The recipes in the book involve dried egg, margarine, cooking fat, and various other substitutes for actual food. And there's a note explaining that austerity and rationing persisted for years after the end of hostilities. Interesting historical and social notes there.
Fast forward to today's world of luxury, and jam! Woman can not manage with memories alone. She needs jam. Today it's Misfits peaches and plums and lime chunks. I'm trying the lime instead of lemon as a source of pectin. And I macerated the fruit since last evening in sugar and the lime pieces, to see if that did anything interesting.
Then added the rest of the sugar, not as much as usual, didn't have a lot of sugar in the house, but we'll see how it works anyway. Sometimes additional boiling can take the place of a full complement of sugar. In the background, the jars and lids bubbling away sterilizing.
No pictures of the unboildownable stage, since it's way too hazardous to be coping with boiling jam and a camera at the same time
And here's the result. I guessed pretty well, since it exactly filled the three recycled glass containers I'd boiled. I won't know till it's completely cooled how well it gelled, but it did the two drops off the side of the spoon test fine, and the wrinkling on the cold saucer test, too. I'll know for tomorrow's breakfast. And if it didn't gel well, I'll give it a different name, Sauce aux peches et whatever plums is in French.
Cook's note: as well as humans liking organic produce, fruit flies are crazy about it. I have never had so many buzzing into my face, getting all over, before I got Misfits produce. Which probably proves that the produce has not seen insecticides. So I wielded the giant spray bottle I had filled to take care of some critters that were eating into the house from the outside, and succeeded in wiping them out. Just a mixture of lemon juice and vinegar. I had also added borax when the baseboard infestation was worse, but then washed the spraybottle and after that just used the benign mix.
Just as well, since I had to spray the apples and pears on the counter, then wrap them in clean cloths, and when I got tired of firing at these teeny little guys, I looked up ideas for a home fruit fly trap. And found that an open jar containing a cup of apple cider vinegar with a dash of dish liquid worked just fine.
It's standing next to the fruit and there's population of tiny corpses in it, must refresh it now, and the fruit is left alone. No more critters in my teeth. It's odd that even when their Auntie Edie is clearly seen at the bottom of the jar, more fruitflies climb in anyway. You'd think they'd avoid the same fate. But then we have humans, supposedly of a higher order of intelligence, claiming that they don't need to wear masks, so I guess we have no room to criticize the fruitflies.
Then after all this strenuous activity, it was time to display the makings of lunch. Remember the pickling I did a while back? Carrots and beets? they came out a treat. And they daily grace my lunch wraps or sandwiches, whatever I'm doing. The colors scream at each other, so they're separated on the plate.
This is the Misfits Beet and Carrot pickle extravaganza, with the American Cheese on nice sliced deli ham, on wholewheat bread with a little spread of mayo. It's really a Lurid Lunch combo.
Nice day, and this evening will be about noting Biden's now well over 300 in the Electoral College vote count, took Georgia and Arizona definitely, and I'm spinning and emailing and generally loafing this evening.
I sent a donation to the Georgia organization that's funding the runoff voter registration and get out the vote push, and signed on with MoveOn to get the lady holding up the funding of the transition to get with it and release the funds. We already have Republicans pushing to extend the daily intelligence briefings to Biden. And Homeland Security has made an official statement that the election was perfectly clean, won fair and square, and no evidence of any tampering or fraud. A couple of dozen DOJ AGs have written to urge Barr, the USAG, to drop the attempt to investigate the election, on the grounds that no evidence of any kind has been found to support his suspicions.
So we hope things are lurching in the right direction.
We get fruit flies in August. They are long gone now. The apple cider works well.
ReplyDeleteHope the jam is as you’d like. I had the last of my tomatoes from the garden ripened and made roasted tomato soup today. So good. I hate to waste food.
That soup sounds excellent. I have never roasted vegetables for soup and I think I will. It makes a real difference to the flavor.
DeleteThat wasn't anonymous it was me!
DeleteYou and Marie Smith always make me hungry...
ReplyDeleteIt's tempting when you read food chat! So many ideas.
DeleteI do love your comparison of the fruit flies who jump into the vinegar with humans who jump into the public without a mask. Too true. We are all fruit flies at heart, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful jams.
One year I pickled carrots WITH my beets. They were very good. Both came ready to eat at the same time so why not?
Yes, my pickling is opportunistic -- carrots available, pickle them, beets a few weeks later, same.
DeleteThat cookbook must be a most interesting read even if most of the recipes may not be quite what we would eat these days.
ReplyDeleteFruit flies - miserable little critters. We have a bowl of apple cider vinegar (covered with a hole-filled plastic wrap so they can't get back out) on our counter for most of the summer. Thought we had them under control but Resident Chef had the bright thought that maybe he could over-winter the chive plant inside and it appears it brought a 'hatching' of more.
That's the thing with fruit flies, their rapid reproduction. Biologists love this for research. Me, not so much.
DeleteI have cookbooks from my great aunt and great grandmother. They are fun to read and I have found people were more conservative about food than these modern days.
ReplyDeleteCooks were certainly frugal because raw materials were labor intensive, and they typically had a limited range of ingredients available to them, depending on country and region.
DeleteMaybe you'll blog about the cookbooks you have? I'd certainly be interested.