At the end of this post, I’ll announce the winner(s) of the Rangpur lime giveaway. Thank you for all the entries. I love how you all love the fruit. First, though, I want to say something about “regular” limes — the dark green kind that most of us buy at the market. It was only…
As every gardener knows, what you hope or intend for your little patch of earth isn’t always what you get. Like last spring when I accidentally planted hot peppers thinking they were sweet. Or when, many years ago, my mom mistakenly thought she had planted a Mexican lime tree in her backyard. Her “limes” turned…
A tall glass of fizzy water with a splash of homemade fruit syrup is one of the most enjoyable alternatives to commercial sodas.
In 2011, I had a goal that I never said out loud. I wanted to return to the reason I first started preserving, which was to make good use of the fruit around me — homegrown or wild — that might otherwise go to waste. I’d strayed from that purpose in 2010, when I started…
As many of you know, I’m doing some work for a new nonprofit business called Community Action Marin FoodWorks — CAM FoodWorks, for short. It’s a venture based on the principles of sustainability and preserving our local harvest. Here’s an example of how it works: A local farmer has more produce — persimmons, let’s say…
It’s time for a progress report on the homemade vanilla extract. On October 8, I poured myself two big jars of booze, stuffed each one with 32 vanilla beans, and promised to report back in two months. (See Vanilla Extract: Day One for details about getting started.) The first jar was a quart of straight…
A story of how Black Mission Figs and my family came to California. Plus the jam.
What’s in your pantry, people? Do you still have marmalade that you made last winter? I do. Around here, the marmalade eating can’t possibly keep up with the marmalade making, so I need lots of ideas for using up what’s left over from one season to the next. Because the holiday gears are starting to…
A few weeks ago, I was fussing on Facebook about how I had picked up some contract legal work and wasn’t enjoying it very much. (If you have ever been stuck for hours on end in the statutes of our fifty states, untangling the particulars of some gnarly legal matter — or if you can…
Are you busy? These days, I am far busier than I would like to be, which is one reason I like this photo of caramel apple jam holding down my datebook. (I still use paper for that!) I had set the jar there so I wouldn’t forget to bring it to a friend in the…
Last year, I wanted to make vanilla extract for holiday gifts, but I missed out. I have heard people say, variously, that it takes two months, three months, six months — in other words, a while — for vanilla beans to steep long enough in vodka to create an extract with deep, true vanilla flavor….
Of all the seedlings I started last January, my ground cherries fared best. (Ground cherries are also called “husk cherries,” or sometimes “cape gooseberries.”) They proved hardy from the start, weathering all sorts of storms — including one that tipped the greenhouse on its side and dumped them all onto the floor. They chugged straight…