I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had to learn how to make strawberry freezer jam. I’ve been even more fortunate in that I never even tasted store-bought jam until I was practically an adult.

As a result, I’m spoiled. Spoiled rotten. I turn up my nose at Smucker’s, and even those fancy top-shelf brand jams can’t satisfy.

I never had to learn how to make strawberry freezer jam because every year I saw my mom make it right in front of me. Sis and I got drafted to help pick strawberries in our grandparents’ strawberry patch. I recall crouching low, pushing through the leaves, and searching for the elusive strawberries Grandma insisted were still there even though we were sure we’d gotten them all.

Nowadays we buy our strawberries already picked from local growers. Rhode’s Strawberries, run by “Captain Bob” Rhode of Chesaning Showboat fame, is always our first choice. Most area growers this year, though, complained of small harvests and we wound up going about 35 miles away to find reasonably-priced berries.

let’s make strawberry freezer jam!

Making strawberry freezer jam is a snap because there’s no special recipe. In fact, deviation from the standard recipe is frowned upon because it will likely result in failure of the jam to set up properly. Just clean one quart of strawberries per batch of freezer jam. Have one package of Sure-Jell or other pectin on hand for each batch. Then chop up those berries. You could briefly, carefully whirl them in a food processor, or use a potato masher, but I find the chopper to be my favorite.

Oops, you can’t really see the chopper in that pic. Here’s a better one! See, it’s like a biscuit cutter, but darksided.

Add the sugar to the chopped strawberries. I’ve got a double batch going in this picture; that’s why there’s so honkin’ much. You can totally double batch it, but don’t even think of triple or more batches at a time. That’s crazy talk.

At this point in the process, if you’re gonna be snapping pictures, you’d better have someone else around, because the stirring and the pouring and the stirring again and the zomg fill the jars before jam sets madness is going on and things are, if not exactly hectic, then not quite “Let’s stop and compose an artsy photo” conducive.

See, for the above, after the lime went in the coconut sugar went in the strawberries, the water went into the pectin, the pectin-water went into the strawberry-sugar, and the pectin-water-strawberry-sugar went into the adorable little jars. And all pretty quickly too, because if you lollygag, the jam will set up before you get it into the jars, which isn’t a tragedy but is a bit messy.

The strawberry freezer jam recipe is in every package of Sure-Jell, and I’m including it below as well, with tips and commentary Kraft simply does not offer. Oo la la.

strawberry freezer jam recipe

Every time I’ve made strawberry freezer jam, and every time anyone I know has made it, I’ve gotten more jam than the recipe predicts (5). I always wind up with 6 cups or 6½ cups. So be prepared with extra clean jars/containers. In fact, that’s always a good idea when canning or preserving. You don’t want to stop in the middle of something time-sensitive to wash jars.

yield: 5–6 cups
special equipment: chopper or food processor; funnel
time: 60 to 90 minutes, plus 24 hours

1 quart strawberries
4 cups granulated sugar
¾ cup water
1 box Sure-Jell fruit pectin

Wash 6 cups’ worth of containers and lids in warm soapy water and dry thoroughly.

Hull and wash strawberries. Chop strawberries until they’re soupy and contain chunks in the size you desire.

Stir in the sugar. It won’t all dissolve right away. Let stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. While waiting, set out jars/containers where you plan to fill them, and get a ladle and a funnel ready if you have one.

In a small saucepan, mix water and pectin and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir constantly. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly and watching to be sure it does not boil over.

Remove pectin from heat and add to the strawberry-sugar mixture. Stir for 3 minutes or until sugar is dissolved. The sugar may not be entirely dissolved, but 3 minutes is all you need to stir, or less if the sugar dissolves quickly.

Immediately fill containers, ladling the hot jam through the funnel if you have one, leaving ½ inch head space to allow room for expansion in the freezer.

Cover containers with their lids and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours. Then the strawberry freezer jam is all ready to go into the freezer.

Just a quick line here to share the joy that is Not Pouring Salt From a Goddamn Spout. This might be old news to a lot of you, but it’s brand spanking new to me. I have no idea why I never thought of it before.

It began when I bought a carton of salt with a bum spout. Until then, lo these many years, I measured all my teeny ¼ and ½ teaspoons of salt by pouring it out of that giant spout. Since this method is clumsy, to say the least, I always did it over a sink so I didn’t accidentally dump several tablespoons of salt into, say, cookie dough, while trying to measure it out.

But then I got the bum spout. It tore out completely from the carton. Being somewhat rigid and OCD, I was at a loss. How would I measure my salt? Ohnoes!

how to store salt! (exciting)

As a temporary solution, I dumped the contents into an el cheapo plastic storage container, the kind you put leftovers in. I thought it was a kludge, just a way to hold the salt til I burned through it and bought another canister.

Ha! Do you know how flippin’ easy it is to just stick the measuring spoon in to the salt? Or your fingers, if you’re one of those hippie feel-good non-measury types? The little plastic container became my default for salt storage.

why isn’t this on page 1 of “how to cook”?

Apparently I am not alone. According to the food geeks populating the Jamie Oliver forums, who all seem to keep their salt in jars or other non-salt containers, maybe this is just something obvious I’ve missed all these years. This really should be in the front of every beginner cooking book/lesson. “Save your sanity and get your salt out of the pour-spout container.”

I bet one of those half-cup canning jars would be a purty way to store salt, too. I’m going to stick with the cheapo Rubbermaid plastic, though, cause those nice jars are going to hold strawberry jam, a much more valuable commodity.

look, a poll

Some of you have been expressing…concern…as to what happened with the whole big levain/sourdough plot. I’ll tell you what happened. A winter storm happened. Unripe levain happened. Flat bread happened. And a possibly unconnected but mysteriously coincidental horrible sinus flareup happened.

By day 4, I had a feeling the levain was ripe and active. Compare the above pic to day 3 and see how much the yeast activity made the levain rise in 12 hours. So I put it back into its normal container and fed it again that evening and planned to bake whole wheat sourdough the next day.

When I checked it in the morning, I frowned. It had been near the north window in the kitchen, and a winter storm had blown in overnight, winds howling from the north. The area where the levain had been sitting was extremely chilly. Worse, the leavain didn’t look active. It wasn’t bubbly or beginning to exude the brownish liquid that it does when active. It had been too cold, there by the window.

f*** it, we’ll do it live!

But like a dumbass I pushed those worries aside. Making sourdough would take a six-hour block of time, and I had scheduled my day specifically to allow for that. I’d make whole wheat sourdough bread come hell or high water, dammit!

Of course, my inflexibility was my downfall. The bread rose sluggishly, my clumsy attempts at brotform substitutes seemed inferior, and the two loaves baked into delicious-smelling, heavy discs of whole wheat sourdough.

With trepidation, I gingerly sliced a sliver of bread from one end once it had cooled. The taste? Wonderful. It was mellow and not outrageously sour; just a hint, the barest hint, of tang. So what if it was fairly leaden? I could still eat this stuff.

And eat it I did, and took it to Mom and Dad’s that night to have with tomato soup. Dad liked it and ate a ton (it probably felt like a ton, too) and so did I.

has your face ever tried to explode away from your head?

The next day I woke up, and wanted to sever the left side of my head from my body. Everything hurt: my jaw, my cheek, my ear, around my eyeball, even my left temple. Everything on the left side of my head was in excruciating pain. Ibuprofen didn’t touch it. The pain knocked me entirely out of commission. It was bizarre and horrible and I’d highly recommend it as a torture technique.

I self-diagnosed a flareup of a sinus infection I thought I’d kicked last fall. Only this time, for some reason, every sinus on the left side of my head was affected and pissed. Off. The next day the pain had subsided a bit, and the day after that it was pretty much gone. It hasn’t come back.

I don’t want it to come back. I’m worried that something about the wild yeast in the sourdough affected my sinuses and made them try to kill me. I don’t want my sinuses to kill me. I want to try this sourdough still. But now I’m afraid to.

So for now, the big sourdough plan is on hold. I am keeping the whole wheat levain alive in the fridge, feeding it weekly. Maybe once I forget how my sinuses felt, and how they took up arms and tried to kill me, I might try baking with it again.

whole wheat levain, refrigerator maintenance

Once you’ve developed an active whole wheat levain, you don’t need to feed it twice daily unless you’re baking with it regularly. This starter can be stored in the refrigerator and fed once weekly to keep it alive. Adapted with permission from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains.

Once a week, remove levain from the refrigerator and discard all but 2 ounces. Add:

4 ounces whole wheat flour
4 ounces cool water

Mix well. Let it sit at room temperature at least a few hours before putting the levain back into the refrigerator.

Two to three days before you plan to bake with the levain, remove it from the refrigerator, keep it at room temperature, and resume twice-daily feedings.

How about a nice tall glass of levain?

Today is Day 3, when we begin feeding the levain twice a day versus the once per day of days 1 and 2. That pic is at 3.5. I’ve put the levain into a tall, clear glass and marked it. In 12 hours we’ll see how much the yeast activity has made it expand.

Notice all those bubbles, made by that friendly wild yeast I’ve attracted. The catnip is this simple flour-and-water combination, at room temperature. The levain is sticky, and stretches when I stir it before discarding/feeding.

Its developed a slightly fruity, tangy smell, yet still with that sweet and fresh smell to it. I tasted a bit of the levain and yes, there was a hint of sour to it. Fingers crossed — it seems to be coming along nicely. Let’s hope I don’t eff it up somehow.

whole wheat levain: Day 3 (and 4 and 5)

Adapted with permission from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains. For days 3, 4, and 5, we go to twice-a-day feedings. Those wild yeast are hungry buggers! Space feedings as close to 12 hours apart as possible. By the fifth day the levain should be ready to use in a sourdough recipe.

4 ounces (1 to 1⅛ cups) whole wheat flour
4 ounces (½ cup) cool nonchlorinated water

Now we move to twice-a-day feedings. Do this as close to every 12 hours as possible.

Discard all but 4 ounces of the levain. Add the whole wheat flour and water. Mix well, cover, and let sit at room temperature (65° to 75°F) for 24 hours.

This is your brain on SmokeMonster!Locke.

Okay, it’s just the whole wheat levain before stirring it up on Day 2. You know what that liquid is on top? Sourdough breadmakers have a highly technical term for it. They call it hooch, because it’s about 15-20 proof. It’s a result of the fermentation process of the yeast. That would be the wild yeast that I set out this lovely catnip of flour and water to attract. There’s nothing wrong with hooch, so go ahead and mix it back in.

You can tell from the hooch that something’s going on now, but there isn’t a lot of bubbling or expansion going on yet. The levain has a comforting, sweet and fresh flour smell. No tang or fruitiness to it yet. By day 3 it’s supposed to gain a bit of a fresh fruit smell.

I’m going to begin posting pics of the levain’s bubbliness, too, since just seeing it after sitting for 24h doesn’t tell the whole story.

In 3 days (Day 5) this should be ready to bake with.

whole wheat levain: Day 2

Adapted with permission from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains. Day 2 is simple. Just discard half the levain, and mix in the following.

4 ounces (1 to 1⅛ cups) whole wheat flour
4 ounces (½ cup) cool nonchlorinated water

Mix well, cover, and let sit at room temperature (65° to 75°F) for 24 hours.

Sis told me yesterday she began the starter for Amish friendship bread, which apparently involves mixing flour, sugar, and yeast and letting it sit on the counter. After it develops for several days, you can make sourdough bread from part of the starter, keep the rest of it going, and continue making bread.

I’ve always been a bit meh on the whole sourdough concept. It’s been a rare occasion when I’ve really dug a sourdough bread, but on the times I have, I’ve really, really dug it. The King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook has a whole chapter devoted to whole grain sourdoughs. I’d avoided it because the whole process seemed so wasteful (I’ll explain why shortly). However, a few months back I bought a different brand of whole wheat flour that was such a coarse grind that I found it incredibly difficult to bake with. I stuck it in the freezer, labeled it “coarse ww flour,” and forgot about it, figuring some use would arise for it sometime.

That time is now. Seems sourdough starters work by capturing wild yeast (yeast floating around in the air) using a mixture called a levain. Whole flour levains are easier to work with than white flour levains because there is more wild yeast present in the flour itself. At the same time, they’re more difficult to work with because the flour will spoil much more quickly at room temperature, which necessitates twice-a-day feedings once the levain is mature (after a couple days). That’s where the wastefulness. I imagine you’d want to be baking with this levain at least a few times a week to make it worthwhile, because you’re throwing away 8 ounces (2 cups) worth of flour every. Single. Day.

What better use for the 4-odd pounds of coarse-grind flour I have sitting in the freezer?

What you see above is Day 1 of my whole wheat levain, immediately after mixing it up. Not very exciting. But I’ll be documenting its development. After 5 days it should be ready to work with.

Here’s how it begins, if you want to play along. We’ll be baking sourdough bread with this within a week.

whole wheat levain: day 1

Reprinted with permission from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains.

4 ounces (1 to 1⅛ cups) whole wheat flour
4 ounces (½ cup) cool nonchlorinated water

Combine the flour and water in a nonreactive container. Glass, crockery, stainless steel, or food-grade plastic all work fine for this. Cover the container and let the mixture sit at room temperature (65° to 75°F) for 24 hours.

Neat, this made Foodie Views of the day! They gave me a pretty button to go with it:

Routine is a good thing. I lost 60 pounds eating the same thing for breakfast every morning, and anecdotally people suggest that eating the same thing for breakfast and lunch, and mixing it up for supper is good too. Some crazy theory that not having to think about what you’re going to eat makes it easier to keep track.

But you’re still fat! you say, glancing at that picture over to your left.

So? A little is better than nothing at all. And I’ll do it again. So there. Everyone who’s done a marathon here raise your hand.

*raises*

I love that comeback. All the training and suffering was worth it. Just to be able to say that for the rest of my life. Any time, for any reason.

My routine breakfast used to be Shredded Wheat and Bran, soymilk, sliced banana, and orange juice. After a year or two of this I still wasn’t bored with it.

But then the damn blood center began dissing me when I went to donate.

Your iron’s too low to donate.

*month passes*

Your iron’s too low to donate.

*month passes*

Your iron’s too low to donate.

*tear out hair*

Apparently some people (Michigan Community Blood Center, I’m looking at you) seem to think a hemocrit of 37, 36, or 35 is too low to be allowed to give blood. Hmph.

I tried small measures: more beans, some more leafies. Didn’t help. So I turned to the most iron-fortified food on the planet, or at the very least, in my cupboard: Malt-O-Meal, fortified with 60% of the RDA for iron, guaranteed to give you Popeye arms.

And, I actually like it. I don’t know why everyone makes that sour face. Malt-O-Meal is awesome.

But it introduced a problem. A serving of Malt-O-Meal does not a breakfast make, at least not one that’s going to stick with you more than half an hour. I couldn’t have cereal with it, because I had this inkling that that would be stupid.

Where to get protein? Oh! An egg! I have all sorts of pretty-colored eggs, thanks to friends who raise chickens that lay Easter eggs. Not kidding. It’s some special variety.

So I got out my little sauté pan and made up a one-egg omelet. All by myself. And it was good. And it made it into the new breakfast routine. I seriously think the green onion makes it. I wouldn’t want it without. The green onion is cooked with the egg. Then I dice up one of the smaller Stupice tomatoes and add other ingredients if they sound good.

As for insides, try:

• tomato
• green pepper
• crumbled bacon
• cheese, even feta
• shredded zucchini

In five minutes, you too can have a little showpiece omelet.

easy one-egg omelet

1 teaspoon bacon grease or butter
2 tablespoons green onion tops, chopped
1 large egg
salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 cup (approximately) of filling: diced tomato, diced green pepper, shredded zucchini, crumbled bacon, and cheddar or feta cheese are good choices, but not the only possibilities — try your own!

Get a large heat-resistant spatula and a small (7-inch or so) nonstick sauté pan.

Heat the bacon grease or butter in the pan over medium heat. Add the green onion and cook, stirring a few times with the spatula.

While the green onion is heating, whisk the egg. When the green onion has wilted, pour the egg into the pan.

Now for the fun part! Grab the pan’s handle and tilt it to and fro to make the egg coat the entire bottom of the pan.

Take the spatula and run it around the edge where the egg meets the pan, lifting it up a bit, and tilt the pan so that the liquid egg on top runs underneath. You will do this in two or three spots around the pan, depending upon how anal you are. It won’t need more, because the egg will cook quickly.

Salt and pepper the top of the egg.

While the egg cooks, prepare your filling ingredient(s). If you don’t like your eggs well-done, do this first. Yes, I waited until now to tell you, because I am cruel and capricious.

Now it’s decision time. If you aren’t fussy about the doneness of your eggs — in other words, if the consistency of restaurant omelets is fine with you — spread your filling ingredients on half of the egg circle, flip the empty half over it with the spatula, and let it warm through, another 30 seconds or so.

But if you like eggs nice and dry, slide that spatula under the disc of egg, and flip that puppy over! It won’t be hard, and it doesn’t require fancy flippin’ skills that would be very hard to access with morning brain. Then, like above, spread your filling ingredients on half of the egg circle, flip the empty half over it with the spatual, and let it warm through, about 30 seconds.

Note that if you do the flip method, you could wait to chop up your filling ingredients until after the flip.

Slide your beautiful omelet onto a plate, and you’re good to go, in about or under 5 minutes flat.

You can’t beat a home-canned peach. Store-bought doesn’t compare. Some other fruits handle store shelves pretty well, like pineapple and pears, but store-canned peaches are nearly flavorless in comparison.

If you can only one variety of fruit, can peaches.

Linda came over to do it with me, bearing a bushel of peaches from the local fruit market. After an aborted attempt at canning them — they weren’t ready yet! — we let them ripen for 3 more days. They were gorgeous. Firm, fragrant, and only one bad one in the bunch, discovered at the bottom of one of the boxes.

We got about 32 pints from that bushel, with about 20 peaches kept aside for fresh eating and baking. Here’s how to can your own.

how to can peaches

Adapted from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. It’s a canning bible. Seriously. I bolded the main parts, but really, the meat is in the unbolded stuff. Stuff like how not to shatter your jars, little things like that.

bushel yields: about 32 pints, with peaches left over for fresh eating
prep: 60 minutes
processing: 20 minutes

special equipment:
• boiling-water canner
• canning jars
• 2-piece lids.
• A canning kit is also really nice to have. It has a funnel, jar tongs, magnetic lid lifter — I do not know how I lived without this — and a couple other things I forget. Those three things are the most handy.

I’ve put together a bunch of canning equipment in the store too.

1 bushel peaches
4-1/2 cups sugar
10-1/2 cups water

For more detailed instructions, see here or view this tutorial prepared by Ball.

1. In a large saucepan, heat sugar and water to a simmer. You’ve just made the light syrup to pack your peaches in. Once all sugar is dissolved, keep syrup hot. Keep sugar on hand; if you have a whole bushel of peaches, you’ll need to mix up another batch of syrup.

2. Give peaches a light rinse if they’re dirty. You’re going to be blanching and peeling them, so if they’re clean-looking, you don’t need to do it.

3. Dump 4-5 peaches at a time into a pot of boiling water. Leave them in there 30 to 60 seconds. Remove and submerge in cold water. Do this until all the peaches are blanched, adding ice or changing water as necessary.

4. Peel and halve the peaches. One at a time, remove skins. (If the skins don’t slip off easily with just pressure from your thumb and fingers, the peaches probably aren’t ripe enough. Stop blanching now, make a bunch of cobbler with the blanched ones, and let the unblanched ones ripen another day or two.) Run a paring knife around the peach, beginning and ending at the stem. Slip halves of the peach from the stone, and drop into water treated with Fruit Fresh to keep them from browning.

Note: You could also do your peaches in quarters, which would be handy if you plan on baking with them later. We did a combination of halves and quarters.

5. Continue with step 3 until all peaches are halved.

6. Pack peaches in hot jars, cut side down. I like to use wide-mouth pints for this. The larger halves go in easily and it’s easy to flip that first peach over (they always want to land curved side down). You can get 4-5 halves into a jar.

7. Ladle syrup over the peaches, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.

8. Remove air bubbles by running a non-metallic thing around the inside of a jar. A plastic knife does the job. After removing air bubbles, you may need to add more syrup to some jars.

9. Wipe off tops of jars and put lids and bands on. Process pints 20 minutes, quarts 25 minutes in your boiling-water canner.

10. Remove, allow to cool on a towel for 12 to 24 hours. And enjoy listening to that pop! pop! pop! of the jars sealing.

Yup, we sure did.

I provided the kitchen and the canner and my aunt picked the pears, cleaned the pears, peeled the pears, cut the pears, packed the pears, and processed the pears.

I practically did it all by myself!

the canning stuff, yawn

Right there you see the basic canning setup on the stovetop. I began doing this a few years ago, absorbed in some weird home ec flashback. I say weird, because home ec was actually more about how to not kill yourself in the kitchen and how to hand sew misshapen stuffed animals made of highly-flammable polyester. And less about useful stuff like, you know, canning.

Since this stuff often hits Facebook, I bet some of you were in that 7th grade home ec class, or had one yourself. Did you honestly ever cook anything more involved than no-bake chocolate cookies? If that. But I digress, as I am wont to do.

We (she) canned 6 pints of pears in 2 hours. Of course, many pears do not make it into little jars, and instead find themselves eaten by nephews and ignored by super adorable kittens.

canned pears

Adapted from the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. It’s a canning bible. Seriously. I bolded the main parts, but really, the meat is in the unbolded stuff. Stuff like how not to shatter your jars, little things like that.

makes: 6 pints
prep: 30 minutes
processing: 20 minutes
out of the canner: 2 hours, tops

special equipment:
• boiling-water canner
• canning jars
• 2-piece lids.
• A canning kit is also really nice to have. It has a funnel, jar tongs, magnetic lid lifter — I do not know how I lived without this — and a couple other things I forget. Those three things are the most handy.

I’ve put together a bunch of canning equipment in the store too.

Now, Linda did a cold pack in medium syrup. The recipe calls for a hot pack in light syrup. I’m going to share the recipe version.

6 to 9 pounds of pears
2-1/4 cups sugar
5-1/4 cups water

1. Prepare jars and lids: Wash all in hot soapy water and rinse. You have to keep the jars hot. Ball’s going to kill me, but here’s how I do it, and how my mom did it: Stand the jars in a cold oven. Turn on the oven to 200. No higher, and no turning on the oven until the jars are in there.

Or if you have a dishwasher, run them through the dishwasher cycle, and leave them hot in there until ready to use. Man, it would be nice to have a dishwasher.

2. Put lids (not bands, they don’t need special treatment besides washing) in a small saucepan, and cover in water. Heat to a low simmer (180 degrees) and keep that way until you need them. Don’t boil.

2.5. Fill the canner about halfway with water, and put on to boil. If it comes to a boil while you’re still prepping, turn it down to a low simmer.

3. Prepare the light syrup. Mix sugar and water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Simmer 2-3 minutes, or until sugar is dissolved. Keep hot.

4. Wash the pears. Just a little rinse is good; you’re going to peel them anyway.

5. Peel pears, cut into halves or quarters, and core. Put into a large bowl filled with water some Fruit Fresh to prevent darkening.

6. Add enough pears to the light syrup to cover the bottom of the pan in 1 layer, no deeper. Simmer lightly for 5-6 minutes, or until hot throughout.

7. Pack hot pears into hot jars. Ladle syrup over the pears, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. This is where the funnel comes in really handy.

8. Using a plastic knife or similar tool, remove air bubbles from the jars by running the knife around the inside of the jar. It may seem like it does nothing. Don’t worry; it helped.

9. Wipe the tops of the jars clean with a sponge or towel. Stuffing fruit into jars can get messy, and you want to make sure no bits or juice are clinging to the glass that the bands and lids touch. This can keep a good seal from forming in the water bath, which sucks because then you have to re-process.

10. Using the magnetic lid lifter, remove lids from the small saucepan and put them on the jars. Center the lids so the rubber seal is in contact with the glass. Don’t worry; this isn’t hard.

11. Twist bands onto the jars. Pay attention that the lids don’t get knocked too far out of whack. Tighten the bands only until you begin to feel resistance, to where they are on but they are not on tight. Tight bands before processing are bad.

12. Using your jar lifter, put your 6 pints of pears into the boiling water canner.

13. Bring the water to a hard rolling boil, then reduce to maintain a gentle rolling boil while processing. Once the water has come to a boil, process for 20 minutes.

14. After 20 minutes, you get to use the jar lifter again. Remove the jars from the canner and set them on a towel to cool. Don’t put them directly on the counter. Protip: a lot of these don’ts mean “if you do do this, your jars might shatter and create a huge mess.”

15. Allow them to sit on the counter for 12 to 24 hours. After this time has passed, check for the seal. Touch the top of the lid. If it gives, it didn’t seal and you must either refrigerate and eat within a few days or process again. If the lid doesn’t give, congrats! You’ve got pears!

Remove the bands before storing the canned pears. They aren’t needed and only tend to rust on the jars.

I know, I know, you’re just antsy for that currant chiffon pie. Because there are no recipes for currant chiffon pie in existence (Google tells me so) I had to tweak from recipes for inferior fruits like lemon and orange. As a result, the first pie (yesterday) was good, but I decided it could be better, and I just shoved the adjusted-recipe version into the fridge.

In the meantime, comfort yourself with a nice, healthy salad. Ha ha.

There’s this gigantic, wizened old apple tree in the front yard. This tree is so ancient no one remembers what kind of apples grow on it, only that they’re tart, ripen really early, get soft quickly, and make good applesauce. As a result, not much usually gets done with them.

At the same time, the second planting of kohlrabi is coming ripe. You know what kohlrabi is, don’t you? Here’s my lovely aunt Linda holding one up for professional photography. You know it’s professional because the wind was blowing so hard this was the only place the leaves weren’t being twisted into even more alien shapes I put the gas tanks and grain bins distractingly behind the kohlrabi on purpose. *nods* (Also, she cherishes her anonymity on the Internet, but she never gets to read this, so let’s not tell her, shall we?)

Everyone seems to think it’s some mystery vegetable. I always had it growing up, so that surprised me. What? Your life experiences differ from mine?

Kohlrabi likes cool temperatures, produces 1 bulb and 1 bulb only, and that above ground. That’s it. It blows its wad making this one not-very-big chunk of vegetation that tastes a bit like cabbage and jicama, and a bit (only a bit) sweet.

what do i do with this green-tentacled space alien?

To prepare kohlrabi, pull off the stems and cut off the root, leaving the bulb. I’m told the leaves may be cooked like other greens but I’ve never tried it.

Now peel off the green outside. It’s soft and not very deep. The end of the kohlrabi near the root tends to get woody, especially near the outside, and especially on kohlrabi that have been neglected and allowed to grow a tad too big, like this one. See the area in the bottom of the pic where the kohlrabi flesh looks stripey and a bit yellower? That’s going to be tough and woody, and you may as well cut it off unless you’re really hurting for fiber.

One the kohlrabi is peeled, you can cut it up however you want. I like to cube it for straight up snacking, but for this recipe I sliced it thin and then cut it into matchsticks.

You know, I like how coleslaw kind of mushes up the cabbage a bit when it’s been made for a day or two. I decided I don’t like that mushing effect with this salad, though. If you like your apples and kohlrabi to have a nice crunch, plan on eating this the same day.

The black pepper, of all things, brings out the apple flavor in this salad. I don’t know why, but that bit of spice in the creamy honey yogurt makes it swoon-worthy.

kohlrabi and apple salad

You may want to put your apple bits in lemon water or sprinkle some Fruit Fresh on them if they’re prone to browning like the ones I used are. I.e., if they brown as you’re cutting them.

prep: 20 minutes
servings: 4

1 large kohlrabi or 2 small, peeled
1 large tart apple or 2 small, cored
1/2 cup plain yogurt
juice of half a lemon, or 2 tablespoons
1 tablespoon honey
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon salt

Julienne the kohlrabi and apple. You can use a mandolin or do it manually. If doing manually: Slice the kohlrabi and the apple thinly, then stack slices and cut into matchsticks.

For the honey yogurt dressing:

In a medium bowl, whisk together the yogurt, lemon juice, honey, pepper, and salt. Toss in the julienned kohlrabi and apple, and mix well. Let sit 10 minutes before eating to allow the flavors to mingle.

The kohlrabi and apple salad will keep in the fridge, but as it sits, it will soften.

Variations: Grate the kohlrabi and apple instead of julienning. Use cabbage or jicama in place of kohlrabi.