From the Kitchen: August 2005 Archives

Hey, Cop Car! I think I may have found the perfect blog for you!

I was surfing this morning and found "Cooking for Engineers"!

We've finished canning the plum jam. It's amazing how you can take a dark blue fruit with green pulp and end up with a beautiful plum colored jam!

The chopped plums, sugar and lemon juice sat for two hours while the juice flowed from the pulp. We put it on the stove top and brought it to a rolling boil. Elegante Mother skimmed the foam from the top, and I worked on getting the jars ready for the canning.

I spent the morning cutting up 2.2 pounds of tiny Italian plums. We're making jam today. The fruit is so tiny that it took me easily two hours to complete the job. Part of that time was devoted to occasional diversions to give my hands a chance to relax.

I happened to find Orangette's blog entry on preserving, and decided to follow her instructions for making jam. To the chopped up plums, I've added a pound of sugar and the juice from half a lemon. The mixture is to sit for two hours at room temperature to "macerate."

And so is the chili sauce!

I've been making chili sauce with Elegante Mother for the last 15 years, and it usually took us all day to cook it down to the point where it could be canned. Today we were done at 2:20!

Hm....well, maybe not gas.....but with a lot of fun in the kitchen.

My niece will be here to join us for dinner tonight. It's just the ladies, as Dear Husband is off boating tonight. I've found several recipies that I'd like to try on her, so this is what I'm planning:

Italian pork tenderloin
Roasted veggies
Farmer's tomato pie (May 16, 2003 in the archives)
Corn Cakes with Fresh Corn and Chives
Peach Blueberry Cake

Wow......now that I have it down on paper I can see that I'm going to have to cut something out. Maybe I can talk her into the Farmer's Tomato Pie for lunch tomorrow. I can slip in a small side salad that would be much lighter.

Peaches
Blueberries
20 pounds of tomatoes
6 plum tomatoes
miniature patty pan squash
green onions
tiny red new potatoes
6 pickle cucumbers
4 green bell peppers
3 red peppers
1 pound crimini mushrooms (baby portabello)
1 portabello mushroom
6 ears bi-color corn
green beans
yellow wax beans

This weekend I am gaining an apprentice!

We have an old family recipe for something called "Chili Sauce." I've posted the recipe on the June 30, 2003 blog entry. Hopefully, the link will take you there.

Except for last year, Elegante Mother and I have been making this sauce once a year for the past sixteen years we have lived together. I'm not sure why we didn't get to it, but I must have decided that we could coast on all the reserves we had stored up.