.

there was the yoga class last week, where the crazy/amazing teacher started talking about strawberries, and somehow turned it into a parable about grace that calmed me to the core.

there's been the generosity of near strangers, friends and acquaintances, helping me with projects, offering encouragement and support.  the stars keep aligning for me: pitches are being accepted, projects are being offered, and just when one path seems to end heartbreakingly, something else turns out to be the way i was meant to go all along.

there is grace every day in the kitchen, as well.  yesterday, i was at yes we can food with michelle, teaching people how to make apricot jams and preserves.  we made some really incredible stuff with royal blenheims, and there was another variety we hadn't worked with before.  we proceeded on to make jam with the second variety using the same methods we'd used for the blenheims, and things went really astray.  really, really astray.  there was unexpected caramelization, crazy high-water content, and a strange tendency to either be undercooked or overcooked, but never just right.  i started to panic.

then michelle, in all of her loveliness, said that whatever it turned out to be, the stuff would be delicious.  it might not look like i wanted it to, but it would still taste really, really good.  and it did.  so we went on to can it, and today she called to say that the version i thought i'd ruined might just be the best tasting one of the lot.  

grace.

i just hope there was some grace headed my way the other day when the red light camera took a photo of me (i think).  oops.

hee hee hee

michael pollan or michel foucoult?

via vanessa

awesomeness of today

bob's cherries, may 2009

lagier ranch brooks cherries, perhaps the most perfect of my life

three amazing hours of yoga.  my hips have never been so open.  this must be how normal people feel all of the time.  hello, mermaid pose!

a little birdie told me i might be appearing in the nyt this weds.   

crimson baby nectarines from blossom bluff 

a quick pectin talk with casey

tacos with handmade tortillas at dominica's house

shucking a mountain of favas at bob cannard sr.'s memorial, may 2009

frustrated, exhausted, confused.

if you had to choose between a little bit of stability that might keep you from growing and jumping into the sea of the unknown, which would you pick?

what if the unknown held opportunities beyond those of your most daring dreams? what if you had no idea how long you might have to tread water before one of them nudged you from behind like a dolphin coming to help keep you afloat?  

what if the bit of stability had other benefits, like (very) minor fame (but not fortune) and comfort?  what if it also caused your insecurities to flare (see: fame), and entangled you in something you already felt ambivalent about?  

and on an unrelated note, if you finally could tell someone who has been emotionally abusing you for, oh, five years or so, to eff off knowing that he/she could never trouble you again, would you?  or would you just get the heck outta dodge?

novella carpenter, november 2008

the amount of racist banter in our kitchen might be shocking to an outside observer.  but we pretty much couldn't make it a day without some sort of cultural slander or another.  i must have been making fun of marco's english yesterday (he says some really endearing things, like "it's not gonna fix" instead of "it's not gonna fit") because he shot back with, "i can't understand you through your farsi accent,"  which is remarkable because i was born and raised in california.  

another cook joined in with, "all i hear when you talk is blah blah blah ack!! blah blah blah ack!!" (because i tend to make really weird exclaiming sounds throughout my conversations) which elicited much laughter, and then everyone joined in with my signature sounds and phrases, which include "omigod!,""totes," "ching ching" (a money making sound), among several others.  

so, even though all day i've been conscious of my hyperbolic statements and exclamations, i'm still going to go ahead and say that i am incredibly excited about the event we're going to have to celebrate the release of novella's book in a couple of weeks.  i'm gathering as many urban farmers and foragers together to collect as much city-grown food as i can for the dinner.  novella's gonna be there signing books, and we are finally going to crack open one of the prosciutti from her urban pigs.

totes awesome, right?  and, omigod, if you have any urban farmed or foraged produce or eggs that we can use at the dinner, please email me so i can find a way to incorporate it into the menu (ching, ching).

jam update: 

i left in a huge rush this afternoon, so i won't know if the jam set until tomorrow.  but it was awfully beautiful.  

other updates:

i'll be helping out this sunday at yes we can, with one of my favorite canners of all time, le fuerst. we'll be making apricot jam, and if i'm not mistaken, there are still spots available to come can with us.  i'm gonna bring my copper jam pot and lots of gossip.  maybe some burritos. 

veller's book got reviewed in the nyt yesterday, by someone who actually got it!  the fantastic death-to-the-possum scene was even mentioned!  excellent!

i have some sneaky writing stuff up my sleeves.  as soon as i have more to share, trust me, i will share it.  but it's pretty exciting!

did you see this article on canning in the nyt last weds?  

dirty girl albion strawberry jam

my love of dirty girl farm is no secret.

neither is my love of albion strawberries.  

so it would only make sense that dirty girl albion strawberries would be my, uh, favorites?  

i got a couple of flats of the berries yesterday, and jo helped me hull them.  i decided to try the christine ferber method, where you macerate the berries overnight, bring them to a simmer the second day, and make the jam on the third day by cooking the syrup down and quickly throwing in the berries at the last second.  this isn't so different than the june taylor marmalade method, which has worked beautifully for me in the past, so i feel pretty good about it.  

i even got to break in my copper jam pot.  yay!

the only weird thing about the christine ferber recipe is how much sugar it calls for: 85% by weight!  yikes!  i know strawberries are low sugar and low pectin, and so you need some extra insurance, but yeesh!  85%?  i started with 20%.  let's see how that works for us.  i'll keep you posted.

have you heard of the plastiki?  it's a sailboat made completely out of recycled materials (primarily 2-liter bottles) that will set sail in september from sf to australia, through the world's largest waste dump, to raise awareness of the sad ecological state of today's oceans.  the craft will be outfitted with many state-of-the-art green technologies to showcase just how much can be done with renewable resources and energies.  

i'm pretty excited to be helping the crew put up food for their voyage.  the skipper, jo, had the idea to stock up on foraged and local foods and preserve them for their journey.  we met the other day for the first time, and are planning an intensive canning and preservation schedule for the summer.  jo helped me work on my first batch of strawberry jam last night.  i'll let you know how it turns out.  

edible city

Edible City Trailer 1 from East Bay Pictures on Vimeo.

food, inc.