Wild Grape Jelly in the wake of Irene devestation

Irene overstayed her welcome in Brandon, and all of Vermont, for that matter.  We have towns that are cut off from the rest of the world, overwhelming infrastructure damage, loss of life and a frightening uncertainty that will linger for some time.  BUT Vermonters have a spirit that defies all of this and in Brandon people were mobilized by morning to help clear out flooded shops, remove debris, and assess the damage.  Facebook and twitter posts offered places to stay, shower, eat or plug into wi-fi.  And the response to photos like the one below that shows our pizza place floating into the street was simply that we'll all get it back in business as soon as we all collectively can.

This morning we woke to the most glorious weather: crisp and cool, and so sunny that I actually broke down and bought sunglasses at the drugstore.  I think it was Vermont's way of saying to Irene to not let the door hit her in her nasty ass.

So I went for a walk in the sunshine with my family down our practically unscathed dirt road.  We talked to neighbors that passed and shared news of the storm and stopped in at Gramma's because (of course) my 5 year old had to go to the bathroom.  That's when we noticed the bunches and bunches of wild grapes we had been watching all summer at Gramma's house had finally turned purple!

We picked as many grapes as we could in the two minutes or so that our busy kids would allow, brought them home, searched a few recipes online, and made some delicious Wild Grape Jelly.

Here's what I did (because I think it's absolutely scrumptious!)

I picked them all off the stem, cleaned them and put them in a pot with about a cup of water.  I mashed them with a spoon and a potato masher and heated them (just to encourage them to get mushy and let the juice out), then strained them in a metal mesh strainer.

I ended up with about two cups of juice (and the recipe I found called for 5 cups of juice, so I had to adjust a few things).  I put the juice back in my pot, heated it back up and added a little less than 2 cups of sugar and a little more water because the flavor was pretty intense (remember I'm not a real recipe follower--guidelines, I say...)  Kenny and I tasted the juice at this point and the flavor was great but, as Kenny said, it had all the flavor and the tartness that makes these grapes special, but it lacked a fruity finish (he doesn't usually speak like this, but he takes his food very seriously.) 

So I wondered (aloud) what could I add to give it a fruity finish.  I went to the kitchen garden and grabbed a big bunch of mint (I'd say a packed cup) that I chopped, threw into about a cup of water in a small sauce pan and added about a tablespoon of my raw honey (with a majorly flowery/fuity finish). 

I pounded the mint down with a wooden spoon to draw the flavor out of it and heated on the stove.  I added this to the grape juice and it was perfect!  I simmered the mixture 5-10 minutes (we were getting close to bedtime for the kids so it was becoming chaotic), added almost one package of pectin (left about 1/4 of it, since I had so little juice to start with), brought it to a hard boil for 30 seconds, jarred it, and processed my jars in a hot water bath for 5 minutes.

I don't know if the jelly will set perfectly, but I like to experiment with fruits and things each year and sometimes we have perfect jelly and sometimes we have syrup.  We will eat it and enjoy it either way.  If you want a more certain recipe, look online and use my ideas of adding mint and honey to make it yummier!

So here's the rundown:

1 1/2-2 lbs Wild Grapes

1 1/2-2 cups water

2 cups sugar

1 (packed) cup fresh mint

1 cup water

1 tablespoon honey

3/4 package pectin (maybe more; we'll know more tomorrow!)

Other thoughts:  We're going to make a batch to go with lamb (we have a ram going "to market" next week) that has cumin rather than mint for the flowery finish.  I think that will be tasty too!  And, of course, since I've allowed mint to take over my kitchen garden, I'm going to do a nice big batch of mint jelly!

News from the Farm: Use your zucchini!

We like to say that the only time you need to lock your car in Vermont is during the summer, when everyone's looking for places to ditch extra zukes.  So, stuck inside because of all this Irene-induced rain, I thought now's a good time to share my three favorite ways to use it all up and free myself from zucchini-wasting guilt.

Once you have bored of zucchini bread, ratatouille, and sauteed zukes try :
Chocolate Zucchini Cake, Zucchini Relish, and Zucchini Pasta:

1)  Chocolate Zucchini Cake
          I use a recipe from Fanny Farmer's baking book, a sweet oldie timie cookbook I got years ago at the Strand in NYC.

• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 1/2 cup flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups shredded raw zucchini
• 1/2 cup milk

Cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs. Sift together and add flour, baking powder, soda, cinnamon, salt and cocoa. Mix well. Add vanilla, zucchini and milk. Stir until well blended.

I usually use two squares of baker's chocolate, never seem to have oranges to zest and sometimes substitute honey for some or all of the sugar (we have hives so there's ample honey around here).
Other thoughts are adding some hot pepper (maybe something smokey like ground chipotle), adding raisins or chocolate chips or making cupcakes with frosting.
I skip the frosting, throw it in a tube pan, sprinkle powdered sugar and call it a day.  (bake at 350 for an hour for tube pan.)
SOOO Good warm!

2)  Zucchini Relish
This is just like pickle relish, but tastier and with zucchini (obviously)
I use "Margaret Hawes's Zucchini Relish from Putting Food By (on of my two canning/freezing/drying bibles).  Here's the recipe, but remember the things you don't want to mess with are the vinegar and sugar (unless you know what you're doing) but I alter the seasoning and the vegetables, depending on what I have in the pantry and in the garden.

Ingredients

• 10 cups finely chopped zucchini (if small, leave in the seeds; if over 8 inches, remove seeds)
• 4 large onions
• 4 green bell peppers, seeded
• 4 red bell peppers, seeded
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2-1/2 cups white vinegar
• 4 cups white sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 teaspoons celery seed
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preparation:  Wash and peel zucchini, removing stems and blossom ends; remove seeds if squash is cut in large chunks for grinding. Peel and quarter onions; seed and quarter the bell peppers. Put vegetables through the food grinder, using a coarse knife. (With a food processor, use the shredding disk: the steel blade can make these ingredients lose too much texture.) Put ground vegetables in a crockery or stainless steel bowl, stir in the salt; keep the vegetables in the resulting brine by holding them down with a weighted plate. Let vegetables stand overnight. The next day, drain off the brine and rinse vegetables with cold water; drain again, and squeeze well by hand. Mix cornstarch with the sugar and four other dry seasonings, add all to the cold vinegar, blending well. Over medium heat, bring to boiling, stirring well to prevent lumping. When sugar is melted and the syrup is clear, add the vegetables; simmer 30 minutes, stirring often. Pour into clean very hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headroom; adjust sterilized lids, and process for 10 minutes in a 185 F/85 C water bath. Remove; complete seals if necessary.

3)  Zucchini Pasta

This is so good, even my kids that don't like sauteed zukes, love this pasta.  When cooking, I'm not much for measuring and mostly use recipes as "guidelines," as my husband says, so use your judgement and your taste for proportions:

About half a stick of butter

a few cloves of garlic

a couple small zukes or one big one, shredded

a bunch of fresh basil

parmesan or romano cheese

Sautee everything but the cheese, throw it over a pound of pasta and grate a bunch of cheese over it.  The yumminess here does come from the glutteny, so don't be shy with extra butter, some olive oil, lots of garlic and basil, depending on what you like.

We also shred zukes with lots of basil and freeze it in quart-sized freezer bags so we can eat this all year long!

A Bonus Use of Zucchini:

No matter how good we are about harvesting zukes daily, we always end up with those hidden mosters no one can eat....no one but the chickens and the turkeys.  Our oldest son recently got a potato gun from a friend. This is a plastic gun that you stick into a potato, making a little potato pellet, then shoot it off.  We now send Luca off with his Zucchini gun and huge zucchini and he sits in front of the chickens and turkeys, firing off food!  It entertains his little sister and brother too, so it's a HUGE bonus for me!

Shhh! Clandestine photo shoot in the Little Hill Studio

Recently some friends came up to the studio, and while they waited for me to arrive, they did some dressing up and playing with hats.   Among the images they sent me from this spontaneous photo-shoot is one of my fave hat pictures of all time:

I love the intimacy of this picture, the playfulness and humor and self-affection in her expression.  There is a whole story here - she has been trying on many hats, and each has transformed her, emphasizing different facets of her character & reminding her she is debonair, glamorous, innocent, gamine, worldly, woodsy, funny, sexy, edgy, romantic, hip, old-fashioned, seductive, cute ... intimidating ... funny ...

This is perfectly emblematic of what I love best about making hats, and watching people wear them. 
Hats are the poetry of fashion.  They are transformative, quickly-grasped (or not...), and the art is in the play between function, form and brave aesthetic leaping. 

Fashion is not a shallow pursuit at all (malls and big-box stores be damned.)  Self-adornment is as old as humanity, as fundamental and universal as music and language and tool-making.  It is an aspect of culture where the zeitgeist is very close to the surface, where tribal affiliations, sub-cultural alliances, gender, age and regionality meet the Socio-Economic Macrostructure filtered through the fluid ebb and flow of personal self-expression.  It is where the individual body interacts with the collective unconscious.  It is a language, a communicative repertoire, and dressing communicatively is a generous act that offers something of oneself  to others.

What do you wear when you are feeling extra communicative?  any good mirror pictures?