Dehydrated Melon

Melon baller.

Cactus Burritos

This week I needed to go talk to the owners of a local Mexican grocery store for an article I'm writing. They make and sell their own tortillas, chips, and salsa, so I decided I'd get burrito fixins for our first group meal in the new house. They had cactus for sale! I asked my cashier how to prepare it and she told me her mom always peeled it and sauteed it. Sounded simple enough.

The cactus wasn't more than half an inch thick and after skinning one side I didn't think there'd be anything left if I skinned the other, so for the other side (and the other cactuses) I just cut off the little black pimples instead of skinning. Then I fried them up in olive oil with some zucchini we had lying around.

The tortillas were too big for a skillet, so we folded them and put them in the oven.

Our assembly line featured a parsley pico de gallo that Natasha made, salsa, sour cream, avocado, rice, garlic fried black beans, and the cactus/zuke stir-fry. Jessica shows you how to put it together.

Pre-rolling.

Post-rolling!

The cactus was yummy. It was slightly slimy in the way that okra is, though when I was cutting it up all I could think about was aloe. It was tart flavored, but not actually sour. Added a wonderful tang and juicy crunch to the burritos. I have one left and am thinking about scrambling it with an egg for breakfast.

The Long and Winding Road to Zweschgenschnecken

Zweschgenschnecken is German cinnamon plum rolls. They were my fun experiment last week. As soon as I found the recipe I knew I had to make them. The recipe, however, called for plum butter, which was not something I already had on hand. Maybe this is where most people would go out and buy some. But I figured with plums in season right here I might as well make it another canning project. Thus began my three day quest to plum rolls.

On day one, I climbed a tree and picked some beautiful Italian prune plums. The things were huge; the bigger ones weighed a quarter pound a piece.

On day two, I made them into plum butter. Big excitement- the plums were completely free-stone (they pulled away from the pit without any flesh clinging on)! Usually I see free-stone peaches and nectarines, but I'd never encountered this quality in a plum before. I didn't even have to use a knife, they ripped in half just about effortlessly.

I also used real vanilla beans for the first time ever! At 77 cents a pod at the co-op they couldn't be beat. I hadn't realized that the actual beans are so little, like teeny tiny vanilla caviar.

• 
  
• Used this recipe for plum butter from epicurious.com, but I made the following adjustments: Upped the vanilla to two beans so the flavor didn't get entirely masked by the plums, and used my favorite Pomona's Universal Pectin which allowed me to go down to 3/4 cup sugar.

With my changes, the recipe was:

• 2 vanilla beans, halved lengthwise
• 4 lb ripe plums, cut into 1/2-inch wedges
• 3t pectin powder and 4t calcium water (you make it up from additional powder that comes with the Pomona's pectin)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup lemon juice

On day three, after two days of prep work, I was plum ready to roll. Recipe is here.

I used melted margarine instead of vegetable oil.

Anyone know a better way to measure cream cheese? This worked, just wondrin'.

Used Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free flour mix so Whitney could still eat them despite her wheat allergy.

20-inch square? It was better not having a ruler around because I probably would have measured it. That was as close to a square as it was gonna get.

More free-stone loveliness.

I toasted pecans instead of almonds because I already had them and it sounded like it would be better anyway.

The plum butter was absolutely gorgeous and the vanilla flavor, though still subtle, was significantly stronger after a day's worth of chilling. I was so glad I made my own, it made the whole thing that much more satisfying.

Plum pizza pie!

At this point I had to take a moment to compose myself before attempting to roll up the giant monster. I'll admit, I was a little bit nervous. I wish I had had wax paper to have rolled it out on, but I didn't and the aluminum foil that I substituted got a little stuck a few times.

But I did it!

So much goop. I didn't take pictures of these things on the pan before baking for a reason. Specifically, it was a mess.

But when they came out of the oven...

So beautiful! With a little extra plum butter on the side for dipping, they were just the German comfort food I'd hoped they'd be. The toasted pecans were show-stopping. The challenge was all worth it, though I imagine the whole rolling up thing will only get easier with more practice.

Tomato Marmalade

Just one picture from the tomato marmalade Whitney and I made together. Not sure if she's going to post more, but we used this recipe (http://momsrecipesandmore.blogspot.com/2009/06/t-is-for-tomato-preserves.html). My Mom's Recipes And More calls it tomato preserves, which I personally prefer the sound of, but due to the length of time that we simmered the tomatoes with the lemons, the flavor was so much like marmalade we decided that if we called it anything else we'd be deluding ourselves. If you make it, the most critical instruction is to weigh your tomatoes after you've blanched, peeled, cored, and seeded them. It makes a substantial difference in weight, and while this is one of the few things we've made where we've actually accepted the given quantity of sugar, if we'd used the proportions from the whole raw tomatoes, we would have used way more sugar than we needed. I have a feeling that this will become a recipe I pass down in my family. Can't wait to spread my tomatoes on toast all winter long!

Incredible Spreadable Wild Edibles

Well, only one of the fruits in this spread is technically "wild," but we didn't have to pay for any of them which makes them as wild as they need to be. This is the culmination of a few days worth of picking. It started on Saturday when I found the biggest red huckleberries I've ever seen growing out at Jessica's house. Normally red huckleberries (at least the ones I've seen) are about pinhead size, but these were the size of giant peas. Coral, translucent, perfect globes, they were like picking rosy pearls off a bush. Then yesterday Whitney and I trekked to the East Side in the rain to harvest blueberries from my old neighbors' yard. On the bike ride to get dry clothes, we found some juicy Asian pears and bagged them. I was ready to jam.

My normal technique for jam and preserve making this year has been to take ideas from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and apply them to the basic Pomona's Pectin recipes which allow you to use far less sugar, basically as little as you want, but will still gel. But I was pleased to discover a section of the Ball book that I had previously overlooked on making jams with no added sugar or pectin, using cans of frozen fruit juice concentrate for sweetener and apples for natural pectin. I halved the basic recipe for Spreadable Blueberries, substituted the Asian pears for the apples (only to add some apple back to the recipe later), and replaced two cups of the blueberries with the huckleberries. The grape concentrate called for definitely stands out and reminds me of the juice popsicles my parents used to make my brother and me as kids, but I can still taste the other fruit, especially since I left it chunky.

Adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving:

Makes about three 8-oz (250 mL) jars

4 Asian pears, cored and chopped

3 cups blueberries

2 cups red huckleberries

1 can (12 oz) undiluted frozen unsweetened grape juice concentrate, thawed

1. In a large, deep stainless steel saucepan, combine all ingredients. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and boil gently, stirring frequently while mashing fruit, until mixture thickens, about 1 hour (I went for two, it just wasn't thick enough with one, but I also left some of the fruit whole, cuz I like it like that. Maybe it would have been quicker if I'd mashed all the fruit.)

Jewels.

At a low boil. Makes me want hot sangria.

After the first hour of simmering, I became skeptical that the jam was going to thicken enough so I went out and picked a few (three) apples (how convenient that there's fruit everywhere!) for some added pectin. I've heard that the skin is where most of the natural pectin is in the fruit, so I just grated in the skin and left out the rest of the apple. With another hour of simmering it was perfect.

2. Prepare canner, jars, and lids in boiling water bath.

3. Ladle hot jam into jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles if necessary and wipe rims (I like to dip a cloth into the boiling water and then wipe them down). Center lid on jar. Screw band down til fingertip-tight.

4. Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Remove canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool, and store.

5. Prepare for blue tongue.

Good idea, Whitney

A few months ago it finally occurred to me that when people ask what I do with my time as an unemployed student, I should just say "cooking" and leave it at that. I spent my first year of college studying food, culture, work, political economy, globalization, agriculture, sustainability, race, gender, class, social oppression, people's movements and more, but all with a connection to food. This year I took off from school and began to act on what I'd learned.

I started my first garden in containers. I cut out most processed foods from my diet. I've been trying to eat as seasonally and locally as possible for about a year now. I shop at the food co-op and the farmers market. I've spent the summer harvesting, canning, pickling, drying, freezing, and preserving as much food as possible to cheer my pantry and my tummy through the winter. I love to bake. And I cook daily. Food has been, is, and will always be the most constant element of my life. It's only recently that I've realized and started doing all of this, but it's become my biggest joy and passion. Ultimately, it's the foundation of my lifestyle. It's not something I push on others or want to hold others up to. It's just what feels good to me, what satisfies my mind, body, and soul, what I'm economically and physically able to do, and what I've chosen.

Until now, I'd only ever bookmarked recipes and drooled over other people's food blogs. I never really make time to journal about other things so joining the "blogosphere" had never really crossed my mind. Then this week my friend Whitney told me that she'd started her own food blog, The Foodture is Now, primarily to have a record of all her cooking exploits and good ideas later down the road. "Wow," I thought, "I'd never thought of it like that." So I'm taking her cue and starting my own food log. A flog, if you will.

I'm hoping this flog will inspire as well as be a window into my life for friends and family. And, depending on how religiously I keep up with it, be a time capsule of all my creative concoctions for me to look back on when I'm 95 and still a Goop.

To good eats and sharing the journey,

Kate