Processing the Harvest

put them in a thick bottomed preserving pan with a scant 1/4 " in of water. Simmer gently until soft, mash 'em down with a spud masher to get all the colour, flavour and goodness from them. Maybe 15 minutes or so. Strain them through muslin over a vessel, letting them do so at their own speed- overnight if possible.
Measure the liquid and add no more than 3/4 lb of sugar to 1 pint of liquid and the juice of 1/2 lemon per pint. Simmer gently to dissolve the sugar then a full rolling boil until setting point is reached. ie will form a wrinkle if a blob on an ice cold saucer is pushed. This may take a few tries - up to 10 minutes - keep going back and boiling again to get that set. Don't let it stick or burn though. Pour into heated jars, cover with a circle of greaseproof or silicone paper to block out air from jam's surface, seal and leave to set properly without moving the jars. You can label /date when cold,
Jenny

 

Here we use canning jars which are sold everywhere and water bath can 10 minutes to vent, and then the jam is good for years - mold in this heat would grow quickly with a paper seal. The lids are about 12 for one £ and the rings that hold them on are reuseable and the jars last for ever.



So what I am getting is 12 oz sugar to 20 oz juice by your ratio (3/5). I think I will leave most of the seeds in - I take half or less out by straining after it has boiled in the sugar - and then process the strained seeds and pulp like the jam and my wife uses the seed/pulp mixture with her yogurt. But I made my last jam 1:1 fruit to sugar and it was too sweet.

I have been fighting with flood insurance on a house I sold that the buyer lets his insurance laps. (I am the mortgage holder) We have to have three kinds of insurance on a house - flood, wind, and fire. That costs over $2000 per year for $40,000 of coverage, so no canning pogies or jam making today.

But I did make more trails in the woods before I found there was an insurance problem. Also - a local butcher makes good pork sausage and I bought one pound each: green onion, sweet Italian, and Cajun, which I un-case and divide into 10 pieces each and put singly in the very cheap sandwich bags and flatten out to very thin disks and freeze in stacks. It is fatty sausage, just pork and pork fat with seasonings minced up and stuffed into casings - and the flat disks are wonderful and very quick to cook right from the freezer (the plastic bag peels off the frozen meat), and so thin the fat cooks out mostly. Breakfast of sausage and eggs is one of the ways of keeping up with the daily egg flood + toast and jam, excellent! Home made jam, home grown eggs, butcher made sausage, and some good toast.

 

I find the blackberry seeds get stuck in between my teeth Colne so that's why I strain them all out. Like you, I don't like my jam too sickly sweet and I like a bit of a sharp bite - hence the lemon.
Would like to know how your experiment turns out ,
set wise...
Jenny

 

I often read this thread but never coment, however I'm curious as to what the common or general selection of American butcher shops are, and are butchers all that common? Butcher myself

 

Grecco, unfortunately most butchers have been swallowed by supermarkets/Wal-Mart. They do remain in some cities and places - but for the most it is 'meat cutters' behind the meat counter of a grocery store. Some of the smaller grocery store chains will make their own sausages though, and a couple of smaller new Orleans ones around here do - and it can be excellent. Our favorite is the sweet Italian which is very course minced lean pork and fat bits with lots of some sort of anisette whole seeds - like fennel seeds and a few other herbs. I flatten 1.5 ounce balls of it in a cheap sandwich bag to as thin as possible and freeze in stacks. just fry from frozen till brown.

I am dashing to net some shrimp for tonight - last night my wife and I went out for 3 hours and came back with 17 specks, many very nice ones in the 1 to 2 pound range. The smallest allowed to be kept is 13 inches which runs about 3/4 pound +. It was such fun being out on the water on a clear night, mild enough a good sweater and hoodie was enough - waves chopping, fish dashing in the light, some boats and the huge barges going past - just lovely. Only two other fishermen but they were so frustrated watching me catch the trout they did crowd in on me making it much harder to fish in the winds which blew ones float all over; few fishermen know where and how to catch and keep live bait that they do terribly in comparison to me.

 

Didn't realise you're near New Orleans Colne.

 

Not far from NO, an hour from the central down town. We spent all Saturday at the LSU hospital there for a part of 'The Gulf Study' on how the oil spill effected health. We were given the full tests in 2012 and again now, and will continue with it for many years. My wife worked the spill cleanup; first walking beaches for oil globs - then working in the depot where oil cleanup boats and gear were steamed cleaned and washed. I worked jobs right along the beaches unrelated to BP - and sometimes the smell of petroleum distillates on our porches and on the beaches were absolutely breath taking strong. They do psychological examinations, lots of neural tests, lots of tests were we watch patterns and letters projected and click when the right sequence comes up. Standing on one leg on a scale which measures your wobbling - same with both feet together for 30 seconds with eyes closed (4 times, everything is done multiple times) blood taken - lots of it, urine, hair, toenails, very difficult breathing tests in an atmosphere controlled room........They gave us $300 for it, and we had some excellent meal on it at a trendy NO place. (Butchers)



And the weather was perfect last night. Lots of blue herons making their pterodactyl calls and flying about the harbor; a northern batch has just come down from the frozen North. I caught a nice bag of trout as they bit early, but when my friend came down to join me later they had slowed right down and he only ended up with a couple - I gave him my 8 because I am about ready with frozen fillets and am giving fish away lately. My wife will be taking half a dozen people a bag of fillets from the night before lasts catch.



I love my fish cleaning board with the clip - I can do a fish in one minute with it holding the head freeing both hands.

 

I just washed eggs for my wife to sell - this is a lot more eggs than it looks - all kinds as I cross chickens. The ones which look white are green but the camera will not show it - but all different sizes and colours - and a bunch of new hens; ones I was supposed to eat, are instead going to be laying in a wile too. Too many eggs, but good eggs; forest chickens and pogie fed.

 

Thank you for those 2 entertaining posts Colne. Glad to see you are in Bon humour and giving folks a helping hand . Those eggs look very handsome indeed,
Jenny

 

Hording and blood lust Jenny. It is fall and our Neolithic genes are bubbling to the surface.

In the years I worked in the mushroom business, walking miles in the remote bush of the far north, autumn would bring the yellow jacket wasps to a mad peak of hunting - the winter would be their deaths; only the grubs in the deeply dug nests would be all snug if enough food could be hoarded for them to overwinter. Every day in the High Cascades we would be swarmed by them as we would stand on the nest - I had this amazing backwards springing dash where I would be batting them off with my hands and whacking them off my clothing wile leaping through the woods; and almost always resulted getting no stings - but not always. (My old mushrooming partner; weasels and Lexies owner)



Putting out a bowl of dog water would bring a swarm of hundreds in minutes to drink. Putting out the dog's dinner would have to be very fast as the yellow jackets would soon swarm on it to eat too. The White dog above ate wasps, grabbing them from the air, chewing them with the expression of one eating a burning hot bite of vindaloo.

Then all over would be pits dug by the bears, digging out the hive for all the rich feed preserved, and the fat grubs in their paper tubes. About 2 foot down the neatly dug pit would be this perfect half globe of paper, like half a soccer ball, - all that remained of the yellow jacket nest - a paper ball underground with the paper hives hanging from the top like massive stagmites inside (that part would be gone, eaten). You see the bears, having come out of the hard winter hibernation live on the winter kill carcasses till the forests green up - then becoming mostly vegetarian they live on leaves, nuts, berries for the bountiful months - then the winter calls out and they seek the fatty things to help for the long sleep, and the lush summer foods are gone - and so will hunt the hives, ignoring the stings.

This call to hunt and hoard is hard wired into us, going all the way back to our insect genes, and I go with it, enjoying satisfying that primal instinct. And so am going fishing with my friend again tonight - I cannot help myself. The call of the night sea and the fish is too strong - another 8 pound tub of frozen 14 ounce packets of fillets will be collected and stored.

 

As I always say, gardening is a hands on experiencing of ultimate matters; germination, life, and death in the great wheel of corporal existence. The best definition of religion I know is 'That which is of ultimate importance' so our processing the harvest is an act which bypasses the simply mundane.

And I tend towards belief in Karma, synchronicity - (the Jungian thing of "meaningful coincidences") luck, fate, and possibly a touch of predestination. And to round it all is how my day went: it is now 2:06 am and I am back from fishing, a good fishing trip in a fish sense, but one of a series of unlikely events. Enough I wonder what it all means.

This part of the world is very religious with most people being members of a church. Black women here have a common by word: 'Have a blessed day' they say. And I am inclined to think I have, that I have muddled through a string of unlikely and bad incidents I am inclined to think I have likely gotten off very lightly because the events were so pronounced in aggregate that I am well off just getting what I did get - that some correction was scheduled for me. I angrily had shouted at a guy in my road for something he probably did not do - but then I rescued the stuck older family. But my string of silly bad luck left me only a bit embarrassed and spent a bit of money pointlessly.

Yesterday my wife's starter solenoid died and after a good struggle I got it working enough to start the car and get it home. That is where I shouted at some guy who I thought drove over my tools - although I later suspected he was stopping to help me. (beat on the solinoid to free it - it does work but mostly once). So I set out to catch shrimp after dropping her off at her job and caught nothing! And then baited the places of the bayou to get some to come in, and then picked my wife up wile the bait worked - but getting back 3 big guys were netting my baits spots, cleaning them out. So I went home for more bait, scattered it, and then back home to let it work. Which it did very well, and I bagged a bunch in the falling light ( also rescuing an elder family who were stuck in a lonely spot back there - they were so tired after a day fishing and stuck). Anyway got them rolling and netted my shrimp - and dropped my glasses off the bridge, Drat. And so to fishing and both my bait aerators died. Rusted to death and I will need to totally rework them - probably replacing them, and them at about 10:30 p.m. my wife called me to see how it was going; I do not have a cell phone and had taken hers. And I dropped it into the deep gulf waters answering her call wile trying to fix a tangle with my neighbors line - it went down lit, a odd effect.

And you may remember my talk of fish and game officers and zero tolerance - well I got checked and had a tiny speck trout 4 inches too small - I had kept it thinking it was a small white trout which have no limit. So a ticket and court appearance. The penalties are large.

And so I inevitably scored some bad points in karma and am working them off - and it was a blessed day; nothing bad happened on a serious scale. I came home to an angry wife, embarrassed as I regard myself as both expert on fish, and a rigidly proper sportsman - and all the other fishermen watched me being escorted off the harbor wall....sigh.

And in a testimony to the last days awkwardness - I mistakenly did not hit post on this so am adding this last line 17 hours later and posting it belatedly. But then I spotted a story in the newspaper of a policeman injuring a girl by an accidental discharge of his pistol and thought - 'well I came through it all very well'. No one hurt, nothing bad happened, just life's silly little jibes.

 

And Guy Fox day passed again, one of the most important days when parliamentary Monarchy was maintained - I hope you all had a good bonfire, possibly roasted some spuds, or marshmallows, in remembrance. The best Autumn holiday is, I believe, Thanksgiving, in USA. A holiday they fail to capitalize on and is about thanking for a bountiful harvest and a peaceful land.

But the second best is Guy Fox, remembering the failed attempt to return Britain to subservience to Rome, and the consequent inquisition and despotism. Hannan put it well in the telegraph: "I’m glad that the MPs of 1605 – those brave, hard-drinking, quarrelsome patriotic men – are not around to see how their successors behave. I’m glad that they can’t watch as the House of Commons whose prerogatives they championed surrenders its rights, not as the result of terrorism or insurrection or foreign invasion, but by its own votes."

And here it has turned cold. I expect to lose my papaya, now 10 foot tall with several green fruits as large as grapefruits and many of the unusual fleshy, but pretty, flowers still coming on. I need to net more pogies wile they are still here, if not too late, for the winter chicken feed. Last night turned cold and now there none to be seen off my porch - I should find them somewhere though, I doubt one night is enough for them all to run off to deep water.

The garden is well - the upper library hill beautiful little greens garden was decimated by the bad chickens but the other side hill is making edible Siberian kale and lettuce, and the main raised bed is all rows of tiny greens, beets, carrots, and such - with large peppers still amongst them, the fence holding so far.

Now the new chickens are laying the egg basket is very pretty with its variety; small speckled ones, small dark brown and light brown ones, large green, small cream coloured, extra large brown. We gathered a few wild persimmons, mostly large seeds and skin - and ferocious if not totally soft and ripe with the most astringent effect possible; but completely sweet when ripe. The raccoon and opossum droppings are mostly composed of persimmon seeds near the trees. The trees attractive with their now sparse leaves and the orange/peach coloured fruits hanging like ornaments. My new kumquats are ripening early and have the lovely tiny oranges looking so good - but out of synch with the old one so marmalade making will mean slicing the new ones and freezing them. The new trees still are thinking they are at their very Southern Louisiana nursery; they will know where they are next year.

 

Just a little correction Colne.....it's Guy Fawkes not Fox. Not a day I celebrate either, the true meaning like Christmas disappeared many years ago and has been turned into a commercial rip off!

 

I do not know how that slipped out: Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, Fawkes, There.

And the as* anarchists and rabid nu Marxists using Fawkes's mask is very ironic. I mean they are traitors, and despots and all in reality - but still it is wrong because they think it merely means being rebellious and edgy.

And I have bought my seasonal bedding plants marked way down: 36 yellow/gold pansies (I always do massed yellow pansies in my roadside pots when the tomatoes finish in them - the tomatoes are still thriving, green fruits, but will not make more, just look good for a bit longer and take the flower's needed space.) 4 red petunias, 4 snapdragons, - also a lantana and a calendula, for $7.60 total. Excellent; bit past prime, but will soon get going well.

The perennials will go on the pond terrace for next spring.

Shrimp and trout jalfrezi for dinner last night - custard for after, salad of bought cukes and tomatoes. And for no good reason a picture of weasel and lexie in their motorcycle carrier - how they commuted for a couple years.

 

What a burst of dejavu and a sort of a thrill feeling to find this story just now in The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/08/the-expats-who-call-afghanistan-home

Nancy Dupree was someone we knew when I was a child in Kabul so many years ago, and all those people from those days still feel so real, Archbishop Bardon of Ispahan, the Scheiwkers, Schienkels, my desk mate was a princess, a diplomat's daughter - what a world away it all was, it makes me feel dazed. That all really happened and yet is as impossibly distant as another world is. Our dog thuli, our Hazara houseboy Tamor, the Tevierages behind us, Professor Negabon, the old man who lived in the cellar without a house above it, in the open land outside our steel gate, the camels and donkeys, and the Pathans and Burqua clad women, what amazing fun it was. Trout fishing in the Bamiyan Valley and in the King's private hunting grounds of the Ajar Valley, the Kuchi Nomads appearing out of the desert with their whole village walking or riding the camels with hundreds of animals all brightly coloured, the men with swords and rifles....