Can Jam: Peach Butter

Trust me.  You're not all I've been neglecting.  You should see how overgrown my garlic bed is.  (Yes, it's all I've managed to grow.  No, I'm not proud of it.)

Current favorite way to eat peach butter:  over a lot of very thick plain Greek yogurt.

But I'm happy to report that my first-ever attempt at canning fruit was a smashing success.  It turns out, if you go to the farmer's market and inform the folks in the booths that you'll be canning (better yet, making a jam of sorts), they're likely to magically produce a basket of "not-quite-perfect" fruits that they wouldn't have been able to sell.  Those, they'll give to you for a song (literally, in my case).

One of the baskets of peaches, doing time before a super hot bath

So I had tons of utterly fantastic Fredericksburg peaches (yep, they have their own website, they're that good), so I set about peeling them.  

I'm no dummy.  I totally Googled peeling tons of peaches at a time.  I tried the boiling/ice water bath method.  For some of them, it worked.  For the rest, well - let's just say I spent a while peeling peaches.  By the time it was over, I had four pounds of peeled peaches, sticky forearms, and the start of an ache in my lower back.  I tossed all of the peaches into the blender with the juice of two lemons and dumped the whole thing into a crock pot with one cup of sugar (more to balance out the lemon juice than to sweeten the peaches - they were plenty sweet on their own).  Then I let it reduce until it was about 1/3 of the original volume and canned in a water bath.

Pretty Pretty Dinner

Wow.  I'd call myself a slacker if I hadn't been so busy.  It turns out, the pursuit of higher education is time consuming.

For the last couple of weeks, we've been rather inundated with the double whammy of Things Going Wrong coupled with "Professionals" Who Make it Worse.

Take my car.  I was on my way to school when the car in front of me starting spitting plastic auto parts all over the freeway.  I had a fraction of a second for a decision, and figured straddling the (rather large) piece was probably my only option - my tires don't belong on a monster truck, and there was no room for me in adjacent lanes.  The terrible noise as I drove over it was frightening, but I made it the rest of the way to school without smoke, explosions, or ninjas bursting from the backseat.  When I came back from school (MUCH later in the day, totally ready to go just go home already), I discovered my car wasn't turning over.  I initially thought I'd left something on and called my roadside assistance service to get a jump.  The marvelous fellow who showed up managed to put the jumper cables on the wrong terminals, totally frying out a bunch of cables and fuses.  He left fairly promptly, citing "another call" and frantically having me sign paperwork that said he wasn't liable for the mess he just caused.

So my husband has been handling our tyrannical daughter, who is in the middle of a disastrous sleep regression.  Despite not sleeping at all last night, he left early this morning to fix my car.

This afternoon, while he caught up on some well-earned sleep, Monster and I talked about what a good daddy we've got.  I asked him what nice things we should do for him, and he suggested pretty pretty flowers. So we got out some poster paints and the ton of coffee filters I've got left (we've switched to a reusable one) and got a-painting.  After they dried, I threaded a few beads on a sturdy wire, punctured three painted coffee filters, and made a sturdy loop behind them (to stand them up a bit).  I cut some slits into the filters and crunched them up a bit, and they wound up looking pretty cute.

For my part, I had a few spectacular ribeye steaks doing time in the fridge, and a giant pile of spinach and swiss cheese.  By adding a few oven-roasted rosemary potatoes, we had ourselves a pretty decadent little faux-steakhouse dinner.

I asked Monster if that was good enough, and he suggested we make it a "Pretty Pretty" dinner, which I took to mean "bust out the china."  So I did.  Frankly, it doesn't get used enough.  I also busted out these fantastic towering crystal pilsner glasses we got for our wedding that I think make totally awesome water goblets.

Then we all scampered off to wake up Daddy (probably actually the cruelest aspect of our thank-you dinner, but at that point it was 8:00 and I was FAMISHED), who seemed to think our thank-you was pretty okay.

Most of all, I thought it was awesome that we managed to get Monster involved in thinking about ways to appreciate the people around us and the nice things they do.  The bulk of our afternoon was about making things with our hands to show our loved ones that we noticed that they'd done something special, and based on Monster's eager responses, I think it clicked.

Textural Exploration

We went for a little neighborhood jaunt yesterday with a giant wicker basket that used to do time as an Easter Basket.  To be more accurate, the hubby, Monster and I went for a walk.  Lady Bug rode on Hubby's shoulders.

Monster and I spent the walk gathering foliage with different textures.  We did a lot of touching, poking, and (on his end) chattering about spiders and bugs and whether or not Ratatoulle lived in the bushes.

After the loop was complete, we splayed all of our finds on the table and sorted them by stems - big stems and little stems, and started cramming them into the old jelly crock.  Lady Bug participated until it became clear that her intent was to undo everything Monster and I had done.  Apparently the walk was the final straw before a nap was absolutely necessary.

At any rate, the resulting bouquet was surprisingly classy for a hodge-podge of sticks and weeds gathered from overgrown vacant lots.

Stew

I can't help it.  I like stew.  I like to toss a bunch of hearty things in a pot, let the flavors mingle, and dunk chunks of crusty bread in them.

Summer in Texas makes stew a fairly unreasonable dinner option, but after spending the weekend watching the water steadily rise in our creek and feeling the temperature plummet to a measly 93 degrees, I really couldn't help myself.

Tonight's stew was sort of based around a pasta fagioli, only without pasta.

Ingredients:

1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 large frond swiss chard
3 cups beef stock
1 tube breakfast sausage
2 cloves garlic, minced
large fistful of grape tomatoes
1 large can of crushed tomatoes
1 can of garbanzo beans

Sweat the onion in a pot with the garlic.  Add sausage, stir until the sausage has browned.  Add the tomatoes and beef stock, then everything else.  Bring to a simmer and let it mingle for at least a half an hour or until the tomatoes pop.

Growing Up

It occurred to me today, while watching Monster (who is just learning how to really swim) boldly grab up preferred floatation devices and head for the deep end of the pool, that my kiddos are rapidly approaching school age.  Not pre-school age, but serious school-school.

We're fortunate enough to live in an area with a fantastic elementary school, mediocre middle school, and decent high school.  But that's just the thing - the words "decent" and "mediocre" shouldn't be in my vocabulary when discussing the environment in which my children will be spending most of their time.

So I started poking around, as I tend to do when I get a wild hair or start fretting over one thing or another.  If it weren't for list-making and Google, there'd be a padded cell somewhere with my name on it.

We're fortunate enough to live in a city filled with alternatives to the public school system.  Unfortunately, most of them are private schools of various flavors, with enormous tuitions.  My husband and I determined a while ago that it's more important to us for our children grow up in an environment that includes parents fulfilling their creative goals regardless of the income it brings in, which generally means we're budgeting fairly carefully.  Having to choose between eating food from the farms and our kids getting an exemplary education should not be an issue.

So imagine my elation to discover that the Austin Discovery School is not only affordable, but is actually tuition-free.

On top of that, there are all kinds of really rad new camps and schools popping up around town.  Neither of my kids are old enough yet, but The Austin Tinkering School provides a forum for little kidlets to poke and prod at various things and figure out how they work.  (More pictures are here)  These little guys are even making Rube-Goldberg machines, which makes them lucky and me jealous.  There's also the brand-new 9th Street School, which is a sort-of home school in East Austin for 5-7 year olds, taking a very practical, hands-on approach to learning.  The kids tend their own garden and cook with their bounty, make their own newspapers and books to encourage learning, fix and ride their own bicycles, and a number of other relevant, exciting things.

The newest mystery is The Living School.  I think.  I can't find ANY information on it outside of this blog (where is it?  Is it even in Austin?), but it's pretty much the coolest thing ever.

More on Canning

Alright.  In between all the studying I'm doing for school, I'm also studying how to can.  I've got kids at home, I can't go pumping them full of cooties - that's Preschool's job.

Here's a How-To round up of awesome links:
USDA's Canning Page - Pretty much the bible of bacterial murder and safe canning practices.
Tigress in a Jam provides a tidy little how-to on canning.
Tigress in A Jam - Botulism (et al) can't survive in acidic environments (meaning a PH of 4.7 or lower).  For some veggies, this is no problem, for things like carrots, this is.  Read all about overcoming that obstacle here.
Another Great Post from Laundry, etc. on dealing with tomatoes, which ride that acidic cusp of 4.7/4.6 - with recipes for tomato puree and jelly.
A just my speed idiots guide to canning tomatoes, from August Can Jam.
But HERE is what I've got my sights set on:  a Tomato Butter, also by August Can Jam.

A Peck of Pickled Peppers

I've done it!  I've canned my first thing ever!

I've had peach butter in a crock pot all day, but while I was making dinner tonight, I realized that it might be a good idea to pickle some of the bushel of anaheim peppers I picked up yesterday at the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market (specifically, from the Johnson's Backyard Gardens booth).

So, I chopped them up into rings and dropped them into jars I had just scrubbed super clean in hot, soapy water, along with a roughly chopped garlic clove.

I wound up chopping about ten good-sized anaheims, which filled three 12 oz jars.  Meanwhile, in a super-clean stainless steel pan, I brought two cups of white vinegar, two cups of water, a tablespoon of sea salt (I didn't have canning salt), a tablespoon of black peppercorns, a tablespoon of coriander, and a teaspoon of sugar.

I let the smelly vinegar mixture get to a nice rolling boil, and let it chill there for a few minutes while I made sure to wipe down the tops of the jars, lids and rings.  I filled the jars with the brine/vinegar fluid, popped the lids on, and put on the rings, then put them into a big stock pot with water halfway up the sides of the jars, which (for some reason) I was remembering was the way to do it.  I've just double-checked a few instructional sites and determined that I'll probably need to re-process them with the water OVER the jars, but I'll let them cool the rest of the way to see if any of them actually seal.

A couple of things with the process:  A lot of places were instructing to get some special tongs to get the cans out.  I used regular tongs and grabbed the cans as they were coming out with a folded up dish towel.

My hubby has already gotten nostalgic a couple of times; first mentioning that his grandmother always used a pressure canner, and that they'd be shooed out of the house from the overwhelming smell of vinegar and the fear that the pressure canner might explode at any moment.

At any rate, I figure the peach butter will be done later tonight and I'll process those properly.  Meanwhile, I'll keep my ears pealed for the ping of the pickled pepper seal.

Follow Friday: Some Rad Canning Blogs!

My aunt and grandmother can.  My mother never did it.  The entire process seems utterly foreign and terrifying to me.  As a person, I generally attempt to hit scary things head on, but with my kids watching, I feel the need to do it more like a mac truck than some jerk with a bicycle (not that there's anything wrong with bicycles).


Meet my new obsession:


Figuring out how to can without murdering my beautiful husband and children with botulism and a host of other creative bacteria.  The fact that my husband's grandmother, who raised him, was some sort of kitchen goddess, who canned her own everything, plucked her own chickens, and made pies that I will never duplicate, ever is more than a little intimidating.  My husband is fan of notating every kitchen disaster to bring up when I mention a flavor combination that makes him cringe (especially if my response is for him to "trust me.")


At any rate, here are some delicious blogs I've found on the subject, that I've immediately added to my Google Reader.  (Holy crap, did you know they make this thing?  You tell it which blogs you like and it puts it all together for you...  I know, I'm behind.  But it's made keeping up SO much easier.)


Tigress in a Jam - Who has set a goal for readers to post one canning recipe a month.  My goal is to figure out how to can and perfect at least one recipe by the end of September.
Canning Across America - Provides a national resource and posts all kinds of recipes, resources, and gorgeous pictures of canning successes from all over. 
Earth Easy Blog (Canning Tips You Might Not See in the Manual)- This post on canning includes all kinds of tips that aren't in most books, and feels like a really good start.

The Lost Art of Busking

Tonight we took the kids to see the 1st Annual Street Magic Festival, run by the Man With His Mitts in Everything, John Maverick.  I had the good fortune of meeting him while performing last year and discovered that he lives just up the street from me, and since then it's been one failed attempt to collaborate after another.  In fact, I'm supposed to head up the hill tomorrow so we can figure out if I'm too tall to be sawed into thirds (I'm fairly certain it's every girl's secret dream to be a magician's assistant).

Our trip, more specifically, a handful of comments overheard, made one thing perfectly clear:  we've forgotten how to appreciate real talent.  Night after night, we'll watch people eat bull testicles, run ludicrous obstacle courses, and all manner of talentless human degradation and call it entertainment - but you run across a person on the street whose spent hours perfecting a slight of hand, or some juggling feat and it's "boring" or "weird."  Around the fringes of the festival, I caught a couple of comments:  "Oh, it's just people doing tricks, let's go find a bar," or (in one miserable case) "Are you ready to go?  I don't want to miss Project Runway."

Further into the festival, we learned that we could ask anyone with a badge to do a trick.  My kids were all eyes - people juggling diabolos and clubs, hula hooping (Monster's favorite), a slew of Parkour guys doing back flips off railings and each other (VERY cool, but we're already informing Monster about the amount of practice required to successfully perform such feats), and various magicians of all ages wandering around with decks of cards and coins.

More exciting for me was watching my kids discover intimately that people can do the seemingly impossible and giving them coins to distribute to the performers that truly fascinate them.  In this digital era, where the notion of arts patronage is something only the elite can do and pedestrians avoid eye contact with street performers, there's a lesson there for my kids - we support the amazing in our family, in every tangible way.