Preserves

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

In recent months, I’ve logged an astonishing number of hours making marmalade. Many kinds of marmalade. I’ve learned that lots of recipes tell you to cut the peel into thin slices, but…

There’s pressure canning, and then there’s canning under pressure. Today, I learned about the latter. I’m one of those weird folk who likes deadlines, but I’ve really been busting my butt the past…

I’m a Meyer lemon fanatic. Everything about them makes me happy — the yellow weight of them in my pockets and palms, the flower-sweet but citrus-sharp fragrance they lend to my hands,…

I packed away this blog almost a year and a half ago, and I didn’t expect to come back to it. Why start up again, when the world is aclutter with everybody’s…

You probably know about the Darwin Awards — honors bestowed upon those who advance the human species by doing something so dumb that they accidentally remove themselves from it. Like the guy…