Recovering slowly...

...from an intensive week and a half of canning, drying, preserving etc. Unfortunately this coincided with hot and humid weather, so I was essentially sweating nonstop, taking time out to shower and go to work, pick up the kids, and then return to the stove. But the results are beyond satisfying: jars and jars of dried apples, peach salsa, tomato sauce, smoked tomato puree, nectarine chutney, pickled beets. What a thrill. The beets are particularly delicious -- I adapted from Rick's Picks, which I'd tasted at the Union Square Greenmarket. I used half white vinegar and half lemon juice for the pickling liquid, and then put a strip of lemon peel and a sprig of rosemary in each jar before adding the liquid and canning. I cannot express how delicious these are.

Less thrilling was the outcome of K's sweater. I finally finished seaming it on last night as we were watching the Emmys (a complete waste of time; I don't understand my love of awards shows, since they so often disappoint. Even -- dare I say it? -- the Oscars), and had K try it on. The sleeves were perfect, which had been my major worry about it, but the body was about 5 inches too short. I have no idea how this happened, but it was hilarious when K tried it on and it hung jauntily at mid-rib. After I recovered from uproarious laughter, I had to come up with a solution that did not include undoing the whole thing, which would have been much too discouraging. So now I have had to pick up stitches from the bottom cast-on row, something I've never done before, and knit down. It actually looks fine, and is not a significant amount of work, but I had really hoped to be finished with it yesterday. My hope is to have completed it by the end of this week, which seems manageable, before The Knitting Ladies convene next Monday.

Canning and Reeling

My oh my, this week is turning into a maelstrom of activity (interrupted by a nasty stomach bug that interfered significantly with my ability to even face the kitchen). We went apple and peach picking on Labor Day, and I bought two cases of tomatoes at bargain basement prices at a farm stand. So far I've turned out nectarine chutney, eleven jars of applesauce, dried tomatoes and dried apples. Friday will be tomato sauce day -- hot, sweaty, but supremely satisfying. We also seem to have a lot of eggs from our CSA egg share, so I'm thinking Eve's Pudding (maybe with peaches instead of apples) with custard for the weekend. Yum.

I know I've been a very inconsistent blog lady, but I'm hoping that will change....

A Brief Ode to Making Granola

How satisfying is making your own granola? Let me count the ways:

1. Homemade granola is SO much cheaper than store bought.
2. You can put whatever you want in it.
3. If you find the right recipe (I love this one, because it's simple and quick -- the trick is to bake it for a shorter time at a higher temperature and stir often, although I found 375 too high and lowered it to 350), you will never buy granola again.
4. You just feel great with a big container of homemade granola on the shelf.
5. Did I mention how much cheaper it is than store bought?

For some reason, making granola makes me feel self-sufficient, like I'm ready to abandon supermarkets and raise chickens for eggs (K has forbidden this until I'm old enough to be truly eccentric, probably at least 60). Also, using the recipe linked above, the whole thing takes about 45 minutes, including washing the bowl and the baking sheet. It feels like picking cucumbers and eggplant from a garden, but it uses up a lot less space. And for two bucks worth of oats and some other stuff I had in the larder, I made probably $10 worth of granola at least, especially that new Bear Naked stuff that costs a fortune.

Ah, granola!

It's Peach Heaven for the Kale Lady

Well, not just peaches; nectarines too. We picked 40 pounds of nectarines and peaches last week, and the past seven days have been a riot of stone fruit. I have to admit it's tough to think about preserving when it's 95 degrees and 80% humidity outside, but I've been trying to limit my activities to early morning and late at night when it's a little cooler. I must admit, canning 4 jars of roasted tomato/peach/chipotle salsa before 9am does give one a real feeling of accomplishment for the day. The week has been a frenzy of matutinal and nocturnal cooking -- so far I have made:

The salsa
Peach/nectarine/raspberry pie (x2)
Nectarine crumble
Nectarine/peach leather
Peach filling/topping (5 jars)
Nectarine chutney (4 jars)

We also still have some whole fruit, which is being eaten by various members of the Kale family in its untreated state, and I don't think more than 4 or 5 pieces of fruit ended up so bad that I couldn't salvage at least for one of the above projects. Of course, now that I've worked my way through all of this, I'm scheming about our next picking trip and what I should make next. I'm disappointed that I missed the very end of cherry season -- the day before we went picking, there was a huge thunderstorm that lasted hours and washed out the remaining cherries. Oh well, next year.

I was reading my guilty blog pleasure, No Impact Man, today (so sanctimonious, yet so enjoyable...), and he had a number of tips for using your time more effectively, and he linked to a site that's all about productivity, Life Remix. What struck me was how epic these ideas seemed -- throw away your cell phone! Toss out your tv! Totally reorganize your sleep schedule! Most of the time, it's little things that can make you more productive, things like making smoothie pops for the kids while they're eating their breakfast, or taking public transport so I can read or knit on the train, or bringing a pillow and blanket to work so I can take a quick afternoon nap without waking up freezing cold in the AC (this only works if you have an office with a door you can close) or cooking in the evenings after the kids are in bed etc etc. Dramatic solutions aren't sustainable in any context -- and sometimes being productive is pissing time away in useless pursuits. Balance is all, I think (of course, this from someone who spends her nights plotting what next to pick, can, or knit....).

A Cherry Jubilee!

It's midsummer and it's cherry picking time! We picked almost 18 pounds of cherries, sweet and sour, this week at Don Baker Farm, just outside Hudson, NY. The next few days were a flurry of cherries: freezing the sour ones, canning some sweet ones, dehydrating, pie-making, and (of course) eating. I'm itching to go cherry picking again now that I'm back in Brooklyn, and I might have to trek out to Long Island to do it, but I suspect it will be worth it. The pie was unbelievably good: 2/3 sour cherries to 1/3 sweet with a 2/3 butter 1/3 shortening crust. Between K, the kids, and me, the pie was gone in about 3 days.

The preserving fever is now officially upon me -- I'm planning my weeks around picking, canning, freezing, baking, jamming etc etc. I lie in bed thinking about new things to can, and can't wait until tomato season. I found a terrific recipe for roasted tomato and chipotle salsa in the Ball book of preserving (the best preserving book EVER!!!), which I'm very excited to make.

I finished L's impossible intarsia sweater and blocked it and G's school sweater (which ended up very oddly proportioned with immensely wide and long sleeves) and I'm now working on K's sweater with hand-dyed wool from Flying Fingers. It's a pleasure to work with -- soft, slips off the needle -- but it's fairly fine and I'm having to use size 4 needles, so it's taking a while. Already thinking about my next knitting project....

Some Endings, Some New Beginnings

Well, I finally finished L's intarsia sweater; now I have to sew the whole damned thing together and finish the neck. I'm finding this quite intimidating -- this only the second sweater I've made and the first was one of those neck-down jobs that require no seaming. Apparently you can pay people to do this for you, but that seems to me to be a cheap way out. And the only way to learn something is to do it (or, in my case, to do it, realize you screwed up, undo it, do it again, and say "well, that's good enough"). I'm planning to do it tonight, after much viewing of online video on knittinghelp.com, cursing, and prayers to the gods of homemade clothes.

Once I've finished I can start the sweater for K in the world's most amazing yarn. It's a bit more brightly coloured than I remembered when I ordered it from Flying Fingers, but it's still pretty fantastic.

The big news for this week is that last Thursday was the first day of the Clinton Hill CSA. I was feeling some trepidation, since our farmer, Ted Blomgren of beautiful Windflower Farm, had had some serious hail a couple of weeks ago. But we had gorgeous lettuce, kale, herb plants, radishes, and a quart of delicious strawberries. Next weekend is cherry picking and the canning season will have officially begun. I can't wait!

Gorgeous wool!

I just got the most beautiful hand-dyed wool from Flying Fingers Yarn; it's called "Sierra" and is in these long skeins of various colors. This set is in autumnal shades. I can't wait to start making a sweater out of it, although that means that I need to finish L's endless intarsia sweater (green stars on a blue background) that I think will take me the rest of my life.

I don't think about knitting all the time. Sometimes I think about my work. Sometimes I think about canning. Sometimes I think about the sublime K and the delicious G and L. And sometimes I think about the fact that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. But a significant portion of the rest of my brain is indeed occupied with knitting.

Of course, that will all change when the CSA starts up and canning season begins. I've already planned at least 3 pick-your-own outings (cherries [sweet and sour], strawberries, blueberries). Are these obsessions healthy?

What the Kale Lady loves, she really loves

It has been said that I can work up quite an enthusiasm for things, and I won't deny it. A few of my enthusiasms:

Canning
Knitting
19th century US literature
Locally grown food
Cows
Dehydrating
Bookshops
Shoes
Convincing people that they can do for themselves most of the things that they pay for

I imagine this blog as a way to share my enthusiasms with others.

A little about me:

The Kale Lady is an emigre from the island of Nova Zemblya, a land populated mostly by chickens and turnips. We have a long and noble history of rugged independence, communal saunas, and small kitchens. Hence I have made it my mission to let people know that even in the smallest space, with basic resources, they can craft for themselves a life full of pleasure and delicious treats. And gorgeous shoes.