A Most Unreasonable Season

My Mom grew up during the Great Depression. She had a deep aversion to wasting things, especially food. She passed this along to me and I dutifully yet unconsciously draped a special "wasting perfectly good food" shaped millstone around the necks of my own children.

This has added no small weight to my CSA Basket challenge this Spring. Using all the fabulously fresh veggies up before they begin that sometimes treacherously rapid transformation from plate-worthy to compost has not always been easy. In my inherited emotional landscape, allowing good food to go bad is a moral failing surely indicative of other, hidden, more serious character flaws.

Our familial scarring aside, this issue of preserving fruits and vegetables that cannot be immediately consumed has long been a problem for folks who grow their own food. In even my limited gardening experience I have noted three stages of harvesting. First, you have too few of whatever is ripening to do much more than snack and admire. Next, you have the "just right" stage with plenty enough of whatever it is to try several different preparation methods and feel pretty happy with your choice to grow your own.

Finally there is the floodgate stage, where you and your kitchen's storage spaces are all swamped by a rising tide of harvest bounty. Our loquat trees provided that first tsunami of fresh this year, and as I watch my little back yard vegetable plants flower and begin to set fruit, I have been anticipating what will be the next wave of "ready".

As part of that looking ahead, I knew at some point this year I'd be submitting something I'd done with my (hopeful overload of) home grown tomatoes to Andrea Meyer's fun monthly round-up "Grow Your Own".

I just hadn't figured on a chance to do it so soon.The unfortunately violent yet seasonable Spring weather had other plans.

Recently Central Texas played host to some pretty rough storms, even by our standards. We had hail ranging from golf ball to tennis ball sized, and the ice chunks sounded quite lively on our (now significantly dented) metal roof. Damage estimates for our area are hovering in the 30 million dollar range, although as insurance adjusters scramble, scheduling visits to assess what repairs will need to be made, those figures continue to climb.

The City has power crews working 16 hour shifts for the third straight day and a special curbside Saturday pick-up has been arranged for people to get rid of their power-outage related spoiled food. I was thinking about my Mom on Thursday as I kept careful track of how long my refrigerator/freezer was going without power, doing my dead level best to keep that door SHUT with the cold air trapped inside. I was very grateful not to have lost any of our food to the power outage.

Out in the garden however, I was not quite so fortunate. I have some significantly shredded chard, a broken off dill plant, and I lost fully half my tomato crop to the crashing balls of ice. OK, perhaps "crop" is a bit of an over statement. But the fact remains that two of my four earliest tomatoes were bashed. They were extremely green, still babies, and now that they had sustained significant breaks in the skin of the fruit, they had to be picked before insects discovered and took advantage of such an easy meal.

So here I found myself, with the power back on, our roof mostly intact (as long as it is not raining, anyway) and two smallish very firm green tomatoes sitting on the counter. What to do with this unexpected early harvest?

I like fried green tomatoes as much if not more than the next person. But these tomatoes are small, and I am trying to be a less frequent fryer. I looked at the tomatoes and the dill and it struck me. Pickles!

My son (the chef!) had told me previously that quick pickles were a snap to make, and are generally ready to eat in under 24 hours. We had talked of this while I had loads of loquats on hand, but I had plans for my loquats already, so I honestly had not paid adequate attention.

These two small green tomatoes seemed good candidates for a small batch of exploratory first run pickling. Rather than admit to my son that I paid anything short of rapt attention during his earlier attempt to teach me a new trick, I googled to see what recipes were out there and to get more detailed instructions. I was frustrated not to come up with anything that sounded like the process he'd described.

Admitting defeat, I called my oldest to explain my situation and get more specific directions. To his eternal credit he passed by the opening to parrot back to me any typically snarky comments I've doubtless dished out in years previous when the tables were turned. He even resisted prefacing his remarks with "If you'd been listening the FIRST time I told you....".

[Current moral high ground score: Son 1/Mom -549]He explained that, in contrast to the dire warnings featured on many canning sites, the technique for quick pickling is very approachable on a small scale, even for a novice such as myself. You have to be aware that the "quick" refers not only to how much time and energy and effort you will have to put into your pickles, but also to their shelf life. These pickles are not processed in a hot water bath and the acidity will vary greatly, so this is a "prepare and enjoy" situation, ideally suited to small portions geared towards an upcoming meal.Here are the bare bones:

Thin slice your potential pickles to determine the amount of pickling liquid you will need to cover. Set aside.

Prepare pickling liquid by combining equal amounts of vinegar and sugar, along with whole spices or herbs as desired in a small saucepan. Heat just to a low boil, then remove and allow liquid to steep for 20 minutes.

Place your sliced pickles to be in a clean container that has a tight fitting lid. Pour liquid through a fine strainer to remove solids over your prepared fruit or vegetables. Cover, and allow to macerate for 4 to 24 hours refrigerated. Then, enjoy!Some considerations: The type of vinegar and the kind of sugar you choose will produce varying balances of sweet/acid. In addition, the combinations of whole spices and/or herbs you steep in the pickling liquid will lend complexity to your finished product.

If your memory is spotty like mine, I suggest keeping a record of various combinations until you develop a "go to" recipe. I am beginning very simply, and as I go along I will experiment, adding in components as I get a feel for what we like and how various flavor profiles develop.

For this my First Ever Green Tomato Pickles, I used white wine vinegar, organic sugar, one star anise, a little of the homegrown dill also broken off by the hail, and a smattering of whole black peppercorns.

If you are wanting to accentuate the flavor of any whole spice, you can slightly smash them to release essential oils. If you choose to do so, you will have to exercise more care with the straining process later. You want to avoid teensy UFOs in your pickling liquid.

My pickles were deliciously ready to enjoy after about 5 hours in the refrigerator. I have plans to use the majority of them as part of a deconstructed tuna salad for today's lunch. The rest will go on the table as a side for balsamic braised beef short ribs for dinner tomorrow night. I think the pickles will be a great accent to the rich beef, the wonderful green color and crisp texture providing an interesting contrast to the deep brown glaze and falling apart on your fork texture of the meat.

I haven't yet determined what would be the "up" side of having a hail damaged roof or shredded and torn oak trees in the height of oak wilt season. On the other hand, everybody in my family is fine. The roof will be replaced in due time. The oak trees have survived for thousands of years despite everything humans could do. Today and tomorrow we will enjoy some early bounty from our garden. All in all, not a bad outcome.

Happy Birthday! Happy Mother's Day!

Today is not only Mother's Day, but also the day after my elder child's birthday, my first "qualification" to celebrate Mother's Day to begin with, some 29 years ago.  

We decided to go out to eat someplace special tonight as a double celebration, something we do fairly regularly for birthdays.  We chose Jeffrey's because somehow in all the special family meals we have celebrated with our adult children, we'd never treated them to Jeffrey's.  Fino, Wink, Vin Bistro, Uchi, Zoot, we've eaten around pretty thoroughly, but until tonight, no visit to this long time star in Austin's dining crown.  This is an oversight we are happy to correct. 

While I am certain without even checking their menu that Jeffrey's has amazing desserts to go along with their outstanding dinners and respectable wine list, for my son's birthday, for as long as I can remember, no celebration would be considered complete without his favorite; Lemon Quick Cake.  

This recipe is an old one that came from a co-worker at my first full time job working at M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute.  It dates from my earliest days in the kitchen, when I was a new wife, suddenly trying to cook in ways to please palates other than just my own.  These were days when most of the women I worked with were always looking for a shortcut, some easier way to arrive at "delicious" without spending all day doing it.   I still have the photocopy of my fellow employee's original recipe card  in my notebook.  DK?  Wherever you are - here's to you!

Lemon Quick Cake/Betty Crocker

Mix:

1 package yellow cake mix (plain - not butter mix)

4 eggs

Dissolve:

1 small package Lemon Jello in 3/4 cup hot water.  Add to mix alternately with 3/4 cup vegetable oil.  Add 2 teaspoons lemon extract.

Bake:  

Put mix in greased and floured Bundt pan and bake at 325 degrees for 50-60 minutes.  Ice while hot.

Icing:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (1 1/2 lemons)

Pour on while hot.

I have made this cake and taken it to families with new babies, to wakes, to pot luck dinners, and I have made it every year for my son for his birthday since he was 8 years old.  

This year I opted to incorporate a nod to my recent efforts to eat locally and organically whenever possible. I used some edible flowers from our garden and candied some organic lemon to decorate the cake. I realize there is little else "local" or "organic"  about this recipe, but Lemon Quick Cake is a time honored family tradition. In certain situations, I believe it is the emotional connotation of a dish rather than it's correctness, that makes it the best choice.

The candied lemon was easy although I ended up with half rounds rather than round slices due to the extremely seedy organic lemon.  I would ordinarily have gone out early this morning to snip the flowers at their peak, but we had a sudden thunderstorm with hail move in on us last night so my husband and I had to rush out and cut flowers so we'd have choices that had not been battered to the ground by rain and hail.  We make plans and God laughs. 

The recipe for the candied lemon is as follows:

Thoroughly wash and then thinly slice one organic lemon.  Combine the lemon slices, one-half cup organic sugar, and one quarter cup organic lemon juice in a small saucepan.  Over medium heat, bring to a low boil and cook, stirring constantly, seven to ten minutes until sugar has dissolved and mixture has slightly thickened.  Cool about 10 minutes.  Place lemon slices in desired intervals on cake and pour syrup over to glaze.

And here it is - the Lemon Quick Cake, updated ever so slightly with candied organic lemons and edible flowers from our garden. Happiest Birthday, Chris!

Tea for Two

What could possibly make fish healthier? Try fish seasoned with green tea salt.

I'd been reading "Bitten" again, Mark Bittman's NYT blog of all things foody. I had a discount coupon for seafood at a local store and he had an intriguing recipe featured for Broiled Fish with Green Tea Salt, so I decided to go buy some pricey fresh halibut and give that a whirl for dinner tonight.

Bittman states green tea powder is available in Japanese specialty shops, but admitted the difference between that and the result of grinding your own plain green tea was imperceptible. Hey - if Mark Bittman can't tell the difference, seeing as my husband and I have never tried it from a Japanese specialty store or otherwise - that was all the permission I needed to "grind our own".For our sides, I planned on scalloping turnips and roasting baby carrots from our CSA baskets. If you've read previous posts you know those are becoming standbys here, but they are delicious, we aren't tired of them yet, and since I was going in a new direction with the fish, I wanted familiar prep and timing for my other dishes. I supplemented our basket's baby lettuce salad mix with the addition of (ahem!, cough!) our own newly harvested Mizuna lettuce and baby onions from the garden.TaDAAAAAA!

Ok, ok, it's just lettuce and onions but it is lettuce and onions that we managed not to ki..., er, grew in our own back yard. You don't get much more local than that. And it is a Japanese mustard, which feeds into my Japanese green tea salt theme a little. So allow me my small smug moment. I haven't cooked the fish yet and I need to smirk while the smirking is good.

So far I have the carrots and turnips taking first turn in the oven. I have the salad made, the table set, and the fish is a lickety-split production of oil, broil, salt, and serve. This should take about 5 minutes of broiling, 2-3 minutes for plating and adulation/photography, and then dinner, she is served, people!

I'll report back on any interesting screw ups or developments later this evening, but in the meantime, I'll share my notes about the green tea powder.First of all, I was tickled to have another chance to use the extra grinder I bought for 4 dollars at my local resale shop. It took 4 green tea bags to produce a tablespoon of powder. I processed the tea leaves for two bursts of several seconds each, until the sound changed, indicating the grinding was complete.

A note of caution...if you are striving to make your own weaponized green tea powder, it floats like crazy, so exercise a little care when opening the grinder so you don't get a snootful. I am not saying this powder will hurt you or not. For all I know, inhaling green tea will let you live to be 100. But hypothetically, once you get a goodly amount of green tea powder up your nose, you might not be tasting anything else for an hour or so. Hypothetically.

After you have emptied the tea bags, be sure to carefully remove the seams and iron the papers flat.They can be reused as delightful little bouquet garni wrappers...naaaaaah. I'm just yanking your chain there. Sure, Martha Stewart probably paints hers and sends them out as sweet little thank you notes or something but I tossed mine into that drawer where I put everything I "might need" eventually. This served me pretty well when my kids were little. We had the greatest stockpile of artsy-fartsy supplies in the free world. Now that my kids are grown I can't seem to break the habit. Maybe someday I will be the coolest grandmother ever, art supply wise. But, back to our fish tale....

I am not sure if this will qualify as an interesting screw up to anybody who didn't share our evening meal last night, but I did in fact screw a couple of things up.

First off, I planned WAY too ambitious a meal for a Wednesday night. Wednesday night is choir practice for all you pagans and heathens out there who don't already know that every Wednesday night thousands of determined church lady types such as my own self head to their respective church to practice an anthem to sing in services the following Sunday. Little known fact outside church circles, "thou shalt have a choir and it shall practice on Wednesday" is the 12th commandment, coming right after "thou shall only change the order of service once every 150 years" and just before "thou shall only sing music written by white men who have been dead for 150 years".So I was pressed for time and this is my excuse for simply not throwing that fish back up under the broiler for another 3-4 minutes because, ladies and gents, my beautiful halibut came out after the specified time looking done but proving otherwise. In that scary midsection, the thickest portion of my filet? (cue scary music and off stage shriek) It was not cooked all the way through.

This is what shoves me away from fish, folks. If I undercooked a beautiful piece of beef a little I'm simply "gourmet". If I undercook fish however, I'm a goofball (unless it is tuna, which I inexplicably tend to overcook. Go figure).

I will say this. The parts of the filet that were cooked, tasted FABULOUS. The green tea salt was one of those complementary flavor combinations that elevated (the cooked portions of) the dish to a whole new level of yumminess. Why can you trust this assessment? Because if you look at this plated, you can't TELL it is underdone. I didn't have to 'fess up to my foul up. ..I may not be experienced with fish (yet!) - but I'm honest...

I will most definitely try this again when I am not heading out the door soon after dinner time and am not distracted by a time constraint. I probably should have paid better attention to Bittman's comment on Step 2 under "Method" where he wrote, "Total cooking time in a good broiler will be about 5 minutes.". Two operative terms there that should have caused a bell to go off in my head. First? A "good" broiler.

Our oven is old enough to order drinks in a bar. It is not awful at all, but it is no longer exactly in it's prime. I should have allowed for more time, which brings me to bell number two, "about" 5 minutes. I am beginning to learn that when a recipe states "about" followed by some time period, that means I need to watch the food and use my own best judgement about conditions on the ground here in terms of when something is ready to serve.

I got in a hurry last night and the price I paid was a less than ideal outcome. Again, what I am focusing on taking away from this is to keep working with fish so I learn enough and begin to trust my instincts rather than getting too literal with a recipe. The flavors were all there as promised, it was my confidence and common sense that were lacking. I have some of the flavored salt left and I'll keep you posted as to how I decide to use it up. More fish? Maybe this time, two's the charm.

The Incredible, Edible...

Cactus!

Just to demonstrate how nutso I've gotten about food lately (your own blog posts can't be used against you in court, can they?)...

I have this gorgeous basket of new arrivals from Tecolote Farms (CSA Basket #6 if you are counting) plus an embarrassment of riches left over from last week's basket chilling in the refrigerator.  Nevertheless, I was talking to a friend of mine about landscaping stuff in general, and cacti blooming in particular, and she told me her landscaping guy shared with her that the little baby cactus pads on the plants currently in bloom, are edible.  

This guy said he grew up eating them and suggested since my friend had so many new pads on her plants, she ought to try them out.  

I have heard about eating cactus all my life (explained by having grown up in far northern Mexico, sometimes referred to as "central Texas" by natives).  We grew up knowing you can keep from dying of thirst in the desert because of the water stored in the plants, and that you can make a great jelly (or Margarita blend) out of the "pears". In restaurants specializing in Mexican cuisine, they commonly offer some sort of salad or soup from the pads.

However, after a lifetime of proximity, I'd never actually tried it myself, short of remarking aloud "I've always wondered about how these taste" when seeing it on a menu.

So I absolutely cannot explain to you why I went outside at lunchtime today, in the rain no less, took a sharp knife and sliced off one of the fresh small Nopalea Grande pads out front. (teaspoon is shown for scale) 

I followed the vague directions my friend passed along.  I rubbed the little protrusions off the pad.

I then took a knife and gently scraped off the white stubs left behind.

I scored the pad lightly with my knife and sauteéd it quickly in butter in a hot pan.  

I went out on a limb there with that last step.  I didn't google "cactus pad preparations" or anything sensible like that.  I just thought to myself in this weird "must...eat...cactus...pad..." fugue I was in, that everything tastes better browned in butter so I went there.

And OK, I'll admit it, I got the pan too hot and browned the butter overmuch before I threw the pad in.  I've only had this rangetop for oh, about 20 years, so clearly I will need more experience with it before I realize how long and how high a setting it needs to preheat.  I just wasn't thinking clearly (if at all) and it didn't matter that much because the little cactus pad cooked pretty promptly, without really burning.  It has a high moisture content, so I got away with it this time.  

And here is what I ended up with.A slightly smaller, nicely browned, chastened version of what I started with.

And how did it taste?  It was only a few bites and considering my inattention to the rangetop settings you might have reason to discount my abilities to describe flavors, but I think this is what would happen if a zucchini and an okra plant had a love child.  It mostly tasted "green", with a hint of sweetness, and a dollop of gooey to finish.  But gooey in that good way....

AFTER I had already eaten my little home grown cactus pad (Andrea, maybe I'm going to blame this little walk on the wild side on your Grow Your Own website) I googled and immediately came up with two less than reassuring sites. The first one featured a great photo of people feeding cacti to their turtles. The turtles certainly seemed to be enjoying their cactus pads, although I'm pretty sure those were uncooked. (The cactus pads, not the turtles. Well, OK, fair enough, the turtles weren't cooked either.)

The next site I hit was slightly more encouraging, and went into excruciating detail about the myriad health benefits of eating cacti. According to this site I was going to experience all sorts of amazing boosts to my immune system, higher energy levels, stabilized blood sugar, maybe the melting away of extraneous body fat and a higher IQ too, I got blurry eyed just reading.

Finally I hit a site with at least one serious recipe, which called for blanching rather than sauteéing the pads.  This recipe uses spined cacti, the nopale in my yard are of the non-spined variety. I am guessing they taste similar but who knows? A few days from now I may find myself heading out with knife and gloves to test that theory.

Maybe not my most thoroughly planned try of a new food source, but my "yard kill" test was a fun foray into Euell "tastes to me a little like wild hickory nuts" Gibbons territory. Since Euell has long gone to his eternal reward, maybe I'll parlay a book deal out of this.  "Stalking the Wild Nopale" has a nice ring to it, don't you agree?

In the meantime, I need to take my energized, immunized, intellectualized self back into the kitchen and get to cooking the non-wild veggies in the refrigerator.  For the moment, the rest of the landscaping plants are safe (from me at least).  

Next time I see nopal salad or sopa on a restaurant menu I can say with a knowing air "I like mine sauteéd better than blanched, don't you?".

And now, to finish, a little home grown cacti humor...

Q: If you try two different types of cactus and like them both equally well, then what do you have?

A: Pad tie. (rimshot!)

Come back any time ladies and gents, I'll be here all week.

GROW YOUR OWN

The Blog is Always Greener...
No, no, no, ... not THAT kind of "your own"... Grow Your Own FOOD.

If you Google "grow your own" without specifying "food", you get a really interesting assortment of search variations that make me wonder how many of my friends made it through the 1960s or 70s without the benefit of the internet. But they did - we did - we all managed somehow and most of us now, a little longer in the tooth and grayer around the temples are still growing our own. Food, that is.

An enterprising young DC metro area self-described "work-at-home Mom" (isn't that redundant?), Andrea Meyers, has a monthly roundup of folks who report their experiences preparing food that includes ingredients they have grown themselves. You can find information on how to participate here. The roundup for April, Grow Your Own Round-up #9, includes one of my blog posts about making loquat jam.

As enticing as it is to be able to reach my own blog post through it being featured on somebody else's site; and it was fun for me I'll admit, a foodie's version of the tagged photos on MySpace or being linked in Facebook I guess, it was also humbling once my competitive nature kicked in.

After reading recently on The Amateur Gourmet about the rules of food blogging,and on how to have a "popular" blog, I immediately zoomed past any elation on being included in the roll of the sustainable foodies into a feeling that I wanted, more than anything else, to have the COOLEST entry in the round-up.

I want to sit at the table with the popular kids! I want to BE one of the popular kids!

I mean, come on, JAM?? Pretty pedestrian when lined up against Brazilian zucchini salsa, or dolamades using grape leaves from your family vineyard in Sparta, Greece. Shoot, even the domestic Californian Beet Ice Cream seems much more exotically wonderful than jam.
My problem seems to be that anything from another country, or even another state, automatically falls into the "cooler than here" category in my mind. The California couple featured, White on Rice, actually have a website all their own that features a well designed, dare I say, hiply laid out format I experienced as vastly superior to the ordinary garden variety blogging most of us (read:me) engage in. And, apparently, if am reading him correctly, Adam Roberts would agree.

But surely that is a problem all on its own. Automatic self deprecation has to be a clear warning sign of using the wrong measuring stick.

I could launch here into a discourse on the Mimetics of Desire, about how the value of anything is enhanced by it being appreciated by the "other". Or I could point out that years under the current administration have left most liberal leaning Americans with a self loathing when comparing ourselves to the rest of the world that bottom lines as "anything I can do, you can do better". I could even cite the ground rules of the Two Year Old, if I have it and put it down but then you want it so I want it back, it is mine.

Jam making may be mine, may be ordinary, easy to do, and certainly is much less exotic than, say, beet ice cream. At the same time, jam in the cupboard is dependable, will keep for up to a year (the Gospel according to my little box of pectin) and is something I like to eat. A LOT. Jam will sit there immediately available, a reminder of sunshiny Spring days spent together with my husband, harvesting fruit in our own back yard.

No matter how domestic or unsophisticated that might read to you, it lives out beautifully for me. Raising vegetables in the garden, having fruit trees in the yard and using that fruit, is all something that comes naturally. It represents a return to sensible living where our connections to our food are much clearer. My mom didn't make jam, but her sisters did, and my mother in law did, and their mothers and grandmothers all did.

My son has a culinary garden in his small outdoor space. My daughter shops very responsibly, and "liberates" herbs and food from here since she has no outdoor space at all in this stage of her life. I don't know if my kids will ever try to make their own jam, but if they do? They will know they are entering into an activity that has sustained the palates of this family for generations.

I suppose somebody from another state or another country could read about our jam making here and think to themselves, "how exotic - loquat jam". Bottom line for me is that exotic or domestic, pioneering or safely quaint, growing our own food, preparing it and sharing the experiences with each other is and ought to stay about connecting, not competing.

That couple in California with their independently designed website and amazing garden already providing them with baby beets are demonstrably more sophisticated than I am. I'll say it flat out right now - if that is going to be my criterion then they win. They are the popular kids. I may never be invited to sit at that table.

However, blog envy aside and on a better day, I am real about who I am and who we are as a family and that is, as my Mom used to say, gracious plenty. That means, popular or not, sophisticated or simple, I win. Now I'm going to the kitchen to celebrate and fix me some toast. With Loquat Jam.

Loquats

I am embarrassed to admit my family has been watching loquats ripen, fall to the ground, and spoil, all without even attempting to harvest any for ourselves. I can't recall how long this has been the case. I originally bought two loquat trees in one gallon planters over 15 years ago and now both trees are as tall as our two story house.

Similarly, I don't recollect when the trees began to develop full fledged fruit, but I do know that my neglecting to pick the dropped fruit up out of the area underneath the two mature trees at one point resulted in a sea of baby loquat trees, completely covering their part of the yard.

I finally reached my breaking point and decided to clear the small trees out. I gave away as many as I could and composted the rest. At least a half dozen times while I was clearing out one set of saplings, I'd be hit on the head by a small loquat falling to the ground. About the size of ping pong balls or smaller, they were strange to me, usually still fairly green, and just didn't seem worth the bother.

Somehow, all that changed. I don't know if it was all the rain last year, the result of clearing out the hundreds of tiny competitors for nutrients, or a certain age being reached, but this Spring our two loquat trees were noticeably laden with fruit. Good sized fruit. Good sized golden fruit, some of it at least ripening easily within reach of a ladder.

None of that might have made much difference except that I am different this year. Having read Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma" and Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", I am determined to grow more of my own food. I was fortunate enough to score a spot on Tecolote Farm's CSA basket delivery list this Spring and have already stretched my usual choices of what to eat while meeting the challenge of preparing and cooking what is locally ripe.

On top of all that I have been working with my husband to take areas of our yard out of grass and into garden beds where we have planted native flowers, various culinary herbs, and several vegetables.

Bottom line, to have this abundance of fruit on two trees ripening within a few feet of my bedroom window was not an opportunity I would choose to miss again this year. Carefully opening a loquat, taking out the seeds, peeling it and slipping the slightly firm flesh into my mouth sealed the deal. They are a wonderful combination of peach, apricot and cherry flavors.

Out came the ladder and I hand picked a bag half full of loquats. I've never made jam before, but with several pounds of ripe fruit on the kitchen counter and countless pounds more steadily ripening on the trees, I knew I'd have to find some way to preserve as much of this bounty as we could possibly eat, and share the rest with my friends, neighbors, and the local wildlife. (Credit where credit is due - the birds, squirrels and bugs have been enjoying our loquats all along. It was only the humans who were missing the loquat boat.)

I adapted the recipe for peach jam that came with the instructions inside the box of pectin:
4 cups finely chopped loquats, seeded, peeled, with inner membrane removed
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
5 1/2 cups sugar

Use a food processor on "pulse" to chop the fruit. Process it in two batches, pulsing 4-5 short bursts until the fruit is finely chopped but not pureed.

Combine fruit, lemon juice and one box of pectin. Bring to a rolling boil stirring constantly, then add sugar. Bring to a rolling boil again, stirring, and cook for exactly one minute.

Remove from heat, skim off foam, and place in prepared jars for processing. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes. The jam has not cooled long enough for me to test for sealing or to try the results, but the jars sure enough LOOK like they've got regulation jam inside and the lids all popped, just like they were supposed to.

I did learn a couple of things. Loquats are much smaller than peaches so the work involved in pitting and peeling simply takes longer. It took me the better part of an hour to prepare the fruit for chopping. After that, everything went pretty quickly. I discovered that the loquat peel comes off easily - I could use the side of a spoon to both pull the interior membrane around the seeds off and to peel the skin. It often came off in only one or two large pieces.

I also decided that the jam recipes call for enough sugar that I will try a batch of not so ripe loquats next for a slightly tarter jam. Past that if I still have loquats available and the will left to preserve more jars, I will try to put together some version of a loquat/jalapeño salsa.

As a first time canner, I learned that size matters. Yes, sure, a no-brainer for real, but the jars I purchased were too tall to allow for 1-2 inches of boiling water to cover in the tallest pot I have. I figure on using those taller jars for other projects and I will keep an eye out for a taller pot at my local Goodwill store. And in the future I will buy shorter jars that will fit in the pots I have on hand.

I can barely wait for the jam to cool sufficiently to test if it sealed and set properly. After all these years of looking at loquats, and pulling out baby loquat trees, it will be truly rewarding to be enjoying the fruit itself. In the next few days, I will prepare a pork loin with a loquat reduction sauce. Loquats, welcome to the family table.

If you have something you prepare from food you have grown - check out this web site dedicated to that very prospect:.