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Recipe: candied ginger

You could deduce that I am a rain lover simply because I live in a place that receives 300+ days of sunshine a year, but you’d be mistaken. I do love the rain, but I have in fact, always loved the rain. I even loved the rain when I lived in Ithaca, New York (during graduate school, no less) which boasts more days of precipitation annually (161) than Seattle, Washington (150). I truly came to appreciate those rainy days after living in Southern California. Winter or “the rainy season” was far and away my favorite time of year there. Of course, in Colorado, I prefer my precipitation in frozen form. That said, the rain is a lovely, beautiful, wondrous thing in summer. I had the privilege of foraging with two of my favorite ladies – Wendy and Ellen – in the suburbs outside of Denver on a deliciously rainy, cool Monday morning.

picking goosefoot in the rain

cute bumblebees keeping dry under this teasel bloom

ground cherries (not ready)

apricot haul

I don’t go foraging for the forage. Mostly, I like learning about and geeking out on plants with my knowledgeable friend. It’s also heaps of fun slogging through muddy trails, seeing local wildlife (snakes, bunnies, etc.), admiring what can thrive in the neglected corners of suburbia, and putting my pattern-recognition skills to good use. Oh, and of course there is the precious (tom)girl-time and post-foraging lunch at a local Vietnamese restaurant!

And if that wasn’t a perfect start to a Monday, Jeremy and I capped off the evening dining in Boulder at The Kitchen, catching up with two long-time friends from graduate school. Julie and Tyler were both in Jeremy’s department – he is an astronomer and she is a planetary geologist. Julie and I were graduate student “cousins” as we shared two common faculty on our PhD committees (Julie had a minor in geology and I had a minor in planetary). I quite love these two. Anyone who claims that graduate school is the best time of your life should be regarded with deep suspicion. However, I will say of our Cornell years that we carry many special friendships from that time into the present day.

tyler and julie

jeremy’s halibut entrée

a nice finish to a great evening

That’s one of the upsides to sticking close to home this summer – getting to see both local friends and friends from out of town. Another positive? Kaweah is doing great. Aside from general aging, her medical issues have abated and you couldn’t find a happier pup. I think being home and providing her with a normal (i.e. non-travel) routine has helped tremendously. Yet another plus of staying local this summer? More kitchen experiments.

find some nice, tender, young ginger (spring is your best bet)

I don’t know when I developed my taste for ginger. I know it wasn’t until I was an adult because I avoided it as a kid. The flavor grew on me and I began to use it more and more in my cooking. During chemotherapy, ginger chews were a staple. I popped one into my mouth whenever I felt queasy. I kept a bag of them along with saltines by my bedside. Folks had said not to eat your favorite foods during chemo because you’d come to have bad associations with them after treatments ended. But you know what? I just wound up loving ginger even more. It wasn’t just the nausea, but anytime I have a cold or feel under the weather, ginger is that soothing flavor in chicken congee or ginger tea that Mom always made for me. I occasionally grab a bag of candied ginger for snacking – it’s such a pick-me-up candy. Then one day it occurred to me that this must be ridiculously easy to make. Ridiculously.

peeling ginger

slicing thin

boiled in water

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Recipe: pickled okra

We had a good, rainy weekend – all gray, cool, and drenched with a few breaks in between. Looks like the monsoons have begun and they are most welcome in our thirsty mountains. And it was nice to have a weekend without obligations to anyone but each other, and of course, Kaweah.

raindrops cling to aspen leaves

fireweed in bloom, mountain biker on the trail – typical colorado

trotting along, loving her little hike

forest colors are so vibrant after a rain

Last Sunday, I canned my very first anything on my own. I had taken a class back in October, but it was a giant group effort and I didn’t feel confident enough to tackle it again until now. Why is that? Because I was waiting for this book to come out.

food in jars

it’s beautiful

I had mentioned this lovely book and its even lovelier author, Marisa, when I posted her wildly popular strawberry syrup recipe. There are just so many terrific recipes on jams, preserves, pickles, chutneys, sauces, etc. in her book that you could conceivably ignore the “canning” factor altogether. But… why would you? Considering our long winters and our short growing season in Colorado, I have decided that canning the seasonal goodness of summer is worth the investment of time, learning, effort, and money. So I started with something easy – pickles. Here’s my journey…

pickling spice blend from savory spice shop in boulder

Pickling requires pickling spices. I decided to make my own blend (a recipe from Marisa’s book) and dropped by Savory Spice Shop in Boulder (my favorite local spice source) for the spices I didn’t have. I have a barely working knowledge of spices at best, so it’s nice to walk into the store and get fantastic advice from the super friendly and knowledgeable staff when you’re in need of help.

bay leaves, juniper berries, mustard seed, peppercorns, coriander seed, allspice, dill seed, cloves, cinnamon

pour it into a jar

shake (mix)

Now what to pickle? l was having a conversation with friends on Twitter about okra one day and I recalled these pickled okra spears that my good friend, Melinda, had turned me on to almost 20 years ago. Mmm, okra pickles. I had not had one of those in a long time. But where oh where do you get okra in Colorado? Some of the Mexican, Indian, and Asian grocery stores carry it, but Manisha reported that the Indian grocer near her house had beautiful okra just the other day. Ellen (of Helliemae’s Handcrafted Caramels) and I met there and gathered what we thought was a good deal of okra.

oh oh oh okra

For the canning newbs or wannabes, here’s what I used. For the seasoned pros, you can skip to the ingredients. There are in essence, two kinds of jars with which I can: Ball jars (or Ball-style jars) and Weck jars. Ball jars are pretty common and more affordable, but Weck jars are not only incredibly beautiful, they also have glass lids that are BPA-free. I like Weck jars for home use, but I gift the Ball jars since I’m not made of money. You also want a canning pot with a rack to keep the jars from resting on the bottom of the pot. For large batches, I have a 21.5 quart porcelain-on-steel pot with a canning rack. For small batches, I use a tall stock pot with a makeshift rack (it’s a cooling rack). Sweet. You will also want a jar lifter (I like this one from Ball because it is spring-loaded which makes for less cussing), a lid lifter wand (if you use Ball-style jars, otherwise you won’t need this for Weck jars as the lids are glass, not metal), a wide-mouth funnel, a wooden chopstick (or you can pay money for a plastic bubble popper thingy), and some kitchen towels.

1/2 liter (1 pint) weck mold jars (742)

tall stock pot with cooling rack

For the pickling, I got myself a bag of pickling salt which is different from regular salt in that it has no iodine and no additives. I also picked up apple cider vinegar that states 5% acidity on the label. From a food safety standpoint, the acidity level is important for ensuring the right pH so you don’t poison yourself with molds or bacteria. So there’s that.

pickling salt

5% acidity apple cider vinegar

The preparation of jars is slightly different for Weck than for Ball jars and I describe both in the recipe below, but for now, I’m going with the Weck jars. You only need to sterilize the jars if you process (boil in the canning bath) for less than 10 minutes. Since I live at 8500 feet, I have to process my jars for an additional 20 minutes – so yeah, I skipped the sterilization step. But the rubber rings go into a boiling bath for 2-3 minutes and remain in the hot water until you are ready to seal the jars. So do that, get your canning bath ready (it takes some time for the giant pot of water to come to temperature), and do your mise en place.

place the rubber rings in a bath

pickling spices, vinegar, pickling salt, garlic, lemon, okra

the brine: water, vinegar, pickling salt

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Recipe: strawberry vodka

Our oppressive heat of the last several weeks seems to be abating so that Kaweah can resume her jolly evening walks without overheating. While we adjust to summer temperatures, it’s much harder on the pup. So 80°F might be tolerable for us, but it will have her gasping for air on the baby trails.

kaweah was so very happy to be out after a rain

trail markers in our town

This cooling trend was just in time for the Fourth of July holiday too. It was lovely getting our legs outside and back on the trails. The wildflowers are going nuts in the high country too. For our holiday, we went for an early morning local hike.

big views

little critters (can you spot the pika?)

final ascent

token summit shot on mount audubon (haze is smoke from wildfires in wyoming)

wonderful blue columbines (colorado state flower)

blessed rains on the descent

Fireworks were cancelled in our mountain town for obvious reasons (two words: Colorado wildfires). If you’re hankering for sparklies, you can see fireworks photos from 2011 and 2010. Instead of scoping out a location from which to shoot the fireworks like previous July 4ths, I got to chill out at home and make a simple, but elegant dinner.

pan-seared scallops on fresh vegetables

My beverage of choice is water. I love it. But when I want to offer something special to friends, it’s usually fruity and usually homemade. In summer, the quintessential beverage is lemonade. I like to play with fancy lemonade like lavender lemonade or in this case, a strawberry lemonade. Except this is an adult strawberry lemonade made with homemade strawberry vodka.

get yer hands on some proper strawberries

red to the core

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