Spoonful of Summer

Every summer when I was growing up, my father and grandmother would make jam and preserve fruits and vegetables with me as their assistant.  I must admit that while I enjoyed spending time with them in the kitchen and I absolutely loved the results - I thought the task of canning itself was a big pain.  So many steps...and it made our Texas kitchen so very, very hot and steamy, especially my grandmother's farm kitchen with no air conditioning.  Brutal.

Fast forward many years...I've not been able to find a replication of that spoonful of summer that I could find in my family kitchens.  You just can't beat jars of jam made at home with freshly picked fruit.  Well, I decided to resolve that.  Conveniently, I had just brought home over 10 pounds of strawberries I picked myself.

The goal was to can our own fruit this summer.  First step - find mason jars and lids.  This is harder than you'd think (or at least harder than I thought) in urban Washington, DC.  My husband, my hero eventually found them early Sunday morning in a neighborhood hardware store, hidden away and high on the shelf after we made several stops the day before with no success.  We also elected not to make jam, but to try something with a bit less sugar.

Monday night, my husband and I made fresh strawberry preserves.  Yes, it made our kitchen very hot and steamy, but it wasn't as much labor as I remembered from my childhood.  Plus, it made our kitchen smell just wonderful.   I was inspired to get up and make biscuits the next morning just so we would have something on which to use the lovely red preserves.

We experimented with our recipe, and plan to make more batches in the future.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share with you what we made in this round.

Homemade Strawberry Preserves
Made six 8 oz. (half pint) jars

8 cups of fresh strawberries
4 cups of sugar
juice and zest of one orange

Combine the strawberries and sugar in a large pot and heat slowly until the juices are no longer cloudy.  It took about 5 minutes.  Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and zest, then cover loosely and let stand for a few hours to macerate or pull out the sweet juice of the fruit.

While waiting, bring a large pot of water to a boil to sterilize the jars and lids.  Let them stay in the boiling water for at least 5 minutes.  Turn off the heat, but leave the jars and lids in the water until you are ready to use them.

In order to help you test the doneness of the preserves later in the process, put a small plate in your refrigerator to start it chilling.

Once the fruit is nice and juicy, scoop out 2 cups worth into a large skillet and begin cooking them over medium high heat.  When the strawberries start to simmer, start stirring regularly and let them cook about 6 minutes.  You should really smell the orange combining with the strawberries at this point.  Mmmm...wonderful.

Turn off the heat and give them a test for doneness.  Take that small plate out of your refrigerator and dribble a bit of the liquid on the plate (no more than 1/4 tsp).  Let this plate sit in the freezer for 30 seconds, pull out, and swipe your finger through the puddle.

Your finger swipe will part the liquid and expose the plate underneath.  If it starts to run together immediately, it isn't done.  So, turn the heat back on and cook for a few more minutes, then try the test again.  Our batches averaged about 8 minutes.

When you get the preserves to the right consistency, they are ready for jars.  Ladle the jam into sterilized jars, filling to within 1/4 inch of the rims.

Cover each jar with a lid and fasten the ring tight.  Set aside and repeat the process with the remaining strawberries and juice.  I found it easier to control the heat and things went faster if I made them in small batches of 2 cups at a time.

Once you've filled all the jars, put them back into boiling water, making sure they are completely submerged.  Cook for about 10 minutes and then lift the jars from the bath.  As they cool down, you should hear a pinging noise as the lids pop from a vacuum forming.  After a couple of hours, press down on the center of each lid.  There should not be any flex.  If the lid flexes, repeat the process and re-submerge the jars in boiling water for 10 minutes to reach the vacuum seal.

Happy Hour with Strawberries and A Cool Website about Alcohol

It can be fairly easy to bring a smile to my husband's face - he's just an upbeat person.  But the grin he had last night as he walked in the door and saw me mixing cocktails could have lit the house.  He's so cute.

If you recall, we try to have a happy hour at home at least once a week.  Last night I decided to mix up a cocktail with some of our plentiful strawberries.  Then I remembered the mint our friend Wendy brought us on  Sunday and I had a brainstorm.  Mojitos with strawberries, mint, and lemon...

Strawberry Mojito
Makes 1 tall glass

2 to 3 fresh stawberries - washed, stemmed, and chopped into bite-size pieces
2 to 3 fresh mint leaves
1 small wedge of lemon
2 tsp (or to taste) of simple syrup
2 oz (or to taste) of light rum
4 oz (or to taste) of lemon seltzer
crushed ice

Drop the strawberries, mint, and lemon wedge in the bottom of a glass.

Muddle or "smush" with a spoon to slightly crush the ingredients and release the juice of the fruit and essence of mint leaves and lemon peel. Add simple syrup and do more of the same to infuse those flavors into syrup.

Pour in rum and slightly stir.  Add crushed ice and mix gently with spoon.  Top with lemon seltzer and serve.  Mmmm...refreshing.

NOTES:  My husband makes a batch of simple syrup for us to keep in the fridge.  He steeped the last one with some mint leaves, and it worked well in this cocktail to provide an additional level of minty flavor.  You may want to use this technique or add a bit more mint leaves to your muddling mixture.

I also liked the extra layer of lemon from the seltzer.  You could elect to use plain seltzer or club soda.  The fizz is a nice touch, so stick with bubbly.

You could also switch to lime, if you prefer, but I thought the lemon would not compete so much with the strawberries.  Regardless, have fun mixing and experimenting.

Now, about that cool website...

How does that song go?
"When I'm not drinkin', I think about drinkin'.  When I'm not thinkin', I drink about you..."

If you are like me, you enjoy drinking, you enjoy reading, and you really enjoy reading about drinking.  So, if that is the case, I encourage you to visit a cool website known as AlcoholReviews.com.

The founder and editor, Kevin R. Kosar has a witty style and he shares lots of neat tidbits of interest to drinkers.  And, I'm proud to say he also generously gave me a shout out about our visit to Copper Fox Distillery earlier this month.  I encourage you to visit his site and keep thinkin' about drinkin'.

Strawberry Fields Forever

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I've been anxiously awaiting the start of the warm weather growing season.   Fruit just tastes so much better when you pick it yourself or at least buy it from the farmer who recently picked it.

I made my first farm trip of the year this weekend when I picked strawberries with my friends Andrea and Christina.  We visited Homestead Farms in Poolesville, Maryland and I had a great time.

It has become a bit of tradition for us, and we have made the trip several times over recent years.  The farm is not far out of Washington, DC in Montgomery County, and has a variety of produce throughout the spring, summer, and fall.   We have a nice visit in the car, and then share ideas of how to use the fresh fruit.

It has become a pretty popular place with families, especially with an expanded petting area with goats and a calf, and a hayride to the picking fields.

Each season, we hear more languages spoken as immigrant families bring their kids to the farm, too.  This year we realized the farm is responding to this expanded clientele and we noticed a sign in what we think is Korean.  Neat,  huh?

The farm has a store to sell other kinds of produce and a kitchen that makes goodies with the fresh fruit.  Our favorite is the strawberry smoothie.  It wasn't quite as good this year.  I fear they may be responding to their clientele in another way by making the smoothie lighter in calories instead of rich in cream that coats your tongue with a slickness as you gulp down chunks of strawberries.  Sigh.  Don't worry I still drank it all, though.

I went a bit crazy this year in my picking....I came home with over 10 pounds of strawberries.

It was a gorgeous day and the berries were plentiful, so it was easy to get carried away.  The smell of freshly picked strawberries is just heavenly, and it made the car ride home even more cheery.

 

I have big plans for them, so I'm not worried about using them all.  In fact, you should expect to read multiple entries about strawberries in the coming days.  I hope Andrea will share her recipe for strawberry bread so I can try it out.

Our first treat, though, was strawberry cream popsicles.  I thought they would make a nice dessert after our heavy meal of beef brisket.  Plus, we could use the new popsicle molds my husband and I got from my parents for Christmas.  It was my first time to make popsicles from fresh fruit, and I imagine I will continue to tinker with the recipe, but here is what I did this time.

Homemade Strawberry Cream Popsicles
Made 6 popsicles, using Tovolo brand molds

2 1/2 cups of stemmed and chopped fresh strawberries
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt

Mix all ingredients in a blender or food processor until fruit is pureed and all is well blended.  A blender is best, but I had to use our food processor since our neighbor borrowed our blender late one night for some boozy margarita fun.  The processor will work in a pinch.  Pour the blended mixture into molds, insert sticks, and place in freezer until firm.  You should allow at least 8 hours.

This is really easy, so I encourage you to experiment with the process and different fruits.  You can adjust the sugar to your taste and use all milk, instead of a combination with yogurt to equally delicious results.

A note on the lack of preciseness: I don't have a kitchen scale yet, so I couldn't weigh the strawberries.  Because of that, this recipe is not exact.  I mean, we each cut our strawberries slightly differently and they contain different amounts of liquid so just consider this a rough proportion.

In case you were wondering, here are the popsicle molds we used...


     

A Simple Cake that is Simply Good

When I was a kid, I thought a cake had to have chocolate frosting to be good.  Now I know that is not necessarily true.  Sometimes, simple ingredients and a plain-looking cake can actually be quite tasty.

Case in point...the plain loaf cake I made for our dinner on Sunday night.  It is a very straightforward recipe that you can vary according to your tastes and menu.  I served it with fresh strawberries and nearly everyone had second helpings.  You should plan accordingly.

Plain Loaf Cake

1 cup unsalted butter, softened (need some to butter pan, too)
3/4 cup sugar, plus extra for sprinkling on top
1 lemon (you'll use both zest and juice)
3 large eggs
1 1/3 cup cake flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter the inside of a 9x5 loaf pan and then line with parchment or wax paper.  Make sure the paper lies smooth and flat at sides.

Cream the butter and sugar.  Zest the entire lemon and add, blend.  Add the eggs one a time and start to add a little bit of the flour in between, mixing.  Gently mix in the rest of the flour, and finally add the juice of the entire lemon.

Pour batter into prepared pan.  Sprinkle with sugar (I probably used 1 1/2 Tbsp).  Bake for 1 hour or until cake tester/toothpick comes out clean.  Remove to wire rack and let it cool for a bit in the pan before you turn it out.

Variations:  You could add poppyseeds, nuts, or chopped chocolate.  You can also vary the juice/liquid. Try an orange, or a flavored liqueur.  You can play with the liquid amounts, but I would stay in the range of 1/4 cup to 1/3 cup.  Try serving it with different types of fruit, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, etc...You get the idea.

The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess.  The variations are mine.

Best Ever White Frosting

Our good friend Virginia turned thirty this weekend, and I wanted to make her a special birthday cake so she knows how much she means to us. I chose a red velvet layer cake topped with fluffy white frosting and my husband added fresh strawberries. I wasn't too pleased with the cake, but the frosting turned out better than expected.

I've tried for several years to recreate the white frosting my Aunt Ruthie made, and finally feel I was successful. I'll keep working on the red velvet cake recipe and post it sometime in the future. This white frosting would work with just about any kind of cake. I had some left over and I used it to frost some chocolate cupcakes the next day. Enjoy!

3 egg whites

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup Karo white syrup

1 Tbsp water

1 tsp vanilla (you could use another flavoring like almond or lemon extract or even coffee)

Put ingredients in double boiler over cold water. Start beating with electric beater and turn on the burner at same time. Beat until it stands in stiff, glossy peaks. This varies in time, as some eggs whip faster than others.

The frosting will come out glossy and fluffy almost like marshmallow. You could also add a few drops of food coloring and fold it in gently, if you wanted a color other than white.

The birthday girl seemed to enjoy it. And, I think Aunt Ruthie would be proud....