stopping time, moving forward

tart cherry preserves - a taste of my childhood!

Ugh. Once again, where has the time gone? Well. I have been making things and taking photos all this long, hot, dry summer. I just haven't taken the next step of culling and editing photos and posting. I also feel like I've barely been keeping my head above water with the making.

Part of it's the heat; look at the grass in that top photo - little straw-twigs! This summer was a prolonged battle of attrition to try and keep the garden alive. It was more work and money than it was worth and eventually I threw up my hands and said, "I give up."

It was the right choice. And now that some more seasonable weather has returned (three good drenching storms in a 3-week period), I feel like I've had a little more time to gather myself and get things done. So I sat down yesterday morning and culled a bunch of photos to put together a couple of posts.

I found tart cherries at the U District Farmer's Market (thanks to a tip from my awesome neighbour) and made preserves - well, more of a low-sugar pie filling, really. I was only able to get 2 lbs of cherries, so these won't be shared, because after you remove the pits, the 2 lbs have pretty much become 1 lb and it's just not enough!! These are for turnovers or eating on English muffins this fall, and reminisces about the mature tart cherry tree I grew up with. (More on that in a moment.)

blackcurrant preserves!

At one point this summer, I walked into Ballard Market and there were flats of blackcurrants for just $10. I took one and went through the laborious process of picking all the bits of stems and flower ends off them - and then I made delightful blackcurrant jam. I have given lots of these away already, sharing the bounty, but there should be a few left at the holidays. I also baked the leftover preserves (when I ran out of jars to pack them into) into a completely heavenly vegan coffee cake (I had some stress this summer and my doctor ordered me off dairy - it took about three weeks for things to level out, and I started getting creative with the vegan baking). 

And now, back to that little note about the cherry tree of my childhood. I've bought one for my own garden: a Northstar. It's supposedly self-dwarfing, only growing 8-10' tall and wide, able to be netted and harvested without a giant ladder, resistant to cracking and brown rot, and when mature, producing plenty of fruit for a family of four. We only have two in our family, but I definitely eat more than my fair share of tart cherries - as a child and teen, these were the only fruits I would eat to the point of allergic reaction: when my grandparents visited and my grandpa brought jars of tart cherry sauce, I'd eat it all day ... until I broke out in hives on my wrists and inner forearms. I'd take a cold shower and put on calamine lotion before bed ... and in the morning I'd start all over again - no regrets!!

And where will we put this tart cherry tree? Well, we'll put it in our new garden that we're going to build ... in our new home. Cass and I have become homeowners - finally! - for the first time in our lives. I expect the tone of this blog will shift toward more decorating, gardening, and home repair/upgrade projects in the future, but for now we're living in boxes as we can't start moving until Tuesday.

And maybe the new home will be just the prod I need to get back into the swing of things here. Let's hope so - because Pacific Rain has been languishing this summer!!

Another architecture tee

2015 is my year of the WIP (Works-in-Progress), by which I mean, working on finishing up old WIPs (and jettisoning those projects that I'm never going to finish). And there are PLENTY of these thing banging around the house. SO MANY IDEAS, never enough time for them all. But as Cass and I finally make progress toward entering the housing market (as first time buyers), I'm trying to adopt an attitude of "we're moving" and use that to motivate some streamlining in all aspects of our lives: cleaning out the fridge and freezer of old unused food, cleaning out our closets, and yes, even cleaning out baskets of projects.

In the interest of finishing up old works-in-progress, I printed this shirt for Cass some time ago; it was meant to be a yuletide gift, but ... I don't know what happened, exactly. I made this screen years ago, and printed him a blue-and-black Aalto tee then. He'd worn that shirt out, so it was time for a new one. Simple as that, really. He's happy as a clam to have an Aalto shirt again. This print is one of his favorites.

I also finished another originally-intended-as-a-yuletide gift in mid-June. I'll try and get it up on the blog this week; I would've posted sooner, but a business trip to Cleveland, followed by Midsommar, followed by a rush proofreading job and the 4th of July have absorbed my last three weeks in a constant state of busy-rush-rush.

I think I've earned a bit of a summer break: time for less rush-rush and a bit more summer reading and beading in my near future, I hope! Oh, and quilting, too - I want to finish the Rabbit in the Moon quilt this summer and give it away. With full time work and part time freelancing, I think I can safely say that Months and Years is officially going back on the shelf of Dreams for When I Have Time. Oh, I'll keep making beautiful small things for little people, but I think I'll just go back to giving them away instead of trying to build a collection of them to sell together.

Stirrings

Hard to believe it's already time; the weather this year is off - I keep asking myself, is it El Nino or more serious climate change?  And while there's an anxiety gnawing at the back of my brain about summer, and drought, and wildfire season and all those poor people who live east of the mountains!, and the price of water, and planting vegetables that don't need too much water  ... at the same time, there's sun in the Pacific Northwest in February, in March. The temps are warm enough that I have been out harvesting nettles since early February ... and it's hard for a light-starved northern girl to remember that this sun and these mild temps are a bad thing, when it's February and sunny instead of February and bleak.

And so I've been out in the woods already, gathering nettles. Soon it'll be big leaf maple blossoms and the spring foraging season will really and truly feel like it's on.

In the meantime, if you need some color (and comfort!) in your life, try this recipe for beet bread from Twigg Studio!

As I'm something of an old hand at making bread, I used my own tried-and-true process for making bread with this one: first I roasted and peeled the beets, then ground them in the food processor to make a puree. Meanwhile, I proofed the yeast in the warm water with a pinch of sugar, then combined the yeast mixture, beet puree, oil, salt, and 1 cup of white flour in a bowl. I beat hard to make a creamy sponge, then added the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until a smooth dough had formed.

The next week, I made this same recipe again, using carrot puree (I boiled, then pureed the carrots) and chopped fresh dill; it was amazing. I love how flexible this recipe is; I'll definitely keep playing with it to make various vegetable breads. Give it a shot!

A first

 

 

Sorry for my long absence here. I realized, last week, that since I started this blog while I was in grad school, this month marks the first time ever that I've held a regular, 9-to-5 job and had a blog. Hence, the silence. I definitely haven't worked out a balance yet with my job, with yoga, with housework, and with the blog - or any kind of creative making, really; I haven't made anything but food-things in a month. Part of that is because I've also got two freelance jobs on my plate right now - both historical fiction novels that I'm proofreading.

But there are at least a few food experiments going on around here, and this post marks the start of my efforts to try and get the blog back into the new balance of what feels, finally, like a fully adult life. (So happy about that.)

It's been such a mild winter around here this year that it'd be easy to forget that we had one at all. But winter is the season for citrus fruits, and I have a giant bowl of bitter Seville oranges sitting on my kitchen table as a reminder (I'm making marmalade this week - or maybe next weekend is more accurate). I also candied orange peels (below) a few weeks ago, and then used the leftover syrup to glacee kumquats (above) afterward. Recipes for the process can be found here (orange peel); I used the same process for the kumquats (and even the leftover syrup, as I said) as I did for the orange peels, and just let the sliced fruits cook in the already-reduced syrup for about 40-50 minutes, then placed them in a food dehydrator set to about 135 degrees F for an hour or two to help dry them. I loved these kumquats in my holiday baking this winter and everyone loved them so much that I wanted to have more on hand to use again this year.

looking ahead

Here's news - though anyone reading this blog has probably already seen my update on facebook, or been called, etc. - I finally landed a stable job (it's been nearly two years). I have about a week before my first official day, so in the meantime I'm finishing up some projects, finally enjoying the time off because I can stop worrying about money for the first time in years.

Here's one of the projects I'd been meaning to do for almost a month now! I came across this "Deer Moon Necklace" by Three Arrows Leather in the late autumn, and knew I wanted to make one like it. I actually found a great new source for nice quartz points: children's toy stores - specifically, ones that carry rock specimens for young collectors. I stocked up over the holidays, so perhaps I'll be making a few more of these (girlfriends for whom I regularly make jewelry, let me know if you want one!). I opted for turquoise deerskin lace to make the braid and the straps, instead of black - because I realize that a lot of the jewelry I'm making for myself lately involves rugged natural materials and then black or brown leather (or brass metal fittings). And I'm wearing more neutral clothing, too - so this is a little bit of a reaction against the rut! I also love wearing turquoise accents in the summer, so this is a nice way to look ahead to the summer months to come.

I added some silver tone metal beads from Africa (leftover from when I made that medicine pouch), and I'm all set! My necklace also hangs a bit higher than the original, as I find necklaces that hang too low bothersome.

a day off

Last week, in the face of some very obvious physical manifestations of stress, I took a "day off." I didn't work on professional development stuff. I didn't apply for jobs. I didn't fuss with emails or spend the day online.

Instead, I took a walk in the park in the morning sunshine. I picked up pretty leaves, and dipped them in wax, using this tutorial from Martha Stewart. I  tied them up with thread to a piece of driftwood and hung them where they would flutter and be pretty and generally get in everyone's way as they walked into the kitchen. 

I  also made some salt scrub for the shower. I had all the ingredients - salt, glycerin, essential oils - on hand, so I quickly mixed this up and now I'm happily scrubbing away. I love salt scrubs. They're great exfoliators; this oil-free recipe from ModernSauce is the one I use. There's a great little shop for glycerin, oils, wax, salts, and other ingredients for making homemade bath products in Seattle, called Zenith (it's on Roosevelt, a couple blocks south of NE 65th St). I have salt from the dead sea in these; the crystals are slightly larger and more rounded/less sharp when you scrub with it. It's like washing with tiny pebbles! I scent mine with some essential oil from the bay tree (laurel nobilis) because I love the herbal, slightly masculine notes of that scent.

project 52: finale

Well. Time flies. I haven't posted. What's been happening? I proofread a couple of books for an employer (one rush job that put me in a frenzy). I'm working on some "homework" (professional development) assignments from different mentors in two completely different fields (since I don't know where things are going these days, I'm just trying to keep the balls in the air for every potential lead ... it's a lot of work. I got sick last week and I still feel tired - though maybe some of that is the weather changing). I'm finishing an article that still makes me balk - I need to keep pushing through on this, though, so I don't lose the habits of being a writer. I designed and made a quilt top for a baby quilt for the shop and I'm doing some hand-quilting on it - more on that soon; there, at least, I feel like I'm making steady progress.

But where does all the time go, really? I feel like it's slipping through my fingers lately. Time to get back on top of it and do a better job of keeping this place up.

Today, I want to share the end of project 52; finished over two weeks ago! Here are the last three cards, with prints available for two (I think I need one of the Raven, Lightbringer cards).

watercolor and acrylic on paper

buy a print of postcard 50 here

September has always been one of my favorite months. Indian Summer is truly gorgeous, exquisite, nostalgia-inducing here in the Northwest - the blackberries get sweeter and sweeter, things are a little dusty, night starts to fall earlier, and if the storms don't come to early, we enjoy a beautiful show of color as the leaves change. I was thinking about looking up through those leaves to a pale summery sky as I painted this one. Cass said it reminded him of Dr. Seuss, and proclaimed it a very happy card.

watercolor and  calligraphy ink on paper

buy a print of postcard 51 here

And here is one of my most favorite cards. The Haida people of Alaska have a story about Raven as a a bringer of light, so, as we turn to the dark side of the year, I thought Raven, Lightbringer would be a good companion with which to close this project. The circle around the little ball of light (and the white rays) echo the circle round the sun (and the pattern of its rays) from the midsommar postcard, postcard 39. And I'm always so obsessed with stargazing and hunting comets through the winter. Last year I got up one morning at 3am when temps were in the teens (incredibly cold for this part of the country), bundled up in extra socks and my husband's massive down jacket, and walked to the park to hunt for a comet - I didn't get to see it, but I did get to see some GREAT constellations. 

ink and nailpolish on paper

And finally, with little fanfare, we close with  a simple flourish of  marbleized paper and "fin."

And ... that's it. A whole year, in postcards. This was a great project. It got me to explore some new media, and I've learned some things about this format, too. It certainly was no small birthday gift, but I enjoyed this year. Last Sunday, I was suddenly a little sad - I was out on a walk with Cass and admiring some pretty rosehips and thought about asking him if I could borrow his phone and take a picture of them to use as a model, but I stopped myself: no more postcards to make, after all. Hm. Maybe there will be more cards in my future again soon. Maybe. =) Thanks so much for following along with this project for the past year; I hope you've enjoyed seeing this unfold here!

And now ... let's talk fruitcake. This week.

italian renaissance

Growing up, Italian food was, like, the height of seductive cuisine in my world. In any TV show, people who were dating, people who were celebrating anniversaries, people who received promotions ... went to an Italian restaurant. Same with movies. As far as I knew, there was nothing more romantic or intimate or special than an Italian restaurant. Maybe French - but in films and on TV, the French restaurant was a place for experts; you had to speak the names with a French accent, and the waiters were always intimidatingly superior (pace francophiles, I'm talking about a child's impressions of pop culture 25 years ago here). People were obsessed with balsamic vinegar and arugula, every fancy cook with a cable cooking show would whip out that pasta machine and I'd feel a sense of awe and desire - heck, even as small child, one of my favorite toys was that play-doh expresser toy. Man, I loved that thing! 

These days, though, you don't see a lot of hype about Italian cooking. It's everywhere, it's comforting ... probably fewer people have the time for the intensive prep work of making things from scratch. The exciting new areas of cuisine lately seem to be other Mediterranean cultures - and points east. Freekeh. Quince. Preserved lemons.

I've been wondering if it's about time for Italian food to make a comeback as a trend.

Certainly, in my own kitchen, I've been making more pasta and pizza this summer than in many summers I can remember - and yes, entirely from scratch. We even have the fancy pasta machine now, but I don't seem to have the strength to change the settings on the thickness so I only ever use it if Cass is here to help me. Most of the time, I roll my pasta by hand, with a simple, solid wood, French-style tapered rolling pin that I bought at the hardware store for six or seven dollars (seriously, sometimes the simple, basic model is the best - I love the control the taper gives me, letting me pivot the pressure and work one bit of dough or crust at a time).

Tonight, it's fava bean agnolotti with a rich, creamy curry emulsion from The French Laundry cookbook. You can click the link to go to the recipe - it's on epicurious! The guys at my favorite produce stand down at the Public Market (aka Pike Place Market) had fava beans last week and I was terribly excited to see them. "Probably the last of the season for us," they told me, and admitted that the beans were a little past their prime - and should be cooked 1-2 minutes longer than normal. Since these are probably my last taste of favas until next spring, I wanted to find a nice way to showcase their flavor; and grinding them into a pasty filling also seemed a good way to deal with the potential issue of woodiness of overripe beans. I had fun folding the pasta into a new shape (for me), and breaking out my new fluted pastry wheel to make those pretty pinked edges (another one of those cheap, hard-working basic tools, we bought the fluted wheel at Mrs. Cook's for less than $8) that are so classic.

Sometimes, it's just so satisfying to stop what you're doing and spend a whole afternoon kneading eggs into flour, rolling out dough, and carefully forming perfect bites for a special dinner. And to boot, while I was waiting for the dough to rest, I squeezed in a good research session - the limited time was just the motivation I needed to overcome some procrastination/intimidation that's totally been holding me back on putting a grant proposal together. I guess even the quiet ritual of making pasta is a comforting influence, for me!

project 52:45

ink, acrylic, paper collage on paper

prints available here

More studies, more experiments, more practice, more discoveries - all for a future painting that I haven't even begun to sketch yet.  This time, I'm testing ideas for a background, with Wallace Stevens on the brain. Specifically, Sunday Morning, a poem with special resonance for both me and the subject of my painting. In the fourth section of the poem, Stevens writes:

But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields

Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”

There is not any haunt of prophecy,

Nor any old chimera of the grave,

Neither the golden underground, nor isle

Melodious, where spirits gat them home,

Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm

Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured

As April’s green endures; or will endure

Like her remembrance of awakened birds,

Or her desire for June and evening, tipped

By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.

It's that last bit, the idea of "June and evening, tipped/ By the consummation of the swallow's wings," that I have on the brain. The water's a reference to another repeating phrase in the poem. I think I've discovered (or re-discovered, or remembered) during the course of Project 52 how very much I like illustrating, creating images to pair with words - by which I mean words that have already been written, not the words on the back of the cards, of course. It's a good thing to know about myself. And besides that bit of self-knowledge, these studies are particularly useful. I definitely figured a few bits of the final painting out in the course of making this card!

a shifting sense

Lately, it seems, I've got autumn on the brain. Seattle's basking in the heat of August - the most reliably warm and dry month of the year - but I find my nose picking up the scent, here and there, of ripe decay, the richness of fruit melting into soil, and I can feel myself on the alert for the spicy incense of rotten leaves and the first hints of smoke from nighttime fires.

I've a few kitchen projects going on today, and they're all rather nice, little, simple things, the kind of things that require more sitting time than working time - and which make a girl feel rather accomplished at the expense of a minimum of effort. Nice, that. First, I'm experimenting with a new bitters (for drinks), using rowan berries (the very ones pictured above) as a bittering agent - it was a bit of a lightbulb moment a few weeks ago, when I was thinking about the intractable bitterness of these berries. If they turn out well, I'll recount the whole process on the blog later. For now, here's a pretty picture of rowan, in my harvesting basket, in a lucky photo that looks rather lovely and picturesque. And autumnal!

And below, those bounteous late-summer beauties: dahlias. My mother-in-law sent us home from the mountains yesterday with three cut-off plastic milk jugs, each stuffed full of dahlias. I made three arrangements for our house, and two big ones (in quart-size mason jars) for my neighbours. I snuck out of the house in my nightgown, a towel still wrapped around my wet hair, and left the jars on their porches, a sweet surprise for this morning. I've since added a brilliant, hottest-pink spidery dahlia from my own garden to the arrangement on the right, tucked just above the ginormous dinner-plate one. I love all their orange, coral, and purple brilliance. So happy, so carefree, so saturated with color.

A new postcard to show you tomorrow; I'm off to attend my haul of huckleberries, picked by the side of a mountain lake yesterday. Ah, perhaps it's not so autumnal, not yet. Just me, as ever, leaning into this, my favorite time of year, that shifting late-summer/early-autumn.

week of jam, day five: alpine blackberry, two ways

Ah, alpine blackberries. So tiny, so sweet, so floral, so much harder to pick than those Himalayan monsters that run rampant everywhere in the northwest (I like those, too, though; those are the ones I grew up eating, and they will always be a quintessential flavor of summer, for me). They're ripening early this year, too; normally we don't pick them until August, but we went up to Index two weekends ago to pick the thimbleberries and found ripe blackberries (and huckleberries - also ahead of schedule!) and picked a couple pints. I made two kinds of blackberry jam: a plain one (with just a little dash of rosewater at the end, to play up the floral notes in the berries), and then blackberry-sage. I used to love blackberry-sage tea as a younger adult. I haven't had any in years, but I still think of the flavor combo fondly. So, I packed up a few jars of the blackberry jam and set them in the canner to process and then went out to the garden and picked some fresh sage, washed and chopped it, and stirred it into the remaining jam in the pot. This decision meant I had to run my hot water canner for an extra 10 minutes (on an 85-degree day, ugh!), but I think it was worth it. Now we have his-n-hers blackberry jam for late autumn - I always like to eat this in November! =)

And yes, I did get up at 6:15am on a Saturday morning to water the garden and take pictures of jam in early morning sunlight! I've been sleeping so little lately, it's kind of awful. I'm getting bags under my eyes from it - but it's so hot at night and so bright so early in the morning that I just can't get a good rest. I seem to wake up at 3am every night now, too. Sometimes I go drink a glass of water, sometimes I get up and go to the bathroom, sometimes I just pet the cat (who, for some reason, hasn't let the heat dissuade her from sneaking into bed sometime in the wee hours of morning and snuggling up into my hip ... I'm kind of glad of it, actually; knowing that we're reaching the end-of-life for her means I want every last little furry snuggle that I can get).

(Here she is enjoying the handwoven, 100% wool rug I picked up at a charity event and cleaned ... clearly, just so she could play with/on it. It's her favorite place to sleep, chase her tail, roll and loll, and of course...those fringes are fun to attack!)

week of jam, day four: blackcap raspberry

I just realized I hadn't posted yet. Seattle's experiencing a real heatwave right now and I am feeling the effects - lethargy, crabbiness, man! I do not like it when the temps are over 80 degrees! And yes, I know, I know: 80 degrees? That's ridiculous! It's so much hotter everywhere else in the world! But here's the thing: do you know what the standing record is for number of days (continuous) with temperatures over 80 degrees in Seattle? Fifteen. Fifteen is the RECORD. It just doesn't get that hot here - and after living more than a decade of my life in this city, I'm glad that it doesn't.

Incidentally, the meteorologists are saying we might be starting a hot streak to break that record right now. We're already at day six. Ugh. As the temps rise, I'm glad I finished making jam earlier this week (oh yes, I still have MORE to share with you), and won't have to fire up the stove and heat the canner anytime soon. Which brings us to today's batch o' jam: blackcap raspberries. We've been growing these berries for a couple of years now, and they are finally starting to settle in and really take off, which is exciting! Blackcaps are native to the northeastern United States, and the nice thing about them is that they can grow and fruit in part-shade. We have a lot of shade in our back garden, so it's exciting to see these guys thriving and their fruit harvest starting to really amp up, despite the lack of light. (But oh, that shady back yard is SO NICE in this heat. Yes, at this time of year, every year, I am thankful for the grove of doug fir that blocks the sun to the south, and the hemlock and stand of cedar which block the sun to the west. I don't have nearly the garden I'd like to have at this house because of  all the shade, but it is ever-so-nice in the summer - and lovely to look at any time of year, of course). Of course, unfortunately for me, one very round, very fluffy squirrel, has also discovered the blackcaps. Every morning, I have to chase him out of the thicket, the little rascal. Stop eating my raspberries!!

But back to the jam. (Sorry - the heat-addled brain is so easily distracted!) So, what do blackcaps taste like? Kind of like a mild raspberry, and kind of floral - in fact, I added a little rosewater to the mix when I made this jam, to play up that quality.

I've got a few more to share with you - I'll try and remember tomorrow, but the thermostat is going up to 90 (wah!), so I might be busy wilting!!

week of jam, day one: strawberry

Yeah, I think I may have enough jam made (and to make) to do an entire week of jam posts. I might also be getting a little sick of jam, as a concept, already - ha! This was the first batch, the batch that kicked it off: our little strawberry patch is really taking off this year. It's nice to see our little garden investments start to pay off, and the back yard start to function like an old-fashioned homesteading garden, with gooseberries, currants, elderberries, strawberries, raspberries, and huckleberries - in addition to veggie beds, kitchen herbs, and the [floral] cutting garden! I already made another batch since this one, and have another bowl of strawberries in the fridge just waiting to be made into a couple more tiny jars.

I don't really have a recipe for this: I wash and halve the strawberries (if they're large), put 'em in the pot with some lemon zest, lemon juice, and the seeds of one half of a vanilla bean. I add a little bit of sugar (for this batch, which only comprised about 2 cups of fruit, less than 1/4 cup of sugar) and cook the fruit gently until it all breaks down. Once that happens, I add a bit more sugar with some pectin stirred into it, cook and check for gel set, and then process in my water bath. The proportions are pretty loose: I use less sugar than recipes call for, and a bit more pectin, and it all works out somehow. I think jam is kind of like pie crusts and biscuits and other things - eventually, you just kind of have a feel for them and you kind of lose track of precise measurements.

I like using lemon zest, lemon juice, and a bit of vanilla bean with fresh strawberry jam; there's something about this combination that really screams, "fair food" (as in, "state fair food" - slap it on a warm, fresh scone and my husband swears it is just like getting a scone from the Fisher Scones stand at the Evergreen State Fair). I'll tuck some of these jars away and they will be forgotten, just you wait and see. He never keeps track of what I put up, and doesn't bother pawing through the cupboard. Then, one morning in early autumn, on a week when we're tired and he's frustrated with something at work and wishing he could just stay home and sleep in, I'll get up early and make a batch of scones and pop them in the oven before I hop in the shower. I'll jump out and catch them just as they finish baking. He'll wonder what the timer is for and what smells so good - and I'll bring him a piping hot scone, slathered with sweet summery strawberry jam, and it'll make everything better.

the reddening

In Czech, the word for the month of June is "červen," "the red month," because it is the month in which red things bloom and red fruits ripen. July is "červenec," "the redder month" because even more fruits and flowers are blooming. I'd say what we've got going on in the garden right now fits the bill, though not everything is red. Our strawberries are finally lighting up their slightly-shady garden spot with ruby jewels, the roses are getting ready for their second round of blooming, the black raspberries are ripening, the poppies are actually fading, the dahlias are starting, and the anemones and lilies are fattening up their buds. A time for everything; now is the time for ripening and bounty.

project 52:39

ink and acrylic on paper

prints available here

Okay, I really like this one. This one went out late, because of the time involved in making it, and because of everything that was happening last week; I was sketching in the kitchen, between and during rounds of cooking, hoping to send my brother a Midsommar postcard that would arrive right on time, as we were celebrating over here - but, alas, I couldn't quite make it all happen. Oh well, better late than never, eh? But I quite like how it turned out - the sun is taken from a 19th-Century Flammarion engraving (roughly), and I've encircled it with a flower crown of sorts, made of poppies and grasses and roses and peonies and hypericum berries and lavender and daisies and any number of things I thought to put in it.

And now that this is out and a series of meetings and volunteering work that took over the first part of my week are done, it's Thursday and I finally feel like the Midsommar rush is over - and man, am I ever tired. I have a long list to get to today, a freelancing project that I need to finish and mail tomorrow, and another one coming sometime next week. Before it arrives, I'm hoping to really dig in and make a good start on a 30-page article that I pledged to write and edit/shape with my adviser this summer. Things are pretty crazy these days. Summer is like that, though - isn't it? Everything happens all at once, while the sun shines we are superhuman.

first fruits foraged 2014: salmonberries and strawberries (of the frais de bois variety)

Ah, last night! I'm sorry! I was scrubbing chair cushions and the front walk, managed to squeeze in my workout before Cass got home from work, started dinner while he went out for a short 15-minute session on the elliptical, then he came back and we ate and I was asleep maybe 30 minutes later. Woof! Such a day!

Today, not so much. The cool mornings make it hard to get up the motivation and I admit, I'm having one of those days when the unemployment situation really gets me down. It's hard to keep one's chin up. But let's not talk about that. It does no one any good and I'm doing my very best to keep myself cheered up today.

Instead, let's look at these beautiful ruby-red berries, shall we? I thought today merited a two-fer, seeing as I missed yesterday's second post (but I *did* take more pictures - and more today, too; if my improvised plan for dinner tonight turns out tasty - and not gross - I'll share the recipe tomorrow). The top is salmonberry jam. Not a lot of salmonberry jam, but a few jars. I also put one 12-ounce jar in the fridge for Saturday's panna cotta, which we'll serve with the alpine strawberry/wild strawberry/frais de bois (whatever you want to call it) compote below. There really is nothing like an alpine strawberry: they're tiny, and just packed with an unbelievable amount of natural sugar. They make a nice contrast to the panna cotta (which is slightly sour, owing to the inclusion of buttermilk in the recipe), and such a nice taste of the wilds. This is a big half-gallon jar. I actually canned and processed the strawberries this year, since we picked them two weeks before the party and I didn't want to risk the berries - or the compote - going off before the big event. I've been storing them in the fridge, though I suppose there's no real need to. I just feel weird having canned something with so very much space left in the jar.

Alright. More tomorrow! I will continue to be dutiful and get back on top of things around here! Keep your fingers crossed that dinner isn't a disaster - sometimes, when I experiment, it's not successful. I hope, based on the number of hours I've already put in today, that this isn't one of those times!

sugarcoating

In this year's second installment of preserved flowers: candied lilac blossoms. I never realized you could candy lilacs; honestly, I always thought they were poisonous! But then I saw Chelsea's post about infusing drinking water with lilac blossoms, and that got me thinking. A little digging turned up plenty of recipes for candied lilacs - and the process was the same as one uses to candy other flower blossoms or petals: a dip in egg, and a dip in sugar, then allow to dry.

A few tips for the lilacs:

I did go out and buy dried egg whites to make these. Dried egg whites will be a bit less gelatinous when you mix them up, and that's ideal when coating delicate flower blossoms - you just want the thinnest coating of egg white. I also read that using dried egg whites eliminates any risk of salmonella, so that's a nice bonus. I found a little tub of powdered egg white at the home cake decorating store near my house for $13; it was a bit more than I'd been expecting, but oh well!

I also made superfine sugar for this, by running regular sugar through my coffee grinder for a few seconds. I think this step is important, too: just like the powdered egg whites, finer sugar means you can get a smoother coating of the blossoms (so that the shape and color of the blossoms won't be overwhelmed by a coating of thick crystals).

Otherwise, it's very simple to candy lilacs, though it's time consuming (I must have spent about 7 hours candying two and a half pans of lilacs over two days): rinse and pat your blossoms dry and remove blossoms from the stems/bunches. Using a pair of clean tweezers, dunk a lilac bloom into lightly beaten egg white (or reconstituted powdered egg whites). Tap the blossom lightly on a paper towel, twice, to remove excess egg white. Next, tap your blossom (face down) into a bowl of superfine sugar 3 or 4 times. Sprinkle sugar over the back of the bloom, then pick it up again (still using your tweezers). Tap your tweezers against the side of the bowl about three times, with some pressure, to shake excess sugar loose from the bloom. Place on a tray or pan lined with paper towels, face down, to dry overnight. A heavier coating of egg white will require an extra day to dry.

Once dry, carefully remove the blooms from the paper towel - they may stick a bit; gently work them loose, being careful not to break the petals (if you do break one, you must eat it! Darn!). Store in an airtight container in a cool, dark place (exposing the blooms to light will cause their fragrance to fade faster). They will last for some months, though the scent and flavor will fade over time  - so, ideally, use them soon after making them!

How do they taste? They taste just like lilacs smell. It's marvelous! Cass says they taste a bit like peeps, with a floral finish. (I've never had one of those marshmallowy treats, so I can't vouch for this, but two of our friends exclaimed he was right, so there might be something to that observation!) They're delightful, and delicate. Imagine them sprinkled over a cake with other flowers - or cupcakes, or floating atop a floral cocktail, or garnishing a panna cotta (this is what I want to do with them!). =)

pickled cherry blossoms

Last year, I pinned pictures from Gardenista's lovely DIY post about how to make traditional Japanese pickled sakura, or cherry blossoms. They looked so beautiful and sounded so interesting, but I found her post after the cherry blossoms had fallen for the year, and I wanted to remember to try it again when I got a chance this year. I almost missed my chance - again! But one afternoon, late in the cherry blossom season, as I looked out and admired my neighbours' gorgeous cherry tree, covered in pink blossoms, I suddenly remembered those photos. I immediately called them to ask if I could come over and pick some blossoms to pickle. They laughed, "yes, of course you may. Please take as many blossoms as you would like!" (When we first moved in to this house, our neighbours were so surprised to see me using a sewing machine that they would stop and ask (through the open kitchen window) what I was making every time I hauled it out. After more than three years together, they no longer are surprised by anything: there are new portraits being painted out on the deck all through the summer, traditional marmalades and pickles being made all through the year, I set racks of calendula blossoms out to dry in the sun ... they're used to it all now! (But they still laugh!)

So, the next morning, I hustled out to pick a big tub of blossoms, as I read we had a week-long storm due to set in by mid-morning. The best flowers to use are ones are not fully-opened yet, so that their perfume has not faded. You can include the stems and even some of the young leaves, though I didn't want to remove leaves from my neighbours' tree, so I only picked blossoms.

 First they had to be soaked overnight in cool water to kill any bugs that might be in them and release any dirt or detritus...

... and then they had to be gently set out to drip dry (above).

After that, it was time to get ready to salt. The proportions in Gardenista's recipe are loose: you put a layer of salt in the bottom of a vessel, and start putting in blossoms, adding generous handfuls of salt as you go (she estimates that you should use about 1 cup of salt per gallon of blossoms).

It looks like snow, doesn't it? So pretty. Then the blossoms are gently weighted: I fit a plate in on top of them and added a jar of pie weights, to press them into the brine created by the salt. Then the entire bowl needs to be placed in a cool, dark place for four days. Mine went into a cupboard that buts up against the uninsulated back wall of our house; it's always cool in there, no matter what I do in the kitchen!

After four days, you pour off the brine and then pack the blossoms (which have considerably less volume at this point!) in a bowl with enough umeboshi (or "ume" or "ume plum") vinegar to cover. This was the only challenge in the process: I went down to Uwajimaya and they were entirely out of ALL umeboshi vinegar! We tried a few other import shops before I finally found some at Central Market in Shoreline. Whew! I didn't see that coming! Lesson learned: acquire your ume vinegar in advance, kids!

The blossoms are weighted (again) to keep them submerged in the vinegar and go back into the cupboard (or other cool, dark place) for three more days.

Then it's time to dry! Gardenista stipulates that the blossoms should be spread on a bamboo rack to dry. Lacking that, I realized I could use the trays from the food dehydrator my parents got me for Christmas. (Perfect! Thanks, Mom!)  To keep bugs from getting into them, I draped flour sack towels over them, so that air could still circulate around them.

The blossoms are supposed to be dried for about 24 hours, until they are a little leathery and not wet anymore. I went for about 48 hours (it's so damp here in Seattle)!

And here's the final result! Aren't they pretty? And how do they taste? They're salty, but also kind of fruity, and they have a lovely cherry floral quality (yes, like almond extract!) that fills your palette.

The blossoms are packed in salt and stored in the refrigerator. Gardenista says you can also let some of the blossoms dry out completely and grind them with salt to make sakura salt. I'm going to do that - I even have some Himalayan pink sea salt that I can use, so that it will all be a lovely pink color!

happy beltane!

It's May 1. On the old European agrarian schedule, this is the start of summer (and hence, the solstice is called "midsummer," and the winter solstice "midwinter"). It's a festival of flowers, those gorgeous precursors of the harvest. I wasn't even thinking about this this morning; as I watered the garden, I picked a few loose  blooms (bleeding hearts, bluebells, avens roses, lilacs) and tucked them together into this vase, loose and free and a little wild - like Beltane itself!

However you measure out the seasons of your year, it's a gorgeous sunny and warm day here in Seattle, and it could feel more like summer. Happy Thursday! Happy day!

a new experiment in practice: project 52

I have an older brother who just celebrated a birthday last week. I've spent the month of September casting about for a good, original present - something that wouldn't take up unnecessary space in his NY apartment, something that would be personal, something that he would enjoy.

I settled on postcards. I would send him a homemade postcard once a week for this whole year. I'll document it here, though I'm going to post them about a week behind, so that he gets to enjoy having the first view.

So here's Project 52: 1. Woodburned birch postcard with acrylic. Dying Queen Anne's lace at the end of summer, set against a hillside in one of my favorite Seattle parks.