Pecan Corner

This is a great way to use some of the green tomatoes left in the garden. I chose to use the small cherry tomatoes for this, cut into quarters, to take advantage of them for texture.  I used some of this to make a Mincemeat Cake (recipe here) to take to a gathering this week and it turned out great!

As Paul has gotten better, he is now feeling like doing more even though he is still mostly house-bound. He has watched a lot of You Tube during this past year, and we've been discovering the amazing channels ordinary people have.   Now we are one of those!  :-)

Pecan Corner on You Tube won't have any political content (that is for the blog! :-) ), just my natural life-long "how to" preparedness. I have always kept a well-stocked larder, and we practice a concept I call "budget abundance" that allows us to still enjoy a high quality standard of living without debt and within a tiny budget. This is especially important during difficult economic times,

Videos so far include how to make prickly pear cactus jelly, canning apple pie filling, seasoning your own breakfast sausage, and inexpensive old fashioned home-cooked meals that can feed a family healthful food for very little. There are also recipes of products I make for my little Cottage Food home business - things to sell at farmer's markets and roadside stands. As we go along, I'm sure my other hobbies will find their way into it as well: letterpress printing, gardening, foraging wild foods, and our new-found fun: Living History and historical reenacting!

I hope you will subscribe, there will only be one a day so it won't overwhelm your inbox. They say You Tube now rates channels by subscribers as well as views, and I have monetized the channel so perhaps one day it will contribute a bit to the household. If nothing else, it is something fun we can do together, to make new friends and enjoy trading knowledge with others.

Here is a sample! Thanks for checking it out! :-)

The Wild Texas Persimmons are ripe! These turn black when ripe, and unlike orange persimmons, they don't need a frost. The trees are small and look almost like an under-story live oak, except their bark and trunks remind me of crepe myrtles.  They would be a good landscape tree - but they are male and female so you need several trees for them to be fruitful. Here is an excellent page to help identify and learn more about them:  BackyardNature.net's Texas Persimmons Page





Our friend Herb gave me a bunch and I turned some of them into Persimmon Jam. The final product is very tasty, reminiscent of molasses - dark and thick and rich and full flavored. They are don't have much acid in them, so the rest of the pulp I canned in my pressure canner.  Our friends tell us it makes fantastic persimmon bread. They made a wonderful pie, using a recipe that is similar to a pumpkin pie, nicely spiced with evaporated milk. I'll post the recipe here when I get it.




These fruit are quite challenging to process, because they are so soft, and each contains multiple large seeds. Putting them through a collander or a jelly strainer leaves far too much waste. I tried several different methods of separating the pulp and finally settled on using a strong mesh bag with very small holes. The ones with diamond shaped netting are too large and allow seeds to escape into the pot, but the bags that grapefruit, oranges, lemons and other citrus come in, with small square shaped holes, seem to be perfect for it. I just scoop the whole fruit into the bag and squeeze it with my hands until all the juice and pulp is out. This method also cleans the seeds well  - they are surrounded by a tough membrane that is as edible as the rest of the pulp but otherwise difficult to remove.

The color is very off-putting for me. It looks and feels like working in crude oil or blackstrap molasses and gets everywhere.  On the plus side, while the unripe ones make an indelible stain, the ripe ones seem to stain at about the same level as plum peelings. One woman, Deb McClintock, has been using the green ones as yarn dye (and wow does she have some gorgeous colors), and also the green ones were used to make ink. But they seem to reach a point on the tree that they will go ahead and ripen even if picked - which is not the case with the wild orange ones in my experience.

 Overall, the reliable test of ripening speaks strongly for these fruits. The American Persimmon that I grew up with in Oklahoma is difficult to rely on because of the need to be certain every single fruit is ripe before using them. These black ones can be confidently used when they are fully black and soft - no astringency at all at that stage.

I was also excited to get these because I want to save the seeds. I have a little display of native wild flower seeds that I sell at our Farmers Market and other events, and I wanted to add this great Texas Native to them. Also, reenactors may know that persimmon seeds were used as buttons during the difficult times during and after the civil war when real pearl or metal buttons were unavailable. They are very hard and naturally smooth, as well as uniform in size, which makes for good buttons.

There are not many trees that offer such a wide range of potential products in such a small package!

I set a goal last Winter, in the cold, here at home looking after my husband in his slow and steady recovery from a life-saving surgery, to learn How to Grow Tomatoes. I have made several posts about it, and will add links here but for now you can search the blog to find them.  Learned how to choose varieties, selected them and raised the plants from seed under fluorescent lights on the kitchen bar, set them out and mourned when they froze to death, set out the "leftovers" and watched them impatiently as they reached a stage of growth and then seemed to go dormant in this funny cool Spring.



 And then, God sent the rain. Glorious abundant rain. It started with a nice shower, then a couple of weeks later, eight inches of water poured from the sky onto my garden and everything took off! Things sprounted that I had forgotten I had even planted.  The tomatoes GREW!

Watched again as they bloomed and filled with greem fruit - fruit that sat on the plants as though waiting for an invitation to dress for dinner.  I wondered if they would ever ripen. They just grew larger and continued to bloom and make even more fruit.


And finally last week, they started in. First a fruit here, and another there. Now, I am gathering a gallon a day. That is half a peck - a kind soul on the tomato mania group let me know that a peck equals 2 gallons.
We are having a blast tasting these beautiful fruits. I've never tasted many of these heirlooms, so have been imagining their flavors all Winter.  They do not disappoint. The black and purple ones are rich and sweet and complex. The pink ones are perfect and balanced. The red tomatoes are acidic and tomato-ey. They are all wonderful.

I sell some at our County's Farmer's Market each Saturday morning, and have a little table set up outside the house for excess during the week.  Most importantly, I am canning the excess, so we will have our own tomatoes for the winter. More on that in another post. For now, I am just enjoying the harvest!

I've been having fun this year in the print shop, turning out seed packets for saving seeds in.  The Pecan Corner Press is a hobby, and this kind of ephemera is what I usually produce. I use handset type and some fun old cuts.  I've been taking these to the local Farmer's Market since the grasshoppers and deer have eaten all my gardening efforts this year.  The empty ones are great for saving seed and tucking into a get well card or garden club seed exchanges. Some people even said they were going to use them in their little miniature display cabinets.



My Swiss Chard went to seed this year (it is a biennial, and can be harvested as long as it lives - it is never tough or bitter), so I made the linoleum cut and filled these to see how the seed would sell. This is the old variety, Fordhook, and they can be planted in Texas all the way though the fall.

I didn't take a press but I have taken a locked-up chase and it has drawn a lot of interest.  I have a ways to go before I sell enough to pay for my market fees, but this is a good way to support our little market and help it grow.
 
 When September rolls around, I'll be able to offer more items - we all will. Texas passed a Cottage Food Law a couple of years ago that made it possible to open one's home to sell baked goods and jams. It is a common-sense approach that recognizes that if we know the person doing the cooking, we can decide for ourselves whether we want to eat what they have cooked.  The newest version, which takes effect Sept 1st 2013, is pretty exciting, because it expands common sense to foods that are pretty much going to be safe to eat and allows us to take our products to Farmers' Markets and locally sponsored Fairs, as well as sell from home.

 Here's another place where we - Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Tea Party, Occupy... pretty much everybody but the Socialists and Communists - can come together, I think. We all want personal sovereignty over our food!!!!



 So, in anticipation of HB 970 (still awaiting the final rules to define exactly what items we can sell), I have been carving linoleum blocks to use on labels for my homemade jams, jellies, relishes, sauerkraut, syrups and baked goods. The linocuts, combined with Art Deco era typefaces, give the labels a fun old fashioned look. These are the first proofs of a few of them, printed on dry-gummed paper. I will tweek the colors and ink coverage a bit for the final labels.

 I know it isn't quite Summer yet, but it is here since I have made the first batch of homemade ice cream. It is cherry season, at least in those places where they grow cherries. Central Texas doesn't get cold enough and gets too hot for the quaint stone fruit, so this is something we must import from places like.... New Mexico*, which I think of as close enough to be almost local.  Anyway, whereever they come from, fresh cherries are abundant and relatively inexpensive right now.

I found a bargain on some that were past their prime, and had been drastically discounted. For ice cream, we want them cut into quarters rather than halves, plus they need to be fully ripe, so this is a good use for imperfect fruit that has reached full flavor. The necessity of tiny pieces of fully ripe fruit I discovered last year when I made the mistake of using commercially frozen peaches in large chunks. They froze so hard that they were not pleasant to eat.

My recipe is a custard-type. It uses egg yolks and is cooked. This makes a luscious, rich ice cream with just the right amount of body. Mema used flour to thicken hers, but I never liked that, I prefer the smoothness of the eggs. The fact that we can buy yard eggs with golden yolks from our neighbor's happy hens is a bonus.

It takes a little practice to learn how to make a custard. There isn't really any secret, just have to be whisking the eggs really fast while pouring a stream of the hot milk into the eggs to "temper" them, then whisk the hot milk really fast while you pour the tempered egg yolk back into the pot and finish cooking. Until you get the hang of it, pour the whole cooked batch through a strainer when it is cooked. That will remove any "scrambled eggs". Eventually you won't need that step any longer.

*(*THINK FOR YOURSELF TIP O' THE DAY: I won't go into the politics of the northwestern state fruit growers and the unreported twists in a lot of the mess our domestic food and immigration policies are in but it is something worth researching sometime. Hint: you will learn a lot if you read news from about 1995 through 2005 on sites sympathetic to Migrant Labor, Fruit Growers, etc. )

Now without further ado, on with the recipe!
 


Fresh Cherry Ice Cream
Makes about 1 1/2 Quarts

1 1/4 Cup Sugar
2 Cups Whole Milk or Half and Half
5 Egg Yolks (freeze the whites to use for meringue)
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Cup Heavy Cream (Whipping Cream)
2 Cups Cherries, pitted and coarsely chopped (about 1 1/2 pounds)

Pit and chop the cherries, stir in 1/4 cup of sugar and set aside until the end.

Scald the milk in a 2 quart saucepan ("scald" means heat to steaming but do not boil).

Whisk the egg yolks and 1 cup of sugar in a mixing bowl.  Temper the yolks by pouring about half the hot milk in a thin stream while whisking the egg yolks very fast. I like to use a pyrex measuring cup for this, just dip it out (careful not to burn yourself) and pour. Makes it easier to keep whisking if you don't have someone to help you.  A stand mixer is also a good helper for this task - it can be beating the eggs whilst you pour.

Then pour the tempered egg yolks back into the rest of the milk while whisking the milk. Cook and stir, to prevent boiling, for 3 or 4 minutes until the mixture has thickened some. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temp. It is at this stage that you can strain it if you wish. 

After the custard has cooled, add the heavy cream and the vanilla extract.

Freeze in your ice cream freezer, following manufacturer's directions. Pay special attention to the need for salt in the freezing process - it is the salt that lowers the temperature below that of ice alone to enable freezing.

When the custard is frozen, remove the dasher and fold in the cherries. At this stage, I transfer my ice cream to freezer containers and put them in the chest freezer. If you want to finish the freezing in your ice cream maker, leave the canister set in the ice, remove the lid and the dasher, stir in the cherries then replace the lid securely, fill the whole bucket with more ice and salt, cover with a towel and let it sit for an hour or two until you are ready to serve, adding more ice as necessary.

I used to use a hand-cranked freezer, but last year I bought an electric one - mainly because my little manual one was not large enough. The electric one seems to take longer to freeze, but since I am not powering it that doesn't hurt! :-)

Enjoy!


About the photo:  Fresh Cherry Ice Cream gets pride of place for its picture in my great grandmother's Pink Cherry Blossom Depression Glass. Big Granddaddy gave this set to Big Grandmother for one of their anniversaries, and I inherited it from her.   Isn't that vintage spoon adorable? It says "Betty Lou" on the handle, and is Carlton Silverplate. I have a funny little collection of figural spoons. I'll take pictures and show them here sometime.

 These are from the only rosebush that survived the drought, but oh aren't they gorgeous! Paul commented that they "are almost florescent": a beautiful orangey coral color.

Just as glorious in their own way are the fresh, day-glo green, male pecan tree flowers. You can see the long strands of pollen-rich catkins hanging in clusters. The female flowers are too small to see, but they are just above the catkins - Pecan trees only make female blossoms if all conditions are right: enough water, enough sugars and starches....and to date no one has figured out a scientific way to consistently predict the crop. It is so unique each year that pecans are called "God's crop" by the botanists and growers who study these trees.

 



I am betting on a great crop from our trees this year, in part because it has been several years since we had a bountiful one, and we've had good rain (thank you, Father God, for answering our prayers and sending rain to tide Texas over despite all predictions to the contrary. The drought is not gone, but we are grateful things are much improved in most of the state).

One of our trees is a native pecan that has the sweetest nuts. I gathered 100 pounds (before shelling) from it alone our first year here. We are just finishing them up (shelled and froze them in vacuum packs), so it would be a great blessing to have a new crop to stock up again.

If you want to produce as much of your own food as possible, do consider nut trees. You can have them in cities, and even a small lot can have a pecan tree. They produce a huge amount of high-calorie, healthy food with minimal effort once they are established. Pecan trees will not grow everywhere, but here they just come up from forgotten nuts that get buried. So look around and see what grows well where you live, and add the best possible "Edible landscaping" to your yard! :-)

Our granddaughter (or "Grand angel" as Paul calls her) asked for a strawberry cake and filet mignon for her birthday. Oh boy! I got to set a pretty pink table and use my pretty "new" flea market dishes, along with my old family pieces!

The footed iced tea glasses, in the Mayfair pattern, are heirlooms: they belonged to Big Grandmother - my great-grandmother, Mema's mother. I inherited her pink depression glass, mostly in the Cherry Blossom pattern - the cake plate is one of those pieces.

The plates are a recent find, with hand-painted wild roses in pink with green leaves. They look very much like Franciscan's Desert Rose. They were made by Villeroy and Bach, a good brand, but they were quite dirty from having been packed in newspaper and so were priced very cheap. A good scrub with my glass cooktop cleaner (I use Ceramabrite - it's basically a polishing glass wax) took the stains right off.

 

My table is oval, and it is impossible to find tablecloths in that shape, so I end up using oblong ones. This vintage damask linen is one of the few oval table cloths I have. The pink is such a pretty shade.

Paul cooked a lovely meal: filet mignon, baked potato, our own asparagus with a saffron sauce. For starters, he made a hot chicken dip that she'd also requested - one of her mother's recipes. It was yummy, and I'll share the recipe for that another time.

Here's the recipe for the cake - it got raves all around and has a lovely fresh taste. Keeps so well in the refigerator. It is one I will make again: nice and cool for a summer barbeque, and it is best if made in advance. That's important for me: things I can make up the night before, to save time and fit my schedule.


Pretty & Pink Fresh Strawberry Cake

Ingredients

1 boxed yellow cake mix
3 tablespoons flour
1 small box strawberry gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
3 1/2 cups of strawberries (a one pound carton)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 8 ounce package cream cheese
3 to 4 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour three round cake pans.

Pour the water into a large mixing bowl and sprinkle gelatin on top. Let it sit to dissolve.

Wash the berries. Pick out 5 or 6 pretty strawberries for garnish and set them aside. Hull the rest of them. Take another cup full of whole, hulled berries and set them aside - they will be sliced for the layers later.

Take one cup of strawberries and chop finely. Add them to the mixing bowl with gelatin, and beat on high for a couple of minutes, then add the remaining ingredients: cake mix, flour, eggs, oil. Beat at medium speed for 5 minutes.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake pans. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool cakes in the pans 5 or 10 minutes, then turn out and complete cooling on wire racks.

Chop one cup of strawberries finely and sprinkle with sugar in a small bowl. Let them sit a few minutes to draw excess liquid out, then drain them.

Whip the cream and set aside. Cream the butter, cream cheese, sugar and the drained, chopped strawberries until light and fluffy then add the whipped cream. If necessary, add more powdered sugar until the frosting holds peaks. Refrigerate the frosting until you are ready to ice the cake.

Slice the rest of the strawberries (except the ones to be used for garnish - leave them aside for now) into very thin slices.

When layers are cool, place one on a cake plate. Spread frosting on top evenly to the edges. Arrange half of your thinly sliced strawberries all over the top of this layer, then put the next cake layer on top of that and repeat, using the rest of the thinly sliced berries on this layer.

Top with the 3rd layer and frost the top and sides thickly with the frosting.

Do not garnish until right before serving, as the juice from cut berries will drip down the sides of the cake. To avoid this, you could garnish with a single whole berry in the center.

When ready to serve, add the strawberries for garnish - in this photo, Paul showed me how to fan the center one by leaving the hull on, and slicing through from bottom to top, leaving the slices attached at the hull end, then twist slightly to fan it out. The other berries were simply cut in half and arranged around it.

Store this cake in the refrigerator and serve chilled. It keeps beautifully and is best made a day or two before.

Enjoy!

I nearly forgot to share this. and here we are in Texas Citrus Season again. The sweetest, most amazing grapefruits in the whole world are those grown in Texas. The flavor of Texas citrus is unsurpassed.

 Paul showed me how to section a grapefruit a few years ago, and it is brilliant. He was smart: now, when the Texas Ruby Red Grapefruits are ripe, I section a whole bag of them and put them in a big jar in the fridge. So he can just dish them out for breakfast.

This method can also be used for oranges, and will really improve your Ambrosia (with or without marshmallows ;-)).


Here's how:

Using a sharp knife, cut off the ends and down each side of the grapefruit, removing all the rind and white and exposing the fruit.

Work over a large, shallow bowl to catch all the yummy juice. This is a messy task. Wear  your old apron and have a dishtowel handy.



Hold the peeled grapefruit in your "off" hand (non-dominant) and run the knife blade carefully down between the membrane and one section. When you reach the bottom of that section, slide the knife along and up the other side of  the same section, so that the single section is separated and will drop into the bowl.






Repeat until all are removed. It sounds a lot harder than it is - in reality, the sections slide away from the membrane easily. Do be careful with the knife though. No need to hurry or take risks. I am a lefthanded clutz, so often I will use a serrated knife (with ambidextrous or lefty serrations) to avoid cutting myself.




When all are done, remove all the seeds and put into a clean mason jar, and refrigerate. I don't know how long they will keep, because we always eat them all within 3 or 4 days!

Paul had a birthday recently, and it was a big one milestone, so we had some of our friends over for cake. When I asked Paul what kind of cake he wanted, he started talking about mocha and raspberries and oh my.  I found a recipe and adapted it to fit. It turned out gorgeous! Looks great and tastes perfect. Several people have asked for the recipe,so here it is.

Devil's Food Torte with Raspberries

Make cake and chill for 8 hours before serving. It should keep well, refrigerated, for at least 24 hours. 

1 Devil's Food Cake Mix (I used Duncan Hines)
Leftover brewed coffee to substitute for water called for in cake mix
Eggs and oil as called for in cake mix
2 layer cake pans

Use shortening to grease the cake pans and dust with flour. Set pans on baking sheets "just in case" to prevent overflows. Preheat oven.
Prepare the cake mix according to package directions, using whole eggs and oil, and substituting coffee for the water called for. Pour into pans and bake as directed for layer cake pans. Test for doneness with a toothpick at earliest time. Remove from oven and cool in pans on wire racks for 15 minutes, then turn out of pans and finish cooling on wire racks with top side UP.  Cool for at least one hour.

2 cups heavy whipping cream (I used Kroger brand)
1 8 ounce package cream cheese (not low fat)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon real vanilla extract

Use electric mixer and beat cream until very stiff.  Set aside.

Put cream cheese into large bowl with sugar and vanilla and beat on high until fluffy. At low speed, gradually fold in whipped cream.

Divide this frosting into 4 relatively equal portions (one can be larger than the others for the top and for "leftover")

Assembling and icing the cake:

1 can raspberry filling (can't remember the brand, but it wasn't a very big can) to glaze the layers with
1 package fresh raspberries

While layer remains on wire rack, use a bread knife (or your electric knife if you don't have a bread knife), and carefully trim the convex part off the top so that it is flat. Don't worry about how it looks, only that most of the top be mostly flat. (Set the trimmings aside to make yourself  & your sweetie a little "preview parfait" out of the leftover ingredients)

Then, hold your bread knife flat and cut the layer in half horizontally. Carefully lift the top and set it onto your cake plate.

Open the raspberry filling and use your spatula to spread a VERY THIN layer on the top of the layer. It should be thin, just enough to glaze the top.

Take a few fresh berries (the ugly ones) and crumble them and scatter on top.

Clean spatula, then spread the cream frosting thickly on top of the glaze, letting it kind of stray over the edges a bit.

Set the other layer right on top of all this and do exactly the same thing all over again.

Split the next layer and repeat.

When the top is iced, smooth it a little, and arrange the prettiest raspberries on it.

Refrigerate until ready to serve. By chilling it for several hours, it will hold together well and you won't need skewers to hold it together.

~~~~~~~


We had coffee ice cream with it, and it was perfect! Paul says it is one of the best cakes he has ever eaten. I was so pleased!  I have never been much of a baker but it starts to look like I have taken it up as a new hobby by accident. :-)

It's Peach Season! Time to eat all we can and can all we can't. ;-) I love canning - it's one of those tasks where we get to enjoy the fruits of a day's work for a long time.

The jar to the far right is Peach Chutney I made last year. It turned out great! It is wonderful with roast poultry and makes a really nice alternative to cranberry sauce. We can't grow cranberries in Texas so this is a good thing for those trying to eat locally or do the "100 mile diet" bit. Aside from some of the spices, all the ingredients either were local or "could have been" homegrown.


Personally, I don't think we should count the spices when trying to eat locally, because spices were one of the early commodities traded as far back as stone age people thousands of years ago - right up to what is now called "The Spice Trade" explosion in the 15th century Age of Exploration. It's why Columbus discovered America: looking for a shorter trade route to the continents and islands of the Orient (the Orient - from the Latin root "orientem" meaning the direction of the sun rise - was the Eastern world, the Occident, from L. "occidentem", direction of the sunset, was the word for the West), where all sorts of wonderful spices originated.

I found the original version of this recipe for "Spicy Peach Chutney" on Allrecipes.com, submitted by "Shana":

Original Recipe Yield 6 - 1/2 pints

Ingredients
* 4 pounds sliced peeled peaches
* 1 cup raisins
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 1/2 cup chopped onion
* 5 ounces chopped preserved ginger
* 1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder
* 1 tablespoon mustard seed
* 1 teaspoon curry powder
* 4 cups packed brown sugar
* 4 cups apple cider vinegar
* 1/4 cup pickling spice

Directions
1. In a large heavy pot, stir together the peaches, raisins, garlic, onion, preserved ginger, chili powder, mustard seed, curry powder, brown sugar and cider vinegar. Wrap the pickling spice in a cheesecloth bag, and place in the pot.
2. Bring to a boil, and cook over medium heat uncovered until the mixture reaches your desired consistency. It will take about 1 1/2 hours to get a good thick sauce. Stir frequently to prevent scorching on the bottom.
3. Remove the spice bag, and ladle into hot sterilized jars. Wipe the rims with a clean moist cloth. Seal with lids and rings, and process in a barely simmering water bath for 10 minutes, or the time recommended by your local extension for your area. The water should cover the jars completely.

I used fresh peaches I had just picked off the tree, but it can as easily be made with canned, frozen or dehydrated fruit. You could even use your peach jam (I'd leave out the sugar in this recipe if I were making it with jam).

To make Peach Chutney using dried peaches, pour plain hot water over the fruit in a ratio of 1 1/2 cups water per cup of fruit and let soak for an hour. Don't add the sugar yet or it will keep the peaches from absorbing the water. Measure out 6 cups of reconsituted peaches and use in place of the fresh peaches called for in the recipe.

This recipe, like many pickles, is best after it has had time to age for at least 2 months. Made at this time of year, it was perfect by Thanksgiving, and we enjoyed it all the way through the winter.

This page for the week of January 10 through 16 from the 1926 John Burrough's Calendar reads

"The apples that cling to the trees, the pods that hang to the lowest branches, and the seeds that the various weeds and grasses hold above the deepest snows, alone make it possible for many birds to pass the winter among us." From "Signs and Seasons"

There was a small hackberry scrub tree next to the road where I gathered prickly pears, and I had to eat a couple of the ripe hackberries. Wow that sure took me back to my childhood. They were "the" street tree in my hometown when I was growing up. The boys may remember the trees in front of Amos house, and one in Mema and Nandy's front yard? There also used to be hackberry trees lining 5th Avenue alongside Amos' house and going for blocks. These were all removed when they widened the road when I was about 12 or so.


There are many varieties of Hackberry, ranging from those that get large enough to be stately lining streets, to scrubby wild ones that grow out in West Texas. They are a rather short lived tree, maybe 50 years or so, and their wood is soft.


Birds love the berries, and they are a wonderful source of food for them. For people...not so much. Yes they have a great flavor, but have you ever eaten one? Imagine a BB (like you shoot from a bb gun), coated with apple peeling. That's it. The little bit of skin is the only thing edible - the inside is an indigestible hard ball. But that little bit of skin tastes just as good and sweet as apple peeling.

Because the berries are small and have no juice, they are not messy, thus their use as street trees.

People here tell me they use hackberry wood in the early part of the winter or spring when they only need a quick warm up to the house. It burns fast and takes the chill off on those cool mornings when you won't need a fire later in the day. I haven't had any of it, so I can't speak from experience yet. If I get the chance to get some from tree trimmers this year, I will try it.

UPDATE Aug 8, 2013: Winter before last, we discovered that some of our firewood was hackberry. How did we find out? Our neighbor came to beg us not to burn that wood any more because it stinks! Our stove is enclosed so we don't smell the wood, but one low pressure day had driven the smoke a block over to their house. When we smelled it we agreed it smells horrible! I am so grateful that she was willing to tell us about it. We threw away the rest of that and changed our source of wood. So nope, I can't recommend hackberry as a source for heat if you live anywhere near humans. :-(

Be sure the see the first post (How to find and gather) and the second post (how to prepare the fruit and juice).

If you have not made jelly before, please do the safe thing and read up on specific canning methods, with up-to-date instructions before making this. The National Center for Home Food Preservation (linked from my sidebar) is a good place to go to start learning. If you have a dear one who knows how to can, call them and enlist their advice. Call your mom anyway, just for general principles.

Jelly is one of the easiest and safest home-canned foods you can make. I follow the instructions that come in the package of Sure-Jell, which is the brand of powdered pectin I usually use. For this batch I used Can-Jel, which is Kroger's brand, and it came out just fine. "Pectin" is a naturally occuring substance that causes fruit juice to gel when it is cooked with sugar. Apples, especially the peelings, have a great lot of it.

I always add extra pectin to my jellies and jams. I don't use liquid pectin, only the powdered type. However, my recipes all call for powdered pectin - be sure to use the type that your recipe calls for. It does make a difference!

Gather your jars, wash them and sterilize them with boiling water: either put the jars (jars only NOT the lids) in a pot of boiling water for 10 minutes (use canning tongs to remove them), or run them through your dishwasher's "sterilize" cycle. I always sterilize one extra jar just in case I need it.

Set them on an old towel in a handy location so that you will be able to easily ladle the hot liquid jelly into them when the time comes. Right next to the stove works best for me, and is safest. You do not want to be carrying a pot full or even a jar-full of boiling liquid jelly. The towel under the jars is to catch spills.

The Prickly Pear Jelly recipe I use is very similar to recipes for elderberry jelly. It makes about 11 half-pints. Since this recipe calls for 2 boxes of pectin, you could half it but do not double it.
If you need more, make 2 batches. Use only sugar for this recipe - do not reduce the amount of sugar and do not use sugar substitutes.

Only make jelly when you can give it your full attention from start to finish. It won't take long for the actual cooking and putting up but you cannot leave it once you start. So get everything else done in advance, but make sure you have an hour of uninterrupted time and turn the phone off before you turn the stove on.

You will need:
6 cups of prepared Prickly Pear Juice
1/4 cup lemon juice (either fresh or bottled)
9 cups of sugar
2 boxes of powdered pectin
1/2 tsp of butter or margarine (to reduce foaming)

Put your jar lids (the seal part) into a sauce pan of water and heat to boiling. Turn the fire down and keep warm.

Measure the sugar into a large bowl and set aside.

Measure 6 cups of prepared juice into a large spaghetti pot and add 1/4 cup lemon juice. Add both packages of pectin and whisk or stir well. Add 1/2 tsp butter - this will help keep the foam down once the jelly starts boiling hard.

Cook on high heat, stirring constantly, until it comes to a full rolling boil that cannot be stirred down.

While stirring, pour all of the sugar in all at once, and keep stirring over high heat until it comes back to a full rolling boil.

Don't take your eyes off it at this point.

Once it is at a full rolling boil, boil it hard for one full minute - this is important, use your timer if you can.

Turn the stove off and remove from hear and keep stirring until the boil dies down. If there is foam on the top, use a metal spoon to skim it off and discard it (I put it into a bowl and use it as my first taste after all the jars are sealed, but you shouldn't have much foam if you put the butter in).

Ladle the jelly into jars to within 1/8" from the top. When they are all filled, wipe off the rims with a wet cloth.

One at a time, get the lids out of the hot water with tongs and put lid and ring onto the jar. Tighten as tight as you can and set back down on a level surface away from drafts.


Repeat with all the jars, setting them close together so they will cool slowly. In about half an hour to an hour you should start hearing the sweet sound of lids popping as they seal.

Don't disturb them til the next day, then you can set them into a sink of clean water and finish getting the jelly off the outside, dry off and label. If they have sealed, they will keep for years.

If the seal didn't tighten they will still keep a long time, but you could either refrigerate those or process them in a boiling water bath if you want (per the recommendations of the NCHFP). Until recently -- oh sometime last week I'm sure -- we sealed jelly with paraffin wax and kept it until we used it up!

The first post told how to find and gather the ripe prickly pears. You might want to refer back to it if you just arrived. This post is part 2: making the juice. Part 3 will explain how to make the jelly.

Preparing the prickly pears: I always singe (pronounced "sinj") the pears before I do anything with them. This helps assure that all those spines are gone. If you have a gas stove, you can do this over a burner. Otherwise, rev up the grill and do it there. You need flames to burn off the spines.

Hold each pear by tongs or a long fork and hold especially the blossom end into the fire, until it stops sparking, then turn and flame the other side, until all sides and top and bottom have been singed. Don't worry about overdoing it - for some reason the skins just never char, so you can keep them in the fire quite a long time if necessary. Set aside into a bowl and flame the next one until all are done.

Next, get a cutting board, sharp knife, your gloves, and tongs or a fork.

They can be eaten raw and you might like the flavor. To eat them that way, singe them and cut off the ends. Using a paring knife, hold the pear with a fork and cut away the peeling and discard. Then, cut the peeled pear in half and, with a spoon, scoop out the seeds - they are
hard and inedible. What is left is tasty raw fruit! You could prepare them this way, then candy them if you like, but I always make jelly.

To make juice so you can make jelly, there is no need to peel them nor to remove the seeds. Just cut the pear into 2 or 3 pieces and drop into a large cooking pot.

When they are all in the pot, add water until the pears are completely covered and an inch or two under water, depending on how many pears you have and how strong you want your juice.

Bring to a simmer and cook, covered, for about half an hour. This will give you the juice for your jelly. Strain it into a pot or pitcher, and discard the pulp of the pears (which will have lost their color into the water).

If you need more juice, and there is still a lot of color in the pears, you can add a little more fresh water to them and simmer again to get the last of the flavor from them. (The photo above shows the pears before they have been cooked. The juice is a much richer magenta color after cooking).

You can either make jelly right away or freeze the juice to use later.

Monday's post will have the jelly recipe.

One of my favorite things to make for Christmas gifts for many years was Prickly Pear Jelly. Devin asked me last year to make some, and Alvina mentioned it last week, so it is in my mind to make some this year. This article will be done in several parts, to cover the process from start to finish: from collecting the ripe prickly pears to beautiful jars of jelly.

The first part is finding the pears (or "tuna" as they are called in Spanish). I usually keep my eyes open throughout the year for sizeable prickly pear patches along county roads or waste places that might be ok to gather in. You can also ask friends with acreage if they have prickly pear cactus on their land, and if they would let you gather some.

We can't pick anything in State Parks or along state highways, but there's no need, really, because in the southwest, even up into Oklahoma, cactus is pretty common.

Once you have located a likely patch, keep your eyes open. Starting in late August or early September, the pears will begin ripening. You know they are ripe when they turn reddish purple. They ripen over time, with different plants turning red at different times Even in the same patch, some fruits will be ripe while others are still green. They will last a long time on the plant if they are not eaten by animals, so you have a little leeway, usually, to gather them.

CAUTION: THEY HAVE THORNS AND HORRIBLE LITTLE HAIR-LIKE SPINES on them, even on the pears!!!! I use a set of tongs to pull them so that I do not have to touch them at all - those little hair spines can get into gloves and are bad news!

I just grasp each ripe pear firmly with the tongs and twist and pull. They come right off. The riper the pear, the easier it will come loose. If your tongs are not strong, you can use them to hold the pear and a long knife to cut them at the base. Either way works fine. Just stay on strong footing and don't even think about trying to get pears from the middle of the patch. Leave those, and only collect the ones you can reach without reaching!!!

Drop them into a heavy paper sack (paper so the spines won't come thru and so you can throw it away when done. Do not reuse the bag as it will have invisible spines in it.

They will keep like this for several days until you are ready to use them. No need to refrigerate at this point.

Tomorrow's post will tell how to prepare them for eating and how to make juice for the jelly.  The third post tells how to make the jelly itself.

Our county has a shared Christian social ministry center that all of the local churches, local businesses, and local people help support. It is called Good Samaritan Ministries (www.goodsambwd.org) and includes a food pantry along with other services. People can come once each 30 days and get a grocery cart full of food, enough to feed a family for at least a week
- or more depending on famly size - and usually this even includes fresh frozen meat - even venison!

Volunteers from our church are responsible for the food pantry two days a month, and I try to go and help when I am off. My task is usually to help fill sacks with groceries. It is a lot of fun. Friends from church who are usually busy get a chance to visit with each other, and it is all good.

The people who come for food do not want to be wasteful so there is a bin where they can put back things they will not use. I noticed that one thing a lot of people put back are canned carrots. Plain old canned carrots are not my favorite either. I make a candied carrots dish that is easy to make and most ingredients are in the average pantry.

With permission from Good Samaritan's managers, I bought enough fresh oranges and made enough copies of the recipe to be able to give one to each family on "our" day along with their can(s) of carrots.

This was during a time when oranges were plentiful and on sale at the store, so it did not cost me much to buy the 5 bags necessary to have one for each of the 50 or so families we serve on the days our church works. It was a one-time thing, too, so it did not create expectations or cause a hardship to do this.

Here is my recipe for Candied Orange Carrots:

1 can of carrots
Juice of 1 orange or 1/2 cup of orange juice
1 Tbls of orange "zest"*** if available
1/4 cup sugar or honey (can also substitute brown sugar or syrup of any kind)
Mix together carrots, orange juice, orange zest and sugar or honey.
Simmer uncovered for 10 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve with any meal.

If you have Orange Marmalade, or peach or apricot jam, you can mix 1/2 cup of the jam with the carrots instead of using orange juice, peel and sugar.

*** "Zest" is citrus peel - just the orange (or yellow or green) part of the peel. Lemon zest and orange zest are most often called for, but you could make tangerine zest and lime zest. Remove in strips from the orange with a potato peeler or run the whole orange across a grater to
get the zest. There's even a special little tool you can get that takes the peel of in skinny strips.

You can dry or freeze the extra for future use. To dry it, just let it sit out on the counter until it is dry! It will keep for ages in a jar in the pantry. It is useful for cooking and baking with, and is great steeped with hot tea.

I wasn't able to be there that day, but they told me a lot of people thought it sounded good and said they were going to try it. They made extra copies of the recipe and put one into each family's sacks for the whole month.

There's been a 29% increase in the number of families served with food this year at Good Samaritan. It has jumped from around 600 families each month to nearly 800 per month. And there is always a rise at Christmas time, so we can expect that there may be a thousand families
for December in our little county.

Often charities need gifts of our time even more than money. With that many more people to serve, more helpers are needed to fill bags and do paperwork, otherwise people who come for groceries have to sit and wait a long time.

I am sure it is the same in your town. So if you have a little time to spare - even if only once in a while - it will be appreciated.

PS They don't call those graters "knuckle busters" for nothing! Careful not to grate your hand. If you do, the sticker on the fruit makes a handy make-do bandaid. ;-)

There's been a change in the air all week. Autumn is coming. Paul mentioned this morning that the days are already getting shorter. Around the blogosphere people are talking about it. Perhaps it is just that school has started, that September 22nd will be the first day of Fall. It seems early though. Especially for Texas.

Well I think we have waited long enough to eat the last watermelon from my garden! We have really enjoyed these melons, and they were so easy. I put down plastic, and cut holes for the plants, so no weeds. They didn't need much water either but when necessary, I just stuck the hose under the edge of the plastic and let it soak.



I learned by pure accident that the easiest way to eat a watermelon is with a grapefruit spoon. The pointed end cuts into the melon and slides right between the seeds.

If you haven't seen one, the bowls of grapefruit spoons are narrower than tea spoons and are shaped sort of like a teardrop.


It makes a world of difference - plus it is so nice to have a second reason to use grapefruit spoons!

And right now it is time to celebrate the last of the summer foods with this lovely yellow meated watermelon.

Bon appetite! :-)

The pear crop is coming on, and my friends let me come pick some from their heavily laden tree. I love picking fruit! Pears on a tree are all ready at the same time, this is not a progressive crop.
I made them all into preserves. My grandfather (Pawpaw) used to make these. I don't have his recipe but I think these are close.



Pear Preserves

Be sure to read up on specific canning methods and up-to-date instructions before doing this if you have never canned fruits before. The National Center for Home Food Preservation (linked from my sidebar) is a good start. Also be sure to call your mom or aunt or friend who cans and ask their advice/help/love/etc. :-)

Use unripe pears that have reached their size but are still very hard and green. Peel, core and slice the pears into water with salt or fruit fresh added so they won't turn brown. Drain the sliced pears completely in a colander - you don't want any liquid remaining.

Put the pears into a large cooking pot (a spaghetti pot is good) and cover with sugar - do not stir, leave the sugar piled on top.

For 20 cups of sliced pears, I used 10 cups of sugar: half as much sugar as you have pears. If you like a heavier syrup, you can increase the sugar to equal amounts as you have pears. But do NOT decrease the sugar amount, and do not use sugar substitutes.

Set aside in the refrigerator overnight. The sugar will draw out the juice during that time so that you don't have to add any liquid when cooking them.
The next day, set on the stove and slowly bring to a boil. Remove lid and continue boiling on low heat, stirring occasionally, for several hours until pears are translucent and golden. This could range from 3 to 5 hours, depending on how thick you want your syrup.

When done, put immediately into hot, sterilized jars and seal. Set aside, away from drafts, on a cup towel to cool slowly. The lids will "pop" as they seal. There is no nicer sound from a kitchen than the popping of sealing lids!

Write the date on the lids.

Store in the refrigerator, or you can process for 12 minutes in boiling water bath in order to make them safe to store in a cupboard for up to 2 years. See above link for the NCHFP for instructions on Water Bath Canning. You can use your spaghetti pot for processing if using half-pint or pint jars (they need to be covered with at least an inch of boiling water). But you will need a canning tongs for safely putting them in and removing them from the pot.

The syrup from these is heavenly on pancakes, and can be substituted for honey. The preserves are so good on a biscuit, and can be used to make tarts and such in the winter.

Tina