Come Hail and High water

These past few weeks, as temperatures swayed madly back and forth, any syncopation between plant and planet seemed momentarily lost. The mercury rocketed to record heights, then fell just as hard. Ninety-six degrees segued into frigid slurries of rain and surreal ice storms.

Hens panted in the heat, their beaks slung open like secateurs; bees splashed themselves across hives in cooling desperation; greens secretly conspired to bolt.

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Agri-Ficionados

The long, slow fruition of all the heat longing solonacea, who sulked through June’s cool nights, has finally begun to show promise, as clusters of Sun Gold, Lemon Drop, and Black Cherry tomatoes have emerged jewel-like on sprawling indeterminate vines, and peppers and eggplant are standing tall above inter-planted lettuce.

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Secrets to Canning Plum Butter

Biscuits and Plum Butter (Photo credit: Vegan Feast Catering)

Canning Plum Butter is a delicious lost art. Plum butter goes well with all types of bread and is a great addition to breakfast or lunch. If you haven't yet canned plum butter or tried this recipe, then I can vouch that brown sugar in plum butter is a great variation of a classic...

I had some brown sugar that I wanted to use up. At my house it tends to dry up before it gets used. I also had some plums that I wanted to can so I came up with the idea of using brown sugar in plum butter. The amount of brown sugar that I had was about 1/2 of what I needed so a also used white sugar.

It turns out that I can't really taste the brown sugar in the finished product. However the whole experiment made me curious about what it would taste like to make apple butter with brown sugar instead of white sugar. I just used up my brown sugar, and now I feel half tempted to buy some more just for another experiment.

I feel like I am being pretty redundant, in writing a recipe for plum butter, since I usually make all of my fruit butters pretty much the same. It is fun some times though to experiment with changing the spices. I think using lemon peel in plum butter rather than cinnamon is a nice change of pace.

Plum Butter

Use one of the following methods to prepare the pulp. As always, I recommend using Fruit Fresh when cutting up the fruit.

Method 1: Quarter pitted plums. Cook plums until they are soft (about 20 minutes) using just enough water to prevent sticking (enough to cover bottom of pan). Run the plums through a food mill.

Method 2: Peel, quarter and pit plums. Cook plums until they are soft (about 20 minutes) using just enough water to prevent sticking (enough to cover bottom of pan). Process in a blender or food processor.

Measure pulp. For each quart of pulp, add 2 1/2 cups sugar and 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Cook slowly until thick. At first you only have to stir occasionally, but as it thickens you will have to stir more often. The plum butter is ready when it will mound up on a spoon.

Fill hot canning jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Add lids and process in a water bath for 10 minutes.

High altitude instructions
1,001 - 3,000 feet : increase processing time by 5 minutes
3,001 - 6,000 feet : increase processing time by 10 minutes
6,001 - 8,000 feet : increase processing time by 15 minutes
8,001 - 10,000 feet : increase processing time by 20 minutes

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Experimental Prickly Pear Syrup

In addition to a fondness for making jams and jellies, I also have a fondness for Cacti. Don't ask me where I got it from. I don't know. I just happen to think that cacti are very attractive plants.

The photo of the prickly pear fruit is one from my own garden. I don't know what variety of opuntia (the scientific name for prickly pears) it is. I didn't get it from a green house. I took cuttings from somebody else. The fruit are not as big as the prickly pear fruit that you sometimes see in the grocery store, but hey, at least it is a variety of opuntia that will survive Iowa winters. After all everything tastes better when you grow it yourself.

I had been looking at those fruit longingly for about a week wishing that I had enough to make jelly. Eventually, my cacti should spread enough that I will be able to make jelly.

When I don't have enough of some type of fruit, I have been known to fill in with apple juice, However in this case, the amount of apple juice that I would have to use would be so much that I was afraid that you wouldn't be able to taste the prickly pear.

I decided to make syrup instead. The method that I used was loosely based in this recipe. I used clear jel rather than corn starch. Then I canned it in 4 ounce jars with 1/4 inch headpace, using the waterbath method. I processed it for 10 minutes.





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Banana-Lime Jam Tips

I had sort of lost interest in making jams that have bananas in them just because they seem to burn so easily. Then Retrogal sent me a recipe of her mother's. Naturally I was curious. I had never had a banana jam with lime in it before, so I had to try it.

It also had the interesting instructions to "boil until bananas turn pink." Well I cooked it down until it was the consistency of fruit butter, but the bananas still didn't look pink to me. I ended up deciding to change that to "cook until thick."

Of course if the goal is to cook it until it is thick like fruit butter, then I couldn't help but wonder if it would thicken faster if I simply started with less water. I didn't try it with less water, so I don't know. In any case, I definitely liked the taste.


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