Nicole Is Cooking

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To pick up where I left off last time:

 

Fantôme Chocolat and I went on vacation the last week of August and over Labor Day. We stopped in Philadelphia for Belgian Beer (not the topic of this blog but you can always expand your knowledge here) and some culture and then headed to NJ to visit my family. On our potential to-do list was some u-pick to get items to pickle and preserve to enjoy later in the year.

I learned how to can on a whim using a “make your own jam” kit from Ball that I found in a store one day when I lived in Miami 6 or 7 years ago. With fond memories of my step-mom making freezer jam from the strawberries we would go pick every summer, I spent way too much money on a variety of berries and spent a day in the kitchen with my kit making jam that my friends inhaled in a fraction of the time it took me to make it. It was fun and I learned that canning wasn’t as hard and mysterious as it seemed to be.

A habit I picked up from both my dad and my mom is to make large batches of tomato sauce at one time to freeze. Somewhere along the line, I also began to search out u-picks or farm stands with good deals to get fresh tomatoes to make sauce from (in Miami this was a winter activity, and the German Baptist guy at Knaus Berry Farm was a little surprised the first time I said I was there to pick ~50 pounds of tomatoes with my piercings and tattoos visible). With my new knowledge of canning, I began reading all I could about canning tomato sauce for storage. At last- fresh sauce always without losing all that freezer space!

Once I had sauce canning down, I decided it was time to try cucumbers and that is when I found The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. This has been my bible for all things canning related ever since. I have always found at least one recipe for any type of vegetable I have wanted to do anything with. There are also some fruit and meat canning recipes. And it is very informative about the different types of canning and how each one works. I spent a night at the library before embarking on our canning weekend to flip through some books and make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I have to say- hands down this book is still the canning bible for me. It is pretty much a “best of canning” guide and the recipes are fabulous. I once made the bread and butter pickle recipe there by request and I have to say it didn’t suck. (That is the highest praise a bread and butter pickle will get from me… before I made and tried this recipe I regarded them as universally vile.)

I introduced Fantôme Chocolat to canning about a year ago. I made some beets for him once and together we have made a peach chutney when I found a fabulous price on some local peaches at a farmer’s market last summer. We also made some beets together this winter when we found some at a year round farmers’ market in the city on a day it was going to snow all day. We made a spur of the moment decision to stay in and watch the snow while canning some beets.

A day at a farm picking things to can seemed like a good way to spend some vacation time. As an added bonus, we had free child labor the company of my step-nieces on the day we headed to DeWolf’s to see what was going on. For kids that aren’t all that excited about eating their vegetables, they sure are fabulous vegetable pickers!

We started off with tomatillos.

Brandi looking on as Kara picks a tomatillo.

It took a little while to get a good bunch of tomatillos. This was my first time picking them any where other than the grocery store. We found that the size of the husk does not necessarily reflect the size of the fruit inside.

Tomatillo plant.

They were very sticky and the bees were quite fond of them but we did manage a good haul. Then it was off to the beets.

Personally, I like gold beets but not the red ones as much. I have been told I am crazy and there isn’t any difference in the taste. Whenever I have had the gold ones in restaurants though I have found their taste a little milder… essentially they don’t taste like someone has just stuffed my mouth full of dirt. Fantôme Chocolat, on the other hand, loves beets and eats them at least once a week which is why I learned to can them. On top of that, Kara discovered she absolutely loves to pick them. The field they were growing in looked like an overgrown jungle and there were no bees. Kara did most of the picking, probably gathering 90% of the beets. Brandi took off the greens that were going bad (sadly they weren’t in the best of shape since Fantôme Chocolat enjoys those as well). We had 10 pounds in about 5 minutes.

Kara shows off some of the haul.

Brandi with some beets.

After beets, we headed to the peppers where both girls managed to fill our basket quite quickly. Fantôme Chocolat and I were overwhelmed just thinking about what we were going to do with all of the peppers. We had mostly sweeter peppers, but grabbed some jalapeños and a few other hot ones as well.

The girls with a small fraction of the pepper haul.

A peck of pickling peppers?

Kara really wanted some potatoes so that is where we headed next. Now fully acquainted with their prolific picking capabilities, the condition of potato picking was they could only pick what they were able to eat so they decided they would only get 8. Potato picking was more like potato gathering… the farm pulls the potatoes up with a tractor and then you go into the field and gather the ones you want.

Brandi and a potato.

Kara can’t wait to eat the potato and even asked me in the car if I thought we could have them for dinner when we got back.

Our last stop was the blackberry patch for Brandi. I didn’t get any pictures because we almost weren’t able to pick any due to the farm closing time and a miscommunication by one of the staff. However, I knew I could still get us back in line and not be last and there was a 12 year old who only wanted blackberries from our big outing so I made it clear to the person that had misinformed me about closing procedures that we would be picking blackberries and told the girls we had to be quick about it. In the end, we picked enough blackberries to make Brandi happy and we were not the last people to check out with our u-pick haul by a long shot. We also rewarded the girls with cookies and cold water. Luckily they ate their dinner so I didn’t get yelled at for the cookies!

When we got back to my sister’s the lure of her gorgeous new kitchen, built by my brother-in-law, was too much and I had to whip up some fresh salsa (sorry, no picture of that) so everyone could give some of the goodies a try. The salsa contained equal parts tomatillo and red tomato (we had gotten some at the farm stand on the farm), some bell pepper and jalapeño (picked at the farm), fresh cilantro, and red onion. It went fast and my sister enjoyed it so much she asked me to assemble a bag of ingredients so she could make more later in the week. My sister also “baked” the potatoes picked that day in her space-age microwave that some how computes how long they need to cook for. And while I am not a fan of cooking anything in the microwave, I must admit the potatoes were very tasty.

Obviously, a batch of salsa did not make a dent in the tomatillos and peppers we had. So what happened to everything? I plan on illustrating that over the course of a few entries. In addition to the tomatillos, peppers, and beets, we also bought about 30 pounds of fresh tomatoes on our way out of NJ. Fantôme Chocolat and I spent the weekend after our vacation in the kitchen preserving it all. In total, we ended up with 15.75 gallons when all of our jars were added together. Please check back in during the week as I start to publish the pictures of our adventures! You will see salsa verde, peppers pickled 4 ways, pickled tomatillos, oven dried tomatoes, pureed and diced preserved tomatoes, gingered beets (a Fantôme Chocolat special!) and some small batch special items I made with items I got at my CSA farm the day we started this madness– pickled okra and pickled Mexican sour cucumbers (that is the banner picture on this site now… they are grape sized cucumbers and so cute!).