Strawberries

Because I have no self-control, and because I shop like I am feeding a family of 14, I bought a flat of strawberries at the farmer's market. So, a month or two ago, after dragging home said flat of strawberries, I was left to decide between letting them rot in the refrigerator and writing my thesis, or doing something much more fun and finding something interesting to do with the strawberries. The strawberries won.

After finding a recipe for sugar-free strawberry preserves in the Ball Book (I think), I went to work. I hulled and washed the strawberries, then boiled them half to death while mashing them a bit. It did feel the littlest bit tragic going from thisto this

Next I dissolved a bit of sweetener and gelatin (resuspended in lemon juice; have to do something if you're not using sugar...) in the hot strawberries, boiled that a bit longer, and spooned the mix into small 2 oz. or 4 oz. jelly jars. They cooled overnight at room temp., then went into the fridge. The book said they can be stored in the fridge for about a month, but so far they are still fine and taste mighty delicious. The gelatin does give the preserves a very bizarre texture, but it tastes very fresh (even with all the boiling), so it's hard to care too much.

Fresh Pickles

I've taken the day (mostly) off and figure with a little free time on my hands (or at least time during which nothing is extremely pressing) I figured I'd update this with some months old stuff. First, fresh pickles (probably two months ago).

Noticing a glut of pickling cucumbers at the farmer's market, E and I decided to try our hand at pickles for a second time¹. Unfortunately, the cucumbers sat in the fridge for a week and had lost a bit of their crunch. We didn't have any PickleCrisp either (apparently just calcium chloride) and I'm not familiar with alum, so floppy pickles it was going to have to be. As our pickling bucket was not clean, I got lazy and decided on fresh (refrigerator) pickles instead and found a recipe in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (p292 "Refrigerated dill slices").

Starting with whole pickles, I started slicing them with the mandoline, but after losing about 1g of thumb, switched to the food processor. The slices were pretty thin, but it was much easier than trying to do it by hand. I quartered ~10 pickles to add a little variety.

The recipe called for both pickling spice and dill seeds, mustard seeds, a bit of garlic, and peppercorns. I never stopped to consider what's actually in pickling spice, but after running out of the paltry 1/4 c we had in the pantry, became quickly interested when I had to make my own. It was a proud moment when I realized our kitchen was sufficiently stocked to make pickling spice from scratch. Most ingredients were unsurprising, with the exception of cinnamon, allspice, ginger and cardamom. Sure enough, when I was done smashing it all together, it looked almost exactly like commercially available pickling spice.

I prepared the jars by first adding the pickling spice, supplemental spices, and garlic, then packed them with the cucumber slices (or spears). After ladling in the pickling liquid I closed the jars up and allowed them to cool. Next, I stuck them in the back of the fridge for a few months and completely forgot about them. A few weeks ago I dug some out and served them to E's family at a cookout. Salty. Delicious, but salty. Hopefully I'll remember to rinse them off before serving them again.


¹ The first batch of pickles were fermenting in the front room for about three months before we remembered them. Although they had not been de-scummed for quite a while, E said they looked and smelled like pickles. We did not eat them to see if they tasted like pickles too. We will certainly try these again, but probably not until next summer. I have a feeling our bucket will be devoted to sauerkraut and other things in the mean time. Another digression: E said "I was thinking at some point we could repurpose the front basement room for temperature-sensistive experiments. Once the oil tank is gone." Best husband ever. And I hereby promise to never mix work yeast with home yeast. Or at least never to eat work yeast.)

Reminders:

• The pickles were good, but too salty
• Do not make so many pickles next time - too many pickles