Coda: tomato jam, roast vegetables

About the tomato lemon jam, I had some on wholewheat Irish buttered bread for breakfast. The flavor is lovely,  just tangy enough. This recipe is for one fewer cups of sugar, from the other one I used,  and it's good. They're both good. Here's both. You choose.

The supposedly Amish one, probably just a traditional recipe, really, but it was in a book of Amish lore and food, I've used for years. As you see from the stains and the notes.

Here's the one I used yesterday

I would suggest longer boiling though, to get a better consistency. I might even try reboiling some as an experiment. You do boil the tomato pulp a while, but I think it would have been good to boil the whole mixture at least a few more minutes. It's also possible I over did the lemon, since I like it, and introduced too much liquid. I think that can be solved by reboiling. 

In other adventures, I embarked on resticking, with newly purchased scotch tape, the pieces of the trouser pattern (I made one pattern, so I'm an insider now, we say pant and trouser) which I cut yesterday.

And made the discovery which I should have realized, that parchment paper is processed specially to be nonstick, duh. Which is why you use it in baking. Oh. Explains the failing painter's tape yesterday. 

And when I unfolded the pattern to retape with scotch tape, it all fell into its components parts. Since I had labeled it once, only the main bits, there were now several anonymous shapes to puzzle over. I ended up having to get the master sheets out again and reassemble everything using them, then taping both sides of every seam. Hm.

It's fine now. It did make me wonder at my possible eptness or, more likely, ineptness, at my winter plan of jigsaw puzzling, though.

Anyway, that's done. 

And the next adventure, I wonder if Mercury is in retrograde, was to try sharpening my blunt old fiskars using the knife sharpener.

This did not go well. They will now not cut Irish butter. Nor silk, nor paper, nor anything. They just bite the fabric between the blades.

They're definitely safe. Useless, but safe. Even the one inch of sharpness they had before was barely restored by cutting then sanding with a nail file, the only available emery paper.

That's not cutting, scissors, that's gnawing! Martha Stewart uses a special Fiskars Sharpening  Tool, but I don't think I'll invest in a tool to repair my thirty year old scissors which cost about ten dollars new.  They're in the recycle as of now. I have a backup pair which I will leave alone.

Meanwhile here's what I like to cut fabric with, working fine. One small, one big.

And, to show that this morning has not been a total loss, I realized I have the makings of a great waistband for my forthcoming trouser, or pant. Look at that prestitched edge of the sari silk piece. Wheeee!!

Hope springs eternal. It better around here, considering the blunders executed by the resident human.

I'm off for lunch, pita stuffed with roasted vegetables. Onions, broccoli, mushrooms, hot sausage. Heavily seasoned with Old Bay.

Roasted yesterday to make several meals.

Then a fresh farm peach, like yesterday.

And there's a Stacey Abrams to read this afternoon. The day's looking up.

The morning, seems so long ago, started with a quick sortie out front to pull out the dying Montauk daisy plant. 

I have another variety doing fine, but this one was totally brittle and literally fell out of the ground into my hands. One bag of debris to the trees, back indoors to breathe again, it being a trifle warm out there. 

Who says life's short? Today's been about three weeks long, and it's only one o'clock. 

The garden looks better, all the other plants just instantly filled in the space. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Late summer, and tomatoes

Now that the roads are dry again, time to do a bit of postponed shopping.  Vital yogurt, scotch tape for paper pattern, and other such urgent needs. 

And, on the way home, braving the heat/ humidity package, a stop at the farm for tomatoes and peaches.

I deliberately didn't get them from Misfits, partly because I like to include local farmers in my budget, partly because there's no peach better than one picked fully ripe this morning a mile away, and in my lunch today.

The last picture explains the yogurt stop. Pinch of baharat on the peach, sprinkle of pure cane sugar on the plain yogurt. 

And Roma plum tomatoes, big this year, needed for a rare extravaganza of tomato lemon jam. It's wonderful, everyone who tastes it wants more, after being amazed at the ingredients. 

However, it's pretty labor intensive.

The tomatoes went through several chapters of my audio book, what with peeling, via boiling water, quartering, deseeding, dicing, boiling. 

The bowl of a dozen large tomatoes, became one bowl of dice for the jam, foreground, and one bowl of skins and seeds and innards for future soup use, background. Nothing at all wasted.

I had prepped and frozen the lemon ages ago, zested it and  saved the zest for other use.

This recipe uses pectin which I don't usually use, but happened to have some.

And my guesswork was spot on. I got exactly three cups of dice, just by pretty much guessing the need at the farm stand. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket quick.

And here's the lovely result

If I like it, neighbors will get a share. It's great for breakfast, on toast. Or over ice cream. Or, nearer home, over plain yogurt. Or anything really. I expect it would be a good condiment with meat, but that's only a guess.

Meanwhile back at the leftovers in the freezer, the extra rice from the chicken dish, the rest of the canned diced tomatoes, and now a container of tomato innards. 

This looks like a soup is suggesting itself. Also as if it's high time I defrosted the freezer.

I used to have a massive chest freezer back in the day when I also had a massive vegetable garden, and a young son. In July I'd defrost, toss out of the back door, onto the grass, big chunks of ice, and young Handsome Son and the boy next door played summer snowball fights. Loads of fun, just chucking the ice about till it melted.

I don't think he would take me up on that offer now, a little more mature, perhaps. I'm not sure I am though.

Come and frivol a bit

So, in urgent need of something that absolutely does not matter, I threw a Teddy Tea. The best Shelley china, hand-crocheted cloth, bears are the Downton Abbey of toys.

And I thought since this is one reason I buy Roma plum tomatoes, and keep lemons frozen just in case, I might as well make a little batch of Tomato lemon jam. 

I was short of sugar, so I halved the recipe, which was fine,  because I only had one jar available anyway.

Cut-out recipe from long gone cookbook, with added undecipherable notes, food stains attesting to the history of making this jam.

The boiling water I dropped the tomatoes in, to peel them,  later served to sterilize the sole jar, and, still later, was poured over the dishes in the soapy sink. Waste not etc.

And I now have a mini harvest of one jar, probably two pints.

It's very tangy, excellent on toast for tea. Or ham as a sauce. Or fish. Or ice cream or yogurt. Or a lot of things in fact.

I've usually served it without naming it, to people who would get all bent about tomatoes in jam. Then they taste it,  want more -- one guest asked if she could take some home!-- and then I tell them what it is. At this point some people look at the jar wonderingly, but my work is done.