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Return of the Rains
This is a post from five days ago that somehow ended up in my drafts folder. Today there’s not a cloud in the sky, though leaves are flying past my office window. I’ve had to don fingerless woolen...
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Pickled Peppers, by the Pint or by the Peck
For a primer on both pickling with vinegar and water-bath canning, see my recent post at the website Eating Rules.
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Gauging the Gages
While picking apples yesterday I noticed that most of the leaves had blown off one of my greengage trees, the one that grew up from the rootstock of a dead nectarine tree. Among all my Prunus trees,...
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Surprisingly Delicious: Fermented Tomato Salsa
Following my post on thick salsa made from baked sliced tomatoes, a reader asked about making fermented salsa. I grimaced as I considered how easily tomatoes rot. Cutting them up and leaving them to...
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A Fool for Pickled Chard
I finally got around to pickling chard stems again last week, when I needed to dig out several big Swiss chard plants so I could start next year’s garlic crop in a raised bed. These plants were of the...
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Uses for Pickle Brine, Part I
What do you do with the brine when you empty your pickle jar? At my house, we go through so many pickles that I often guiltily dump the brine down the drain. Pickle brine has seldom gone to waste in …...
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Uses for Pickle Brine, Part II
As American bartenders have grown increasingly inventive in recent years, some have taken inspiration from the pickle jar on the bar. The dirty martini—a martini with a bit of olive brine added—has...
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A Good Use for Thick-Skinned Little Peppers
For me, November’s vegetable of the month isn’t sweet potato or even winter squash; it’s capsicum pepper. I pick my peppers when the first frost hits, usually in early October, and then let I them...
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A Hot Pepper for Cool Climes
When my faithful correspondent Sheila offered to send me seeds of a pepper variety called hinkelhatz, I didn’t bother to ask what a hinkelhatz pepper was. Every pepper variety, I figure, is worth...
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Pommé: Breton Apple Butter
I first learned of this traditional preserve of Brittany from a travel guide. In our subsequent trip to Brittany, last spring, my family and I searched the grocery stores and gift shops for pommé. Some...
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Easy, Tasty Roasted Sliced Quince
I’ve been failing in my efforts to get people excited about quinces. I took baskets of handsome quinces to sell along with my jams at two events this fall, but everyone wanted my Asian pears instead....
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Un Blog Affidabile
The most enjoyable part of keeping a WordPress blog, to my mind, is checking your blog’s statistics to see where in the world your most recent readers live. Although many of my international readers...
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For the Last Preserves of the Year: The Humble Citron Melon
I first learned about watermelon’s pale-fleshed, seedy ancestor while studying traditional ways of preserving modern watermelon. Why, I wondered, do people bother to make the watermelon’s narrow inner...
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The Tomato Report 2012
Seed catalogs have been arriving in my mailbox for two months now, and in another two months tomato seedlings will be coming up in the greenhouse. For all of us northerners who start our summer...
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Black Currant–Sausage Pinchos
When I offer samples of fruit pastes at fairs and other public events, people always ask me how to serve them. I tell them about the Spanish custom of eating quince paste with cheese. I say that Middle...
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A Tart Little Tuber from the Andes
A couple of weeks ago I noticed the motley assortment of pots in the middle of my greenhouse floor, dragged there for minimal protection from the winter cold and now adorned with the limp, frozen...
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A Bean Worth Drying: The Scarlet Runner
I was filling baskets with French beans and Spanish magic beans last summer when I noticed that some of my Scarlet Runner Beans were ready to eat. Why in the world had I planted so many beans? I was...
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Citron Melon Again, for Dessert
Every day this winter I’ve eyed my citron melons in the entry hall, admiring their summery beauty and wondering how long they would keep. Some people say they store well for a whole year, but I’m...
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A Quick Wintertime Refrigerator Relish
What can you do with a few beets, some slowly shriveling apples from last fall’s harvest, and an ever-expanding patch of horseradish? Inspired by a traditional beet-horseradish relish from Russia and a...
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Eating and Drinking in New Orleans
Robert and I flew to New Orleans the week before last to spend time with our youngest, who was finishing an internship in southern Louisiana, and to see the city for the first time. I hope you don’t...
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