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We Eat Well
May. 24th, 2010 08:59 amThere are some weekends where I seriously wish I had a camera. This past weekend was one of those. I believe we left off some point on Friday, when I was trying to recover from the crazy project of trying to teach people how to make jam and can it at the bike co-op. Not the ideal environment for it.
Well, right after that, I rode on up to J's parents' house, where they have an apricot tree that is going out of control. I think most people who have fruit trees know this feeling - the fruit gets ripe all at once, and it's hard to watch it spoil and fall to the ground. So they were pretty grateful to have me take it off their hands. I didn't even have to pick the apricots, I just collected up a big batch from a table in the garage and loaded my panniers practically to the top. As I set out for home again, I messaged S and asked him to pick up more jars.
You should have seen the piles of fruit. It was an astounding sight. We spent Friday evening cutting up fruit and made three batches of jam. I think I was tired and perhaps a bit impatient as we got underway, and I didn't let the fruit cook down quite as much as I should have. But oh well. I'd planned to ride to the farmer's market with friends the following morning, but we didn't get to sleep on time and S pointed out that there wasn't much point in going to the market anyway if we already had too much fruit to deal with. So we got back to work on the jam and canning.
To add to the excitement, we had a wedding to attend that afternoon as well. Eventually, I left S to head up the jamming and canning operations while I ran around and prepared for the wedding. I made a trip to Target, where they'd registered, and picked up an item of the registry, a water boiler. Then I wandered around and decided to put together a few items to complement the water boiler - some drinking chocolate, a mesh tea infuser, and some honey and dried chocolate peppermint from the house. Pretty nice.
Altogether, S made five additional batches of jam Saturday morning. Enough to stockpile some and share some as well. I'm learning from him that these things can be shared strategically - if one gets apricots from some people, one should share jars of marmalade with those folks. If one gets citrus, one should share apricots. And so forth and so on. Then it was time for the wedding, and then time for a party at our house. R had finally managed to pull things together for a Chicha de Jora party, so we came home and enjoyed some fine, fermented beverage before going to sleep.
Sunday morning, we were supposed to meet up with a friend for a bike&hike trip, but he decided to sleep in. We'd already invested effort in getting up and out of bed and over to the park, though, so we decided to at least get a nice bike ride in. So we did the loop around Mummy Mountain. I haven't been back there in a while, and the morning weather was just splendid.
Sunday was low-key, but the chill day was necessary after so much crazy jamming. For dinner, I made some incredibly delicious pizzas. A year or two ago, I took![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sytharin to Cafe Flora for dinner as a belated birthday gift, and she ordered a scrumptious pizza. I couldn't remember everything on the pizza except that I believe it had crispy sage and pears on it. That pizza inspired me to start growing sage - the crispy sage was heavenly. Anyway, I was not sure about all of the pizza ingredients, but I was determined to recreate something of the sort for dinner because I'd finally found some deliciously ripe pears at the corner market that were begging to be put to good use. So we ended up having pizza crust brushed with olive oil, then spread with goat cheese and covered in slices of pear, toasted walnuts, browned shallots, and crispy sage. Heavenly.
And that was only the first pizza. The second pizza featured tomato sauce from homegrown tomatoes (also from J's parents) plus herbs from the garden, roasted chilis, and dots of ricotta and goat cheese.
Yep. We eat well.
Well, right after that, I rode on up to J's parents' house, where they have an apricot tree that is going out of control. I think most people who have fruit trees know this feeling - the fruit gets ripe all at once, and it's hard to watch it spoil and fall to the ground. So they were pretty grateful to have me take it off their hands. I didn't even have to pick the apricots, I just collected up a big batch from a table in the garage and loaded my panniers practically to the top. As I set out for home again, I messaged S and asked him to pick up more jars.
You should have seen the piles of fruit. It was an astounding sight. We spent Friday evening cutting up fruit and made three batches of jam. I think I was tired and perhaps a bit impatient as we got underway, and I didn't let the fruit cook down quite as much as I should have. But oh well. I'd planned to ride to the farmer's market with friends the following morning, but we didn't get to sleep on time and S pointed out that there wasn't much point in going to the market anyway if we already had too much fruit to deal with. So we got back to work on the jam and canning.
To add to the excitement, we had a wedding to attend that afternoon as well. Eventually, I left S to head up the jamming and canning operations while I ran around and prepared for the wedding. I made a trip to Target, where they'd registered, and picked up an item of the registry, a water boiler. Then I wandered around and decided to put together a few items to complement the water boiler - some drinking chocolate, a mesh tea infuser, and some honey and dried chocolate peppermint from the house. Pretty nice.
Altogether, S made five additional batches of jam Saturday morning. Enough to stockpile some and share some as well. I'm learning from him that these things can be shared strategically - if one gets apricots from some people, one should share jars of marmalade with those folks. If one gets citrus, one should share apricots. And so forth and so on. Then it was time for the wedding, and then time for a party at our house. R had finally managed to pull things together for a Chicha de Jora party, so we came home and enjoyed some fine, fermented beverage before going to sleep.
Sunday morning, we were supposed to meet up with a friend for a bike&hike trip, but he decided to sleep in. We'd already invested effort in getting up and out of bed and over to the park, though, so we decided to at least get a nice bike ride in. So we did the loop around Mummy Mountain. I haven't been back there in a while, and the morning weather was just splendid.
Sunday was low-key, but the chill day was necessary after so much crazy jamming. For dinner, I made some incredibly delicious pizzas. A year or two ago, I took
sytharin to Cafe Flora for dinner as a belated birthday gift, and she ordered a scrumptious pizza. I couldn't remember everything on the pizza except that I believe it had crispy sage and pears on it. That pizza inspired me to start growing sage - the crispy sage was heavenly. Anyway, I was not sure about all of the pizza ingredients, but I was determined to recreate something of the sort for dinner because I'd finally found some deliciously ripe pears at the corner market that were begging to be put to good use. So we ended up having pizza crust brushed with olive oil, then spread with goat cheese and covered in slices of pear, toasted walnuts, browned shallots, and crispy sage. Heavenly. And that was only the first pizza. The second pizza featured tomato sauce from homegrown tomatoes (also from J's parents) plus herbs from the garden, roasted chilis, and dots of ricotta and goat cheese.
Yep. We eat well.
