Pepper Jelly

A couple of week-ends ago at the Hillsdale farmer's market I bought four pounds of jalapeno peppers to make pepper jelly with. Pepper jelly isn't the kind of thing I would normally gravitate to. In fact, when Lisa E. said she wanted to make pepper jelly I'm pretty sure I stated that nothing on earth would induce me to eat a jellified pepper flavored nastiness. She assured me that my head was up my bahookie and I need to try some new things.

The only thing that's true in the statement above is that I was highly suspicious of pepper jelly and that Lisa E. did make some. Lisa is an incredible cook and I will try things that she's made that I might not try at the hands of a less stellar cook. She served pepper jelly with crackers and cream cheese. Yeah, I couldn't believe how good it was. I also couldn't stop eating it. I may even have dreamed about eating some more a couple of times and woke up in a panic because pepper season is done.

Well, I was lucky to have found the peppers. Unfortunately they sat around for over a week and some had to be tossed. However, yesterday, I finally got around to making the jelly. I have never made jelly before. I generally prefer jam. I'm really not sure how it turned out. I made seven half pints but they haven't set up yet. I wonder if they will? They are fully cooled now and still liquid. I used my pretty "Elite" series of Ball canning jars for this jelly. They are so pretty but so expensive! They would make the perfect gift but I feel selfish. I like to see pretty jars in my pantry.

The Hillsdale market was very busy and still had lots of vendors present. A couple of them indicated that they won't be back for a while though. Only one vendor had celery so I bought eighteen pounds of it. The lady who took my money looked like she thought I must be feeding a very large bunny at home.

I don't know what has happened but yesterday I got a sudden swarm of fruit flies in my house. Bigger than the last time. I don't understand where they all came from...the peppers that had gone bad? I didn't think fruit flies liked things like cabbage, leeks, and jalapenos, which were the things I had out on the counter. They aren't just in the kitchen, they are flying all over the house. Like a swarm of biblical locusts. Is this a sign that Armageddon has begun?

Speaking of Armageddon... it seems to me that if a person wants to be largely self sufficient, one should have a nut tree on their property. When things get dark in this world, when depressions hit hard, when economies crash, things like veal and steak are a lot harder to come by. Even milk could be hard to come by. You should always have more than one source of protein on your property. Eggs are one, nuts are another. Instead of making meat balls in lean times, clever cooks make things like walnut and cheese croquettes. So, we are trying to figure out what nut tree to plant. We have clay soil which basically means no nut will be at it's absolute best here, except filberts...WHICH I HATE. We've narrowed it down to three possibilities: pine nuts, walnuts, or almonds. We most particularly are interested in pine nuts.

What would you grow if the end of the world was nigh and you needed to batten down the hatches and be sure to grow food that will keep you alive?

By the way, I don't really believe in Armageddon or other end-of-the-world theories. I do believe in the end of crude oil, and that might turn out to be similar. By the way, has anyone given thanks recently to the dinosaurs for dying in such a convenient way and leaving their carcasses for us to discover and base our entire modern world around? Is it possible for dead people to turn into tar at some point? Would people be willing to continue to drive cars if it meant they'd have to somehow rely on our own dead to supply our fuel to us?* (And how far would one dead person turned to crude oil get a car? Would dead Great Grandpa Vinnie= 1 day trip to Vegas?)

Wasn't the world going to end in the eighties? Also, the San Francisco Bay Area was supposed to be under water by now. At least that's what my mom told me back in 1987, and she used to stay pretty tuned in to end of the world scares.

My one concern about getting a pine nut producing pine tree is that pine trees are susceptible to the kind of diseases that the Ribes family of fruit carries and spreads to them and I just so happen to be planning on getting lots of gooseberries and currants. Is that just asking for plant plagues?

By the way, last night I didn't have dinner planned in time so I whipped out two frozen pot pies and guess what? THEY WERE SO EFFING GOOD I ALMOST CRIED. That was a successful experiment. You cook them for an hour at 375 degrees and they are perfect. I cannot believe I only have two frozen ones left in there. Obviously I need to make some more while I can. This reminds me of my quiche project. I wanted to see if I could make some quiches that freeze well. My girls are kind of slowing down their egg laying so I may actually have to buy some eggs for the first time in a year. Wow, I have not bought eggs in a year! Hens rock.

I have to go do battle with the swarm of fruit flies and do some house work, do some work-work, and eat some delicious 99% local ingredient soup with a big giant spoonful on non-local Parmesan cheese. I hope you all are going to eat good food today too.

*Yeah, I know it took thousands of years for those huge beasts to produce tar pits, smarty pants.

Pickled Eggplant
(aka: Rebel Food)

These jars of pickled eggplant just may be the prettiest items in my pantry. You should know right off the bat that this recipe is by a British author named Nora Carey from her book called "Perfect Preserves". I love this book. I love Nora. I think she'd be startled to know that. There are interesting preserves, the most inspiring kitchen garden pictures, and recipes that call for the preserves in the book so that you know what the hell to do with them once you've made them all. It is my favorite preserving book. However, the methods used in it are distinctly British in that jams are not zapped into flavorless anonymity by over-processing. In fact, most jams aren't processed at all.

It's not just distinctly British to stick to traditional methods of canning and preserving, it's very European to not ditch Grandma's pickled eggplant because a government agency is worried about lawsuits. What I'm trying to tell you is that this recipe for pickled eggplant is

UNSANCTIONED BY THE USDA.

I made it anyway. The USDA is extremely skittish about preserving anything in olive oil. For the last few years the stance was "YOU WILL DIE IF YOU PRESERVE ANYTHING IN OLIVE OIL" They are now slightly backing down from that rather dire stance. Now they are allowing that maybe, maybe it's not so dangerous to store sun dried tomatoes in olive oil at room temperature provided there aren't any fresh herbs in it.

I have done a lot of reading about the reasons for different canning methods, about the science that backs up our belief that it isn't safe to preserve eggplant. I've read the USDA book of canning, I've called the canning hot-lines, and I've listened to some very heated discourse on the subject on a canning forum. It isn't easy to get at the science of it all because only the food scientists really know and they don't think us lay people can use that information safely. I think that's a form of oppression. Personally, I think that our fear of food-borne illness is threatening our rich and diverse catalog of family canning and preserving traditions.

Do I want to die of botulism? Of course not. However, I will use my brain in this matter, not a government agency, to make my own decisions. I have found at least three recipes for pickled eggplant, all of them calling for some form of vinegaring and spicing and then storing at room temperature in olive oil. All of those recipes were either European or Middle Eastern. These are traditional recipes. Here's something I've never heard about: lots of European and Middle Eastern home canners dying of botulism. Oh wait, I haven't heard of many American home canners dying of botulism either.

I am tired of food paranoia. This recipe seems pretty safe to me. First you cut the eggplant in 1/2" slices, toss them in a bowl with a lot of course sea salt (I think "tossing" is not really a good word here. Half inch slices of eggplant don't really "toss" easily.), and then layer them on either paper towels or kitchen towels and weight them with something heavy. I used a big wooden cutting board held down by a 24 lb box of apples. You let them sweat for at least an hour.

After that you brush them off and cook them for 5 minutes in white vinegar. What happens is that the vinegar then replaces any moisture in the slices making them less susceptible to rot or botulism, which doesn't happen to like vinegar. You pat them dry and then after letting them cool down you layer them in sterilized jars that you put a half inch of olive oil in before filling, and once your eggplant has reached the top, you cover completely with more olive oil and add a teaspoon of corriander seeds.

When you're processing anything in a boiling water bath canner for at least ten minutes it's not actually necessary to pre-sterilize your jars. The processing will kill off anything that might be on them or in them. For this recipe, however, it's vital to sterilize the jars for ten minutes in boiling water because they won't be processed further.

This is my one slice of eggplant that didn't make the cut. When the vinegar saturates the slices they turn slightly translucent. This piece was too thick for the vinegar to penetrate. So I tossed it out. It's beautiful though, isn't it?

I do take other people's safety in my kitchen pretty seriously and I don't plan to feed these to anyone without making them sign a waiver to sue me if anything happens. Because I'm American and that's the kind of thing we do. Jesus.

Max has just informed me that these jars look like cans of throw up and poop.

I really want to make some more of these. I'm afraid that the coriander seeds I bought are very old and not all that aromatic. One of the recipes that Nora includes for using these pickled eggplants is to put the slices on a home made pizza. Oh boy, that sounds so good. I'm excited by the combination of the earthiness of eggplant with the added zing of vinegar, and the richness of the oil. Not a diet food, of course. Nicole Montesano, a food writer for our local newspaper and another canning spaz like me (it must be said that like Lisa E., she is elegantly quiet in her spazziness), gave me a recipe she found for pickled eggplant that I may need to try as well. Now I'm not sure where I've put it, but while the eggplant is cheap at my favorite farm (Bernards), it seems a shame not to make some more.

On a side note, I left some tomatoes in a bucket for much too long and missed the fact that two of them were rotting and hatching a cloud of fruit flies. Fruit flies are a fixture in my kitchen during canning season. An unpleasant fact of life. It's what happens when large quantities of fruits continuously make their juicy way through my house. However, usually there's just a few and aren't much of a nuisance. Oy. I have about a hundred of them in my kitchen. So if anyone knows of any great traps for them, let me know. I have put out some fly paper, and while it's caught some of the slower more stupid ones, the others seem to know what it is and are not getting fooled. I still have a ton of fruit to process so it's not like I can just rid my kitchen of all fruit fly food right now.

So, in closing, I would like to say that if for some unfortunate reason my brave rebellion of the USDA's oppression turns sour on me and I die of botulism from eating my beautiful eggplants, this is what I want on my tombstone:

"Although she ordered the exact same meal at the Hotel Oregon EVERY SINGLE TIME SHE WENT, she was brave enough to eat pickled eggplant. Let it be duly noted: Angelina was not a total food coward"

Maybe that's too expensive. That's a lot of words and we don't have a lot of money. Maybe the community can collect some donations?

Fruit fly update: Between using Karmyn's method and standing patiently like a zen master in order to strike like lightening and kill them with the smack of bare hands I have reduced the fruit fly population almost to nothing. I've still got about five of them that I can't seem to get at. But five, I think you'll all agree, is so much less disturbing than over 100 of them.