Fiber Fool

I suspect this Twain quote doesn’t ring much truer than in the Rocky Mountain region — “In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.” Certainly mountain regions anyway. It certain applied yesterday.

Just look at that drop of melted snow on the stamen!

I’m a sucker for contrast in any form - color, texture, or physical state. So I actually revel in the contrast of snow on flowers. Plus, since the snow was preceded with a good rain shower the blooms are probably safe. It worked last year. We still had a decent plum harvest so I’m not writing off one for this year. Plus, the tree really hasn’t bloomed out fully. Though I’m not certain if it will given the harsh conditions this winter.

Yes, this photo is of the same branch as Monday’s picture, just taken a week apart from a different angle!

Most years I’d likely be bitching about snow on April 14th. This year is different. We are in such desperate need of moisture, I’m elated to have it in any form. We started with a nice slow rain for several hours last night and I was surprised to wake up to snow. All told, cold surfaces like the cars gathered about 3 inches of snow before it stopped. It was very wet and heavy snow, as is the norm for late spring snowfalls. According to the city utility rainfall map we exceeded 1″ of moisture. I’m not certain what their collector set ups are so I don’t know how they handle the snow. That could be just the rainfall total as we were pushing 3/4″ at about 2am yesterday morning. Whatever the real totals, I am thankful!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Oh, and the first surprise for Nourishing Knits subscribers will be awarded next week, so if you haven’t subscribed yet, I recommend you do so soon! You definitely do not want to miss out on this one.

The plums at the top of yesterday’s post were the start of a batch of plum butter from the nearly 8 pounds we harvested two weeks ago. I turned almost 6 pounds of plums (yes, that is a lot of slicing in half and pitting to do) into about 11 cups of plum butter! Because the house is hot and we’ve been relatively humid for us I didn’t want to run two batches through the canner. Our altitude requires each batch to boil for 20 minutes, rather than the standard 10. So we canned 6 cups, froze 3 and kept 2 in the fridge.

We (meaning Drew mostly, but I was there holding the ladder and cheering) worked hard for these plums. We had several late snowfalls this spring, but fortunately they were all preceded by freezing rain so we think that saved some of the sets. The plums blend right into the foliage of the tree and are kind of hard to find. Added to that, most of the fruit was near the very center of the tree (where I assume set fruit survived due to the increased temperature from the tree’s respiration) and quite high. So, we ultimately resorted to laying down a bunch of sheets, then Drew got up on a step ladder and grabbed a branch with a hoe and shook. The dogs really loved that approach. Well, until we lured them inside the house with treats and then moved like lightning back out the door before they could notice (or follow us).

These plums are a rich ruby red on the inside. Very juicy and sweet. In contrast, the dark (almost black) skin is really tart. Cheek puckering tart! The whole shebang (well, minus pits) goes into the blender and then is cooked down with the sugar into the plum butter. Including the sweet flesh and the tart skins creates a really complex flavor that I just love. In fact, if I weren’t positive that we couldn’t possibly go through all 11 cups of plum butter before the tree produces again I would have a really hard time sharing!

I had made two separate batches of plum butter three years ago (pictured at left) when our plum tree last had fruit. It was a bumper crop that year and I can’t imagine how many pounds we would have gotten if we had taken the same approach to harvesting as we did this year! The first batch of plum butter that year was really good, but the spices were almost more forward than the plums. The second one ran into problems because we had to evacuate the house half-way through the cooking down process because of localized flooding. I moved it to the crock pot to continue cooking while we were away, but it ended up with a slightly burnt taste.

This time I worked off of the same recipe from Cooks.com, though I cut back on the sugar just a tad and on the spices. I also used some fruit fresh (aka citric acid) in the plums to hopefully stave off the drastic browning that occurred before. I just loved the deep rich garnet color we got this time so I’ll be certain to do the same in the future.

Because of the cut back on the sugar and the fact that I hadn’t made it in three years this batch ended up a tad on the runny side. It passed the frozen saucer test, but it didn’t really thicken much at all once cooled. In some ways I’m thinking that is okay. It has made it a very versatile condiment in the fridge these past two weeks. I’ve used it the traditional way, on biscuits and toast. But I also took it to Monday night knitting where we had it on Rye Wassa crackers with ricotta salata, aged parmesan and a 1 year manchego. Then last week I used a couple tablespoons in the sauce for a stir-fry I made for dinner with a bunch of our CSA veggies and some tofu and it was awesome! I think it would also be really good on pancakes or french toast too. In fact, we may have to give that a try for our Saturday brunch!

It is a lot of work. I think I was in the kitchen for nearly 5 hours to make those 11 cups of plum butter (thank goodness for audiobooks). Canning and preserving is hot and humid work too. But it is soooo worth the effort! The result is unlike anything you’d buy in the store. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen plum butter for sale, even in the upscale kitchen stores and boutique tea shops I’ve been in. There is no corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup like in so many store bought preserves, even ones that try to look homemade or small batch-like. You have full control of the process and the ingredients and I like it that way.

Later this week I’ll be repeating the effort. We just got a 24 pound box of organic western slope peaches for a fantastic price thanks to Amanda ordering an extra box for us through her work. They aren’t ready just yet, but I’m hoping to get to process them Friday or Saturday. I’m planning on both jam and peach butter and Drew is planning on liqueur. I wouldn’t mind freezing 6-8 cups of sliced ones for a few winter peach cobblers or green smoothies either. We’ll start with the preserving since we don’t have a deep freeze and freezer space is kind of a premium. Oh, and there was a spicy pickled peaches recipe a friend of my mom’s made from Better Homes and Gardens last year that I’d kind of like to try too. Mom and dad both loved the little bit that was shared with them.

Do you have any favorite peach recipes that you must make each year?

The 0 plums I was expecting due to our late freeze this year was actually a little over 7 pounds… There is much preserving ahead of me this evening!

Last week I was pleasantly surprised when I finally toured the garden and realized that we had planted a few perrenials last year that came back well and appear to be surviving our dramatic temperature swings this spring. There was sage doing really well. I swear every time I look out at it it has grown larger. I’m going to need some good sage recipes soon. Our chives came back and were starting to send up a few shoots for flowers. The strawberries were looking healthy as well. I also discovered we had volunteer arugula. I’m not certain if it reseeded itself or if some of last year’s seeding that didn’t germinate last year did this year. Either way, I’ll take my arugula and eat it too!

Since the chives looked nearly ready to bloom I chopped down one clump of them to just 2″ high. DH is not a fan of potatoes so I didn’t want to use them for that. Much of the reading I did on drying them pretty much made me think it wasn’t worth the trouble as everywhere I looked talked about how much flavor it lost when air dried (as opposed to freeze drying). We had some left over ricotta on hand from making Roasted Garlic and Pesto Cheesecake for SnB so I opted to give a King Arthur Flour bread machine recipe for Ricotta Chive Bread a try.

Some of the comments on the recipe noted the need for much more flour than called for. Since it was a cool and rainy spring day when I made the bread I decided to just mix the dough in the machine and bake in the oven, that way I could better evaluate the moisture of the dough. I ended up just fine with no adjustments, if not slightly on the dry side as forming the ball wasn’t terribly easy. I just love the green specks throughout the dough and final bread. If the flavor doesn’t scream “spring” to you the look of those flecks does!

Since my chive yield from that cutting was a bit more than the called for 1/2 cup I decided to go the easy route for dinner that night and make scrambled eggs laced with ricotta and the remaining chives. Sometimes simplicity is the best way to enjoy something. Plus, ricotta is rather subtle in flavor and having it less altered in the eggs made it more of player in the flavors of the meal.

I broke the rules and cut into the bread before it was completely cool. There is just something much more exciting about home baked bread when there is enough warmth to gently melt that butter…

This year has been a very humbling one for this fledgling gardener. There was much hail throughout the month of June. Three really bad ones with hail piling up and sitting for hours before melting. That has left the garden a bit stunted and behind. I’m not sure how much harvest we will ultimately have, but we had out first meal using stuff from the garden last night.

I have learned that arugula stands up well to hail and is fairly effectively kept from bolting by being planted around the edges of the pumpkin bed. I had a large harvest of fairly petite arugula leaves yesterday morning. I had read they don’t keep very well so I wanted to use them right away. I whipped up a batch of arugula and walnut pesto that I served over cellentani pasta and white beans with carmelized onions and chèvre with a side dressing of balsamic grape tomatoes. There was also of course the required garlic bread :-)

It was delicious if I do say so myself. I’m looking forward to the leftovers as a cold salad for lunch today :-) There is a bit of the pesto left over as well. Perhaps we’ll have that on some polenta cakes???