It's probably no secret that I really enjoy home canning, especially jams and curds.
I find the entire endeavor very fulfilling, in a terre à table kind of way. The bulk of my ingredients come from the local farmer's market, my yard, or as a result of my urban foraging efforts. Canning gets me outside and enables me to connect with the earth and the people who farm it. I like that.
Continue reading "Kitchen :: Pink Plum Jam + Homemade Jam Jar Labels" »
| | |
| | |
Turns out, it really is a small world, after all. About three years ago (wow, has it really been that long?), I was thinking of starting a food blog. Knowing nothing about blogging, I was intrigued when I read on line that BlogHer would be hosting a food blog event in San Francisco. Maybe I could learn a few things to get me started on the right track.
| | |
| | |
Making homemade jam is a little bit like finding true love.
Some people think it's not worth the trouble. That it's too much work, too difficult, too time-consuming. And with all those hot juices bubbling away, there's a good chance you might get burned.
| | |
| | |
The first food blog I ever read was Chocolate & Zucchini. I was searching for a recipe that would produce a chocolate and pistachio pound cake similar to my then-favorite afternoon treat from the cafe on the first floor of my office building. Although Google didn't turn up any recipes similar to the cake I craved, it did lead me to Clotilde's Pistachio Pound Cake post. Until that moment, I didn't know there was such a thing as a food blog. To be honest, I didn't know there was such a thing as a blog. I started clicking around the site. There were dozens, nay, hundreds of recipes. But what really drew me in was the writing - the recipes were preceded by wonderful vignettes about the author's family, friends, travels, life. Then I noticed the comments from other readers, and the links to some of their blogs. Before I knew it, an hour had passed while I clicked from site to site to site, exploring this new world. It was like flipping through a really great magazine, only better, because most of the bloggers weren't professional writers, chefs or restaurant critics... they were just ordinary people who loved food.
| | |
| | |
When we were preparing to buy our first home six years ago, it was - to put it mildly - a seller's market. Houses were selling like hotcakes. Time and again, we would make an appointment to see a house, only to hear from our real estate agent the next day that it was already taken. So when I saw the listing for a cute little house with hardwood floors inside and roses in the front yard, I didn't hesitate. "Please go see it today," I begged my husband. "If you like it, let's make an offer." He did, and we did. By the time I saw the house a day later, three more people had made offers on it, but they were too late. It was ours.
Our little house was built in the 1940s. It's old, it doesn't have central air conditioning (yet), and it's probably a tad too small for our family of five. But we love it. The prior owner was a sweet old lady named Agnes, who was in her eighties and had bought the house over 40 years earlier. She had outlived her first two husbands and was getting ready to move to Oregon with her third. Agnes had accumulated so many "treasures" during the time she lived in the house, when she finally moved out and I saw the house empty for the first time, I was shocked to find there was a door in the living room that I didn't even know was there, so hidden it was by her many belongings.
| | |
| | |
