Is it possible that someday I’ll just know where the jelling point is, like any practiced artist learns her craft? Too often, I just don’t get it, and even my candy thermometer won’t save me. A preserve will usually jell somewhere between 220F and 224F, but within those few degrees there’s an astonishing range of…
A few people asked for more information about the labels I made for last weekend’s Rhubarb, Pear, and Vanilla Jam, so here’s a quick post to show what I did. Because I’m not savvy when it comes to computer design, I needed to make something simple. It took me only two years to figure out…
I wanted to do something to soothe myself after last week’s garlic disaster. That garlic jelly was a total loss. When Stewart came home from his travels, it took me a whole day just to get him to smell it. When I held out the greenish yellow goo he looked at me like I was…
When I said onions made me nervous, I didn’t know what I was talking about. Onions are innocent. Garlic, on the other hand, assaulted me and drove me out of my own home. Maybe it was the conspiracy with chiles that turned the little cloves against me. Two full heads of garlic blended to a…
This month for the Tigress’s Can Jam, we were asked to get down and dirty with the allium family: onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, scalllions, and their ilk. Except for the few onions I throw in with my pickles, I’ve never preserved alliums before. But I’ve been seeing a lot of mighty fine looking chutneys lately,…
When I launched this blog in 2007 — with no intention of writing about jam — I googled “Hitchhiking to Heaven” to find out whether anyone else was already using the name. My search didn’t yield much, certainly not anything that concerned me. What I’m saying is that I didn’t find this entry in the…