Jam, knots, braids, HOAs

Yesterday I made a small pot of blueberry jam 

Enough for me for now

And today paneer with chive blossoms, a softer version this time, very good with fruit.

Containers of whey for upcoming carrot and pumpkin soup 

This is really good, so much more flavor than the kind you buy.

I'm returning to my patterned bands as I learn some finishing techniques. Here's one with whipped ends right,replacing the temp knots left, 

and one with braided ends, the latest band off the loom.

There's more to do after the weaving's off the loom. I think next will be the heddle I made with special slots for the pattern threads.

Following on our condo chats and how some people vow never to live in one, a few thoughts.  

I've been a renter, an owner of a freestanding house and owner of an HOA townhouse and an HOA condo apartment. My credentials!

I'm also a single older woman with neither financial nor physical strength to run a free standing house. Contractors are not easy to deal with when there's no man in the picture.  The unnecessary struggle is very real, and exhausting. Also expensive.

That leaves the other choices. Renting puts you at the mercy of a landlord in a state where there are only vague guidelines on rent raises and what's reasonable.  To rent a house exactly like the one I live in is currently $3k a month. Plus utilities. That's more than my income.

One bedroom apartments are currently $1800 monthly plus utilities. Rents have doubled in the last five years 

Then if you want to buy a townhome like mine, they're currently about $550k for two bed two and a half bath, 1200 sq ft footprint.

Condos like my rental are up to $200k.

I bought when prices were lower, the condo, mine only, not joint, I bought at rock bottom because the market was poor at that time. We bought the townhouse from the builder at a desperate price because they wanted to complete the sales and leave the governance.

For a single older woman the trade offs of living with an HOA are: there's a massive inbuilt insurance of the whole development, trash is picked up, snow cleared, including paths and walkways, landscaping is done, mowing, dead trees removed, exterior maintenance and repair is HOA work. 

I'm responsible for the inside of the townhouse. Likewise the condo apartment I rent out.  I couldn't afford the maintenance and repair on a freestanding house,  all of which I'd have to contract out.

So that's why I live where I do, and it's a beautiful place. If you have the strength or partner or finances to live elsewhere, you're very fortunate. It's good to remember you're speaking from an advantaged position.  

But when you don't have those privileges, you make other choices.  I'm happy with mine despite the drawbacks I've been complaining about lately!

Happy day everyone, play the hand you're dealt! It's all good sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony and Ursula 

 

Jam today!

 Yesterday, having seen off the last of the Freecycling for now, I turned to being a pioneer lady, and made a gallon of laundry soap.  

Speaking of free cycling, Gary stopped in to tell me his puppy had attacked and destroyed the dracaena, so the issue of free cycling it was concluded!  I suspect she was jealous of all the attention we were paying the plant instead of her. I've had dogs do that when they were upset with my attention going to projects that weren't them.

 Anyway the laundry soap, blog edited to add in picture of ingredients for Inger

Usual recipe of grated castile soap, borax, washing soda, and this time I added a few drops of lemon essential oil for a scent. This is not hard to make, works just as well as expensive detergents, and suits my frugal soul. It needs to stand for 24 hours before you use it. I didn't mind postponing laundry in a good cause.

The good thing about making laundry soap is that it cleans the grater and the pans you use. You just scrub and rinse them and they're all shining.

So that's why I made the jam second, using the clean pots.

This is dried apricots and cranberries, which is why it looks dark. I soaked the apricots overnight, which gave me a glass of juice yesterday with breakfast, drained off them. Waste nothing!

Then I made the jam, not too sweet. The texture is heavier than with fresh fruit, and the flavor good enough for jam or a sauce with meat or fish. Breakfast today was jam on toasted wholewheat.

I'm planning on a sheet roast today, butternut squash (cooked), onions, hot sausage, carrots, a golden meal, more or less. The sausage is a new thing to me, plant based, the only hot, spicy one available. The turkey and chicken sausage are sweet, not my choice. We'll see.

Our big storm started as snow, was rain when it touched down, and is now a bit of flooding. The high winds didn't happen, but this kind of rain tends to bring down trees as the earth softens, so around here, trees along every road, you drive on high  alert.

Happy day everyone, watch as you go.

Food in war and peace, fruitflies always

 This came out in 1985

A local friend sent me this image, the cover of a book she has in her collection, a gift from an English friend, very old at the time, who clearly remembered all this wartime rationing and cooking.  I love that the title is a pun on Vera Lynn (The Forces' Sweetheart)'s hit song in wartime, to keep morale up:  We'll Meet Again!  M sent it after reading yesterday's post.  Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5C4meGkNyc

Vera Lynn lived till June 2020. Aged 103.Think what she saw in her long lifetime. Some people are reviving her song to help get us through the pandemic. Think what she saw in her long lifetime.

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.

The Dollivers Get in a Jam

Tomato and lemon jam, to be exact.  Call Me Michelle and Bette Davis stood on their diva rights and refused to join the kitchen squad.

But Blondie Firstborn, NameMe and Dreads, kitted up in their kitchen whites, set to to make this year's tomato and lemon jam.
The recipe, which I've changed many times since I first used it, an Amish one which doesn't mind tweaking, is for six half pints of jam, but I make three whole pints, why not.

  

Then with the able assistance of Dollivers, stationed at various point, we sterilized all my  Mason jars, three, that is, 

zested the lemon using my handy zester, out on its maiden voyage, and very good it is, then sliced the remaining lemon. The recipe says to just slice, but I find the outer skin goes tough in the jam, so this will be better.

Then simmered the tomatoes in the huge pot I use about once a year, add in a packet of liquid pectin, and the lemon, zest, slices, everything, 

and boil it a bit before adding in the sugar and getting it to an unboildownable boil.

At this point I remember each year why it's important to have a huge pot, doesn't bear thinking what would happen if it didn't have room to boil out of all control like this.

And we have three lovely jars of jam, setting up nicely.  And three Dollivers proudly showing their kitchen expertise before leaving me to deal with a mountain of dishes.. they complaining also about being tired, though.

The cook's privilege is to eat the last little bit out of the pan, and wow was it good. Very tangy, more interesting than fruit jams, great for breakfast.  But now I have to make hot biscuits to go with.