A Decent Canning 101

A friend Brian asked for a primer on canning. I'll put up some thoughts of my own on the subject, but Alton Brown does a great job of the basics of canning in this episode. Enjoy!

Thrift Addiction

I love clothes. But I've always felt a bit of a tension between getting things I loved and being fearful of spending too much money on them. I've often been thrifty to the point of miserly, and sometimes that made me pass on things I should've bought, or buy certain things because they were both cheap and a "sure thing." Sometimes this tendency has kept me from taking too many fashion risks.

I've spent the bulk of my adulthood in New York City. It's a hub of American fashion and no mistake, but it also can be incredibly expensive, even when thrift shopping. The Goodwills and Salvation Armys I went to back then were okay, but nothing special. There was an amazing warehouse of a thrift shop in Williamsburg in the 90s called Domsey's Warehouse . I still remember the old school air pilot leather helmets with goggles that were on sale one day when I went that I passed up. Sigh. Domsey's vanished when the real estate got too expensive.

But for the most part the stuff I craved was at little house designers on East 7th St in the east village, or at consignment shops. As a rule I'd hit those when there was a sale, or when I had a big occasion to shop for. I still treasure the Mark Montano dress that my friend Rob urged me to try on and buy (alas, MM no longer designs clothes). I also hit Daffy's pretty frequently. Sadly Daffys too is no more.

During our first couple years of serious shoestring living in Seattle I took note of the city's particular style. Lots of girls in boots, everyone in beanies, & a lot of vintage clothing and a lot of flannel shirts 15 years after the height of the grunge era. I started trolling thrift shops more regularly, as much for entertainment as anything else. But for some reason the selection out here is a lot better. I've gotten a lot of good stuff in the last few months, and I'm starting to take more risks with the items I buy, veering toward slightly trendier things. At the same time, I'm 42 years old, and don't wanna look like I'm struggling to look like 25 when I obviously don't. But when thrift shopping out here I can take some risks without worrying too much about the expense.

Fit is also a factor. In the past I've often chosen clothes that are loose on me, because I didn't want them to be "too tight". In many cases I now realize that I was actually veering away from a true fit on my body. As I buy more clothes and play around with the sizing, I'm getting a better idea of what will work for my body type.

This is a perfect example of "fit discovery." I'm short-waisted as it is, and this skirt has a very high waist compared to what I'm used to.

But it does fit me properly. It flares over my hips at the right spot precisely because it has as high a waist as it does.

Plus it has pockets!

I'd usually never buy a suede skirt, but for $1.29 how could I say no? With the right sweaters in the fall I think it'll work out well.

Plum-tastic

Seattle has a lot of lovely trees on its neighborhood planting strips—that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. A lot of those trees are fruit trees—plum, cherry, apple, pear, quince, fig…it still amazes me how easily they grow out here, and how many of them there are. Last year I wrote out a few notes introducing myself, including an email address, and asking permission to pick the fruit off of those trees if they didn’t have plans for them. Some people responded, and I got a lot of fruit to try canning and drying.

Canning is definitely more my forte—the prunes I tried to make were lackluster at best. So when I reached out to a nice lady who has a very densely fruited shiro plum tree on her planting strip, she encouraged me to go right ahead again this year and pick the plums.

I got 17 pounds of plums this year, and it barely looked like I touched the tree. There is tons of fruit on this tree, it’s amazing. So far I’ve made a yellow plum sauce, which is nice n’zesty:

And a straight-up plum jam, just made with fruit and sugar in the proportions advocated by the lovely people at Under the Tuscan Gun:

I deliberated a bit on how much to cook the jam. I made the same jam last year from the same plums, and like a lot of my jam endeavors it came out with a very solid set, something that hovered around the consistency of a gumdrop. It was spreadable, but not as luscious as a softer jam would be. I also like mixing this with soy sauce to made a plum sauce for Asian dishes, and making that with a harder-set jam is a bit of a struggle. So I took it off the heat when it still looked too loose for my liking, grit my teeth, and canned it.

It is a bit softer than I would optimally like, but I made the soy/jam sauce last night for a friend’s mu shu pork dinner and it mixed together much more easily—and with a more vibrant plum flavor, I think. So overall it was a win.

Now I need to figure out what to do with the other 8 or so pounds of plums I still have. This is giving me some ideas:

Blackberry Syrup

Blackberries are poppin' all over the place right now. Unfortunately the wild ones that are the easiest to get are Himalayan blackberries, which are seedier than some of the cultivated varieties. But they're delicious in jams, and with the right sieve it's possible to get most or all of the seeds out.

I've done blackberry jam several times in the past, and might do another batch this summer, but I saw this recipe for blackberry syrup and thought I'd give that a try.





It was about as easy as can be, to be honest. I was psyched to try it in a drink a couple days later, and it was very fresh and tasty. This had gin, club soda, and syrup with some ice. Can't get much simpler than that. I might try it with tonic sometime soon though, add a bit of complexity.

Lovely Limoncello

I made this using the same ingredients shown in the video. The exact proportions can be found here:

http://underthetuscangun.com/featured/40-limoncello/

I did it last year with 100 proof vodka and that was very good, but using grain alcohol makes a slightly more potent, have-to-sip-slowly, drier beverage that is a lovely way to end the evening. A true digestif, although I’ll also be trying to use it in cocktails.

Skirt score!

I had my eye on this skirt at Goodwill. I tried it on (God bless Goodwill for fitting rooms!) and it was just too big. For $4.99 I couldn’t conscience buying a skirt I’d have to alter. But I went back on a Monday when everything with a blue tag was $1.29. This had a blue tag, so I bought it. I put a few darts in the elastic waistband and now it fits just fine. It’s an Eddie Bauer, 100% cotton skirt with a 100% cotton lining. I really like it.

Time for a reboot

I fell off the blogging map a few years ago. I stopped posting, got out of the habit, and every time I thought of picking it up again some excuse got in the way.

But recently I’ve found a new obsession, shopping at the local thrift shops in Seattle. There are a lot of them. And they have some really, really great finds. I’ve started to take risks in the stuff I try on and the things I buy, because it’s easier to take that risk when I’m spending $4-$6 for it. That’s my usual goal. Something vintage or awesome in the shoe department gets a pass at a larger splurge. I have a couple different kinds of boots I have my eye on, for example, and I’ll pay more if I can get a lot of wear out of it.

In the meantime, I’m still trying out experiments in gardening, and I go through a pretty obsessive canning phase every summer. I also love baking my own bread and making a lot of the food I take to work. I like sewing, knitting, jewelry making, and quilting. Why not document it? So I figured I’d give blogging another shot.

I look forward to hearing criticisms, suggestions, ideas and contradictions. I want to have fun with my failures as well as my successes. As long as I learn from the failure I’ll be able to reap some benefit from it.