Family recipe Monday: let the canning begin: fruit preserves and butters

September cottonwood, Canyon Lake, 2008

Fall is galloping in on all sides up here, no doubt about it. We are digging out the recipes for canning and preserving fruit as the crop peaks and starts to diminish. These are the recipes that keep summer with us in the cold months. The wild plums, those that survived the hail, are positively shimmering, and the apples are ripening nicely. It may be a week until the equinox, but up here fall is in full force, never mind the calendar.

Migration is also in full force. Gene starts his fall hawk watch on Dinosaur Hill this week. The chipmunks and squirrels are agitated, seeking and carrying off as much food as they can. We got into a long discussion on Friday about hibernation and torpor. The little mammals have to conserve their energy in the cold months for all they're worth. As the light wanes, they race around to get ready for the long--but hopefully not final--sleep.

We'll get the fruit canning fully under way next weekend. It's a bit of a hassle now, but the jewel tones of the preserves in December will be all the more worth it.

The raspberries are at their peak or just slightly past it right now. Raspberries do particularly well in freezer preparations, as opposed to boiling-water canning baths which tend to destroy their delicate texture. Here are two recipes for that.

Raspberry freezer jam

3 cups raspberries, cleaned and picked over
5¼ cups sugar
2 T lemon juice
1 pkg. Sure Jell fruit pectin
¾ cup water

Put raspberries into a large bowl and crush fruit lightly with a fork or potato masher. Add sugar and lemon juice. Set aside to allow sugar to dissolve with fruit for 10 minutes. Place the pectin and water into a small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil 1 minute until mixture turns clear. Pour over the raspberries and stir well for about 3 minutes. Immediately spoon into clean clear plastic containers, leaving ½" headspace. Seal with lids and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours. Freeze for up to 1 year. May be refrigerated for up to 1 month.

Red raspberry preserves

4 cups whole raspberries
Juice of 1 lemon
4 cups sugar

Place raspberries in kettle with sugar and lemon. Bring slowly to a boil over low heat, shaking all the while. Do not stir. Continue shaking pan and boiling for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Cover and let stand overnight. Freeze. Yield: 7 half-pints.

This is a Pennsylvania Dutch classic from Gene. "Smidge" is a great word. Interpret this amount as you will. Use the lowest possible heat and let it go as long as needed--this is ideal for a slow cooker, too. We have used this with the small wild apples up here with terrific results. This is the taste of fall. The fruit does not have to be perfect for this--we actually get our best results from the fruit on the ground.
 

Apple butter

For ½ peach basket of apples, peel, quarter and core apples. Put in oven at 200*. Add ½ lb dark brown sugar, 1 T cinnamon, ½ tsp allspice, smidge of clove (ground) or 1 whole clove. Allow to cook down. If not peeled, run it through a food mill. Let cook all day or longer.
--Gene K. Hess

Wild plum jelly

For wild plum jelly, I can't improve much on the slightly terse directions left to us by Gran Brooks. Plums are, or should be, loaded with natural pectin, though last year's needed a bit of pectin added. It was either that, or enjoy wild plum syrup all winter. If you are using wild fruit, I recommend simmering the whole fruit in a stockpot and then pressing it through a sieve to separate the juice from the pits and skins. Ignore any recipe directions that call for halving and pitting--these are tiny. Simmer the whole plums in batches of about 2 lb. Press the juice through a clean cotton jelly bag for greater clarity. For 5 lb. of juice, use 7 to 7 1/2 cups of sugar, and simmer for at least half an hour. Test the jelly on a chilled plate--if it does not set up promptly, add a little more pectin and keep stirring, simmering, testing and tweaking until you get there. You'll know it when you see it--it goes from a thick liquid to a soft jelly in a matter of seconds when it hits the chilled plate. It's magic. Wild fruits vary so much in sugar and pectin content, depending on the year and the weather, amount of rain, etc., that it's hard to give mathematically exact instructions. Follow standard canning directions. Wild plum jelly has an especially lovely color that shines out in Christmas gift baskets. The unsugared juice can also be the base for a great homemade wine. Or so I'm told.

Crabapples are falling all over the place right now. You can save and pickle them for a great side dish for the holidays. This is a very easy recipe with a great texture. The crabapples are preserved whole with no preparation other than a few tiny skin punctures (optional); you even get to leave the stems on. We have used any leftover syrup as a base for sweet-sour recipes of all kinds. It's that good. You can put the spices in a small muslin bag if you like.

Spiced crabapples

3 cups apple cider vinegar
4-5 cups brown sugar
1 t whole cloves
2 sticks cinnamon
4 pounds crab apples

Rinse but leave stems on crab apples. Do not peel, though you may wish to poke the skins with a small fork tine in 3 or 4 places to make sure that the syrup sets all the way through. Boil vinegar, brown sugar, cloves, and cinnamon together. Mix the spiced vinegar and sugar and returrn to a boil. Add crabapples to syrup and boil until apples are tender. Remove the fruit with slotted spoon and pack into hot sterilized jars. Pour in syrup. Seal. This recipe can be doubled.

Happy Monday, happy fall.

Family recipe Monday: let the canning begin: herb jellies

Still life with basil: last year's haul of wild plums

If you have been keeping up with the saga of the new building, you may be thinking that this is no timne for me to be writing about canning. It's true: we cut the ribbon this coming Wednesday, September 1. I will post more on that as soon as the long week is over.

But canning can't wait forever. The produce season up here is short, and it is coming to an end. So many things are happening simultaneously: new building, new semester, new course to teach, family in town....and more canning. I am hoping that we get another bumper crop of wild plums and apples this year. In the meantime, we are finding treasures at the farmers' market. Best find yesterday: the first of the year's pears and perfectly ripe raspberries, which will make a pie or cobbler to feed the aforesaid visiting family.

Here are some recipes for herb jellies. The herbs are coming in, too, and these make sweet and savory jellies with pure gem colors. The possible combinations are endless. If you've got others, please share them. I don't worry too much about the food coloring unless the jelly looks off-putting. It all tastes wonderful.

Mint jelly

6 lb. apples, stemmed and chopped
6 cups water
3 cups sugar
¾ cup fresh mint leaves, crushed
2 T lemon juice
2 drops green food coloring

Combine apples and water in a large Dutch oven; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 to 25 minutes. Strain apples through a jelly bag or 4 layers of cheesecloth, reserving 4 cups juice. Discard pulp. Combine reserved juice, sugar, mint, lemon juice and food coloring in Dutch oven. Bring to a rolling boil, stirring frequently. Boil until mixture reaches 220* F on candy thermometer. Remove from heat and skim off foam. Quickly pour jelly through a sieve into hot sterilized jars, leaving ¼ ” headspace. Cover at once with metal lids and screw bands tight. Process in boiling-water bath for 5 minutes. Yield: 4 half-pints.

Note: If you don't normally use a candy thermometer, it's a good time to learn how to do so, unless you prefer uncooked freezer jams. Jellues need to be cooked and clarified, and can be very touchy.

Basil jelly

6 lb. apples, stemmed and chopped
6 cups water
3 cups sugar
2 T chopped fresh basil leaves
2 T lemon juice

Follow directions as for mint jelly (above), substituting coarsely chopped basil and omitting food coloring.

Rose geranium jelly

4 cups apple juice
8 drops red food coloring
1 1¾ oz. pkg. powdered fruit pectin
5-½ cups sugar
7 fresh rose geranium leaves

Combine juice, food coloring and pectin in a large Dutch oven. Quickly bring to a rolling boil, stirring frequently. Add sugar and return to a rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil 1 minute, stirring. Remove from heat and skim off foam. Place 1 rose geranium leaf in each of 7 hot sterilized half-pint jars. Quickly pour jelly into jars, leaving ¼ ” headspace. Cover at once with metal lids and screw bands tight. Process in boiling-water bath 5 minutes.

You can use this one with any of the "flavored" geraniums.

Rosemary jelly

1 ½ cups white grape juice
8 drops red food coloring
½ cup water
8 drops yellow food coloring
3-½ cups sugar
3 T fresh rosemary leaves, crushed
1 3-oz. pkg. liquid fruit pectin

Combine all ingredients except pectin in a large Dutch oven. Quickly bring to a rolling boil, stirring constantly. Cook 1 minute, stirring. Add pectin and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture returns to a rolling boil. Continue boiling 1 minute, stirring. Remove from heat and skim off foam. Quickly pour jelly through a sieve into 4 hot sterilized half-pint jars, leaving ¼ ” headspace. Cover at once with metal lids and screw bands tight. Process in boiling-water bath 5 minutes.

Sage jelly

1 ½ cups apple cider
¼ cup chopped fresh sage leaves
½ cup water
6 drops yellow food coloring
3-½ cups sugar
1 3-oz pkg. liquid fruit pectin

Follow directions as for rosemary jelly (above), substituting coarsely chopped fresh sage leaves.

Thyme jelly

1 ½ cups white grape juice
3 T fresh thyme leaves, crushed
½ cup water
8 drops red food coloring
3-½ cups sugar
1 3-oz pkg. liquid fruit pectin

Follow directions as for rosemary jelly (above), substituting crushed fresh thyme leaves.

Herb-juice jellies

2 T dried herbs
3 cups juice
6 cups sugar
1 bottle liquid pectin

Combine dried herbs and juice. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let steep 10-15 minutes. Strain and add water to make 3 cups. Add sugar and bring to a full rolling boil. Cool one minute. Add pectin and return to hard rolling boil. Pour jelly into sterilized jars and seal immediately. Makes approximately 8 half-pints.

Juice-herb combinations

Cranberry-basil
Orange-marjoram
Tomato-lemon thyme
Pineapple-mint
Grapefruit-rosemary
Grape-sage
Boysenberry-thyme
Lime-tarragon
Apple-sage
Apple-rose geranium
Beet-ginger
Lemon-parsley

Happy Monday. Save everything you can.

P.S. for those who asked: we kept the kitten.

Family recipe Monday: let the canning begin: melon pickles

August on the prairie. Feel the heat?

For the first time in three years, we broke into triple-digit temperatures on Sunday. Classic August: the heat is on, the farmers' market was bursting with produce, and the Central States Fair has started. We may check out the quilting and canning displays later in the week, when the cold front predicted for tonight brings the high back down to the 70s.

I realize that our friends and family in Texas are howling with laughter at our wimpiness in the heat. Don't forget that we could have our first snow as early as five weeks from now, if last year is anything to go by.

So we are stocking up on the fresh produce and hauling out the canning gear in earnest. The jars and spices are back on sale at the feed store. I bought a pint of chokecherry jam at the farmers' market and will report on the taste as soon as the biscuits are done. You have to have biscuits for a jam taste test, after all.

Canning in August is counterintuitive--no one wants to work on a hot day in an even hotter kitchen. The older girls knew that this was the right time, though, and that the work could not wait, especially pre-refrigeration. Anything that could be preserved was canned, smoked or salted. Out here, berrying was (and is) in full swing.

I'm especially intrigued with melon pickles. I've seen more varieties of watermelon rind pickles up here in three years than I ever had before. It takes a truly gifted cook to figure out how to make an apparently inedible rind or a very watery, juicy fruit into a splendid preserve.

The cantaloupe pickles are new to me, and they are amazingly good. Here you are preserving the cantaloupe flesh itself, not the rind. Heed the warning about selecting non-mushy cantaloupes, though.

Cantaloupe pickles

3 firm (not mushy) cantaloupes
4 T pickling spices
1 cinnamon stick
3 cups cider vinegar
2 cups water
4 cups granulated sugar

Seed and peel the cantaloupes. Cut into 1” cubes (about 12 cups). Tie the spices and cinnamon into a double layer of cheesecloth. Place in large nonreactive pot along with the vinegar and water. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes over medium heat. Remove from heat; add melon ands let stand for 1 ½ --2 hours, tossing occasionally. Add the sugar and stir well to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for 45 minutes or until the cantaloupe becomes slightly transparent. Pack the melon into 4 sterilized pint jars, making sure there are no air pockets in the jars. Cover with the hot syrup, leaving ¼“ head space. Seal and process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes.

Watermelon pickles are just the opposite: you can't really save the flesh (so eat up!), but the rind makes a lovely, savory, translucent preserve that goes well with anything just off the grill. There are  dozens of recipes for watermelon pickles: here is my favorite. Note that, in all watermelon pickle recipes, the green outer rind is peeled and discarded. You can't save everything, but you can come close.

Ginger watermelon pickles

White part of rind from 1 small watermelon (~5 cups)
4 T salt
6 cups water
2 sticks cinnamon
1 tsp. whole allspice
1 tsp. whole cloves
4 cups sugar
2 pieces preserved ginger, sliced thin
2 cups white vinegar
1 3” piece fresh ginger, peeled
1 lemon, thinly sliced

Peel outer green skin off whole water melon and cut watermelon into wedges. Cut off white rind and reserve pink flesh for another purpose. Cut white rind into 1” pieces and put into a large bowl. Sprinkle with salt and add cold water to cover. Soak overnight for at least 12 hours. Drain in a colander and rinse well with cold water. Place in a saucepan, cover with water, bring to boil and boil for 10 to 15 minutes. Drain in colander. Combine remaining ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook 10 minutes, then add rind and simmer gently, uncovered, for about 1 hour or until the rind is clear. Remove the fresh ginger. Ladle pickles and liquid into hot sterilized jars, leaving ¼ ” headspace. Divide lemon slices and spices among jars. Top with lids and screw bands tight. Process in boiling water for 10 minutes. Store in cool dark place.

Give these until at least November before you open them. You'll love the aroma in the cold months. Happy Monday, and stay cool.

Family recipe Monday: let the canning begin: vinegars

Upland sandpiper on the move

Fall migration has started. The birds that were moving north in April are already moving south. People have been hearing shorebirds, like our upland sandpiper, flying over in the twilight and calling to each other on their long journey. The blast-furnace heat of the past weeks is subtly cooler, and the days are just perceptibly shorter. The fall semester is two weeks away, as is our grand opening of the new building. The birds are not alone: this is a time of moving and transition on all fronts up here.

And, just to add to the hectic pace of moving, it's time to start saving the summer magic for the cold months. The summer harvest is in full swing. It looks like another bumper-crop year for wild plums, apples and raspberries. We'll try to make a trip to the fair at the end of the month, where I will be checking out the canning and quilting shows. It's like going back in time 50 years. I'll be setting up a little canning expo of my own at home over the next couple of months.

One of the easiest canning techniques is the preparation of herb, fruit and vegetable vinegars. This is the right time to get these done so that they can mature nicely for holiday gift-giving. Start them now and let them sit for a few months while you look for the perfect gift bottles. Preserves are like casseroles: Make them so that you can keep some and share some. By December, these will have a lovely color and shine.

Basic herb vinegar

 Add 1 cup of fresh herb or spice or 1/3 cup of the dried version to each quart of cold vinegar. Leave for 5 to 6 weeks to develop flavor. Then strain the vinegar into clean bottles and add a fresh twig of herb for show. Cap tightly and store.

As the base you can use any of several vinegars--white, wine, cider or malt. The white vinegar will let the flavor of the herb or spice shine through. Other vinegars add their own characteristics to the end product.

If you want flavored vinegar in a hurry, simmer vinegar and spices for about 20 minutes. Pour into bottles and cap. It’s ready for use without waiting for it to mellow. Care should be taken so that the vinegar is not boiled or it will destroy the acetic acid in the vinegar that is essential to preserve the herb foliage.

Variations

• Dill-garlic-black peppercorns (use on salads and fish)
• Oregano-garlic-red chiles (meat marinade)
• Tarragon-lemon peel-cloves (fish and green salads)
• Bay leaves-juniper berries-allspice (beef marinade)
• Mint-lemon-garlic (use to baste chicken and fish)
• Mint-cider vinegar (great for fruit salads)
• Thyme-red chiles-garlic (meat marinade)

Ten-herb vinegar

Parsley
Lemon balm
Thyme
Rosemary
Mint
Oregano
Basil
Chives
Marjoram
Dill

Use 1 tsp. of each herb per quart of vinegar with the exception of rosemary and thyme. These herbs are very strong, so use in small amounts (a pinch).

Basic fruit vinegar

1 lb. fresh fruits or berries
1 quart distilled white vinegar
Sugar

Sort fruit, rinse and drain in colander. Cut large varieties of stone fruits into ½” sections. Discard pits; peeling is unnecessary. It is not necessary to pit plums and sour cherries. Transfer fruit to a large glass container and, using a potato masher or hands, crush fruit to release juices. Blend in vinegar. Cover tightly with plastic wrap. Store in a cool place for 3 to 4 weeks, stirring every day. Line large glass bowl with a pillowcase and pour in the fruit and vinegar. Gather up 4 corners of fabric and knot onto a broomstick handle. Hang mixture over a bowl overnight to allow vinegar to drain; do not squeeze fruit mixture. Preheat oven to 300* F. Discard drained fruit. Measure vinegar: 3 T sugar for every 2 cups of vinegar. Place sugar in a baking pan and warm it in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, pour vinegar into a large wide pot that is no more than 8” deep; vinegar should be no more than 4” deep. (Keeping vinegar shallow expedites boiling process, which preserves the color.) Place vinegar over high heat and warm. Stir in warmed sugar and quickly bring to a boil. Boil 3 minutes to prevent fermentation. Pour into a clean container and let stand overnight. Add appropriate garnish to sterilized bottles. Slowly and carefully decant vinegar into bottles. Discard sediment remaining in container. Cap or seal bottles. Store bottles in a cool dark area until ready to use.

Variations

• Peach-ginger: 2 oz peeled ginger, cut into ¼ ” slices to basic peach cider mixture.
• Blueberry-mint: 1 lb. of blueberries to 1 cup of fresh mint.

Onion vinegar

6 large Texas or Vidalia sweet onions, peeled, chopped
1 T salt
1 T sugar
4 cups white vinegar

Place onions, salt and sugar in a large clean crock or glass jar. Heat the vinegar in the microwave about 2 minutes on High (100%) and pour over onion mixture. Cool and seal. Store in a cool dark place for 1 to 3 months. Clarify by pouring through a coffee filter. Pour into decorative bottles and add fresh or green onion to each bottle. Seal and label. Yield: 4 cups.

Happy Monday. Save up the summer to light up the winter.

Family recipe Monday: jellies and preserves

Mary Marcella Walker Brooks and children

All the signs point to another productive year up here for both cultivated and wild fruit and other produce. This is the third year of good rains after a seven-year drought. Look for the ongoing summer canning saga on these pages as the wild apples and plums ripen and the farmers' market expands. Right now the late spring harvest is just starting, and we're not seeing local fruit yet.

The cooks in our families were all farm girls or just one short drive away from the family farm, and they all saved every possible scrap of food for the winter months. Pickling and canning began in early summer and ramped up throught the first hard frost. That meant many days of boiling away in the hot months, but many more days of fruit in the cold months.

I have a little cookbook from 1934, The Art of Modern Cooking and Better Meals: Recipes for Every Occasion, by Meta Given, which I read every time I need to be reminded that I am a slacker. According to Meta, I should have 970 quarts of canned food put up to feed a family of 5 for a year, including canned meats. I'll get right on that, once I recover from testing her suggestion on how to find out how much pectin is in fruit juice, using equal amounts of the fruit juice in question and grain alcohol. You rock, Meta. We've been running this experiment every evening and will have scientifically significant results as soon as we can remember what it is that we are looking for.

Here are a few suggestions from the Simple Gifts files.

Gran Brooks’s directions for making jelly

For grape, raspberry, blackberry, or plum jelly:

Cook fruit until done in very little water; remove from fire and squeeze through a flour sack. Put juice on fire and boil hard 10 minutes, add as much sugar as juice and when beginning to boil, boil hard 2 minutes and pour in glasses. The time is counted from the time it boils real hard.
--Mary Marcella Walker Brooks

Bear in mind that sugar is a preservative as much as it is a sweetener in these pre-refrigeration and wood-fire recipes. The high heat and sugar release and set as much natural pectin from these particular fruits as possible. Wild plums may need a little help in the pectin department if you want a firm-set jelly, something I don't think my great-grandmother's generation worried about too much as long as there was a good-enough set. They did, however, place a high premium on the clarity (translucency, if you will) of the jelly;  hence the straining directions.

Here's a more recent recipe that produces a lovely preserve.

Marmalade gold

1 orange
1 lemon
1 cup water
2 T lemon juice
~1 lb. fully ripe fresh apricots
~1 lb. fully ripe fresh nectarines
7 cups (3 lb.) sugar
½ bottle Certo

Cut the orange and lemon in half and remove seeds. Do not peel. Chop fine. Simmer the chopped fruit with the water and lemon juice, covered, for 20 minutes. Meanwhile peel apricots and nectarines by dipping into boiling water to loosen the skins; pit and slice; chop very fine. Add enough of the apricots and nectarines to the simmered mixture to make 4 1/2 cups. Put in large pan. Stir in the sugar. Over high heat bring to a full rolling boil; boil hard, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Remove from heat. Stir in Certo. With a large metal spoon, skim off foam. Stir and skim for 5 minutes to cool slightly and avoid floating fruit. Ladle at once into sterilized jelly glasses. Cover with hot paraffin wax. Makes about 8 cups (9 half-pints).
--Shirley Johnson Shelton

If you are canning these in a hot-water bath, the paraffin is not necessary, and vice versa. Certo is concentrated fruit pectin, either liquid or powder.

Here's one for later in the summer. Note that this preserves the entire peach, and you will have to deal with the pits when you are serving them later. Trust me, you won't mind doing that. These are awesome. I'd let them stand for at least a week or two before opening them, to let the flavors deepen.

Sweet pickled peaches

6 lb. peaches
3 lb. sugar
1 pint water
1 pint vinegar
4 oz stick cinnamon
2 oz whole cloves
1 oz ginger

Select firm clingstone peaches. It is better to have them too green than too ripe. Peel and drop at once into a syrup which is made by boiling together the sugar and water and boil for 15 minutes. Cool quickly and allow to stand for from two to three hours. Drain off syrup, put vinegar and spices into it, boil for fifteen minutes, then add the peaches and cook together for half an hour. Let stand overnight. Next morning, drain off the syrup, boil for twenty minutes, add the peaches, and continue cooking for fifteen minutes longer. Cool again and let stand for two hours or overnight, then boil all together until the peaches are clear and tender. Pack peaches into cold jars, garnish with snips of stick cinnamon, cover with strained syrup, seal, and process quart jars for 20 minutes at 180* F (simmering).

Happy Monday.

Family recipe Monday: pickles

We are all ready for the farmer's market to start up again this year. This being the northern part of the Great Plains, the season of productivity starts later and ends earlier than the season in the southern extent of the plains (aka the tropics of the Texas Panhandle), where I grew up. My colleagues in the tropics of DC and the Southeast are gleefully writing about tilling gardens and planting containers full of lovely greenery. Yesterday, I was looking at three-foot-high piles of snow left over from the last storm that hit the Black Hills. This is just what spring is like up here. Last year at this time, we were only halfway through the blizzard run for the month. The container plantings will have to wait a bit.

In the meantime, I am pulling together the various pickling recipes from the Simple Gifts files. Here are some I'm planning to try this year, in addition to the various crabapple, wild plum and other preserves that worked well last year. Here's one from my aunt Melba's mother, from Louisiana.

Slack lime pickles (sweet)

1 gallon cucumbers, sliced
1 cup slack lime
2 gallons water

Slice cucumbers and soak 24 hours in lime water. Wash and soak 1 hour in clear water. Drain well.

Mix:
3 quarts vinegar
8 cups sugar
2 T salt
1/2 box pickling spice

Cook pickles 1½ to 2 hours, or until tender in vinegar, sugar, salt and spice. Put in jars and seal.
--Mrs. Royal D. Campbell (Melba Campbell Johnson’s mother)

Note: slack lime (or slaked lime) is the same as pickling lime. Up here, we can get it at the feed store, in pickling season.

It seems that everyone in the family had a different recipe (and even a different name) for the mixed-vegetable preserve that my grandmother called chow chow. This one could be mild to outright scary, depending on your choice of hot peppers.

Chow chow

1 gallon green tomatoes
5 large onions
1 large cabbage head
1 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ green (bell) pepper
12 hot peppers
1 ½ tsp. each cloves, cinnamon, ginger
1 T salt
3 to 4 apples
4 cups vinegar

Chop green tomatoes fine. Salt and let stand overnight. Press out juice and add other chopped ingredients and cook 20 minutes. Can. To double: use 1 peck green tomatoes, 10 large onions, 6 cups vinegar, 3 cups sugar, 1 T of each of the spices, 2 T salt.
 --Vada Brooks Johnson

Notice that doubling the recipe does not necessarily meaning doubling all the ingredients. If you are following the casserole philosophy of one to keep, one to share, you will find that you need to be careful about the doubling proportions in spicing and canning. In this recipe, for example, you already have enough peppers for taste and heat before you begin doubling. Trust us on this one.

Here is a classic from the 1950s. Red food coloring, cinnamon sticks AND Red-Hots cinnamon candy are used for an unexpectedly zippy preparation. I have to admit that I have not tried to make this one, myself...

Cucumber rings (Lois’s pickles)

1 gallon cucumber rings, peeled, sliced, and centers cut out
1 ½ cup pickling lime
8 ½ quarts water

Combine and soak 24 hours. Drain and wash enough to get rid of all lime. Combine 1 cup vinegar, 1 T alum, and 1 small bottle of red food coloring. Add to cucumber rings and add enough water to cover. Simmer 2 hours and drain off. In another pan, mix 2 cups vinegar, 2 cups water, 10 cups sugar, 8 sticks cinnamon, and 1 10-oz pkg. Red-Hots candy. Bring to a boil and pour over rings. Repeat a second day. Heat all to a boil on third day and seal.
--Gladys Brooks Strickland

More on this subject next week. Happy Monday.

Family recipe Monday: pears

It's a frosty Monday morning and I'm not happy about being an adult human instead of a hibernating bear. Hibernation sounds like a great idea right now. But I've warmed up with cinnamon tea and am off to face the day. Just don't ask me to be perky yet.

Gene will soon be posting a series of family recipes from the Hess-Shaffner side. These reflect a totally different heritage, pure Pennsylvania Dutch, and some are even older than any I've collected from my side of the tree.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about pears...

Pear preserves

1 quart thinly sliced pears
1 cup sugar per quart pears
Very thinly sliced lemon to taste
Water to cover

Cook over very low heat to right consistency.
 --Mrs. E. A. (Leo) Tipton

I am not sure who Mrs. Tipton was; I'm assuming that she was a family friend who shared her recipes (unlike some people we know, or have read about). I love the combination of exactitude on the slicing and heat, but vagueness on the consistency. Hint: cook this until the syrup coats a spoon, but the pear slices are still intact. You're making preserves, not jam, and these are lovely. The preserves will continue setting up in the jar as they cool. I'd use at least half a lemon per quart, and make sure that the water only just covers the pears. mmmm....
 

 

Pear honey

4 quarts ground pears
3 quarts sugar

Cook in pan over medium flame until pears are tender and juice is clear. Add 1 quart crushed pineapple--continue cooking 10 minutes.
 --Vada Brooks Johnson

Pineapple was another exotic fruit that transformed cooking in the dryland areas when it became available in stores. People put it in everything they could get away with, as I recall. The pears were ground with a hand mill/food mill. You could use a food processor for this, with no problems. Just don't overdo it--this should be a coarse grind.

A note on the recipe card itself: this is obviously a sheet from a scratch pad rather than a card. My grandmother and her mother wrote down recipes on any paper that was at hand, and my grandfather always had scratch pads from the businessmen he worked with as an architectural draftsman. This is a prime example. I think we need to do a little local research and find out what we have in our recipe papers from businesses that no longer exist. We could do a micro-history of the businesses in the area.

Finally, here is a preview of the Shaffner-Hess recipe files. Gene's mom Dolly was an ace cook and had the dietitian's degree to prove it. Her recipes are short, crisp and exact. More on her when Gene gets his recipes up.

Early American pear pie

Make pastry and line 9” pan. Fill with:

Pare and slice firm pears—6 cups. Mix ¾ cup sugar, 1 tsp nutmeg or cinnamon, 2 T flour. Mix through pears. Fill pie tin, dot with butter, cover with crust. Bake 425 [F] for 35-45 minutes.
--Dolly Shaffner Hess

Being a fan of eating produce in its season, I only have six or seven months to go before fresh pears are available. I'm ready for them right now. This is why hibernation would be such a great idea. Snarl. Happy Monday.