Nearly Gourmet Collards

Long time no see friends! Writing has taken a backseat to loads of other demands lately, but we are still eating good!

We dug up a little patch of grass on the sunny-side of our yard back in February to test out some new stuff. We planted corn, beets, collards, green onion, arugula, strawberries, cilantro and cauliflower.  Since we have only lived in this house about a year, it has taken us that long to figure out where stuff will grow. The concept of “right plant, right place” is essential in Permaculture and was the first lesson I learned as a Master Gardener. All the fancy tricks in the world won’t help you grow stuff that doesn’t want to be there!

Good news is, stuff wanted to grow here! In about 6 weeks (from wee seedlings) we got all this! I’ve never grown collard greens before (and only eaten them when served to me!) so I was excited to try out some recipes. The traditionally Southern way of eating collards with loads of pork and chicken broth wasn’t going to work for us so I headed to the kitchen to experiment. I found the taste of the collards to be really good in these simple recipes. Not much added “flavor” was needed at all. Even our 4.5 year old like the creamy soup and asked for seconds!

Our little test plot

Only two plants yielded a huge amount! After cutting the thick stems, and chopping the leaves, I stuffed two gallon size bags full. Collards pack a big nutritional punch too. Check out the chart on this page for amazing facts.

Rinsing in a bath of water and vinegar to get rid of little critters. Organic gardens have bugs! 🙂

 

One bag became Hearty Collard Stew.

Hearty Collard Stew

About a week later I made the other bag into Cream of Collard Soup.

Cream of Collard Soup with Roasted Carrots

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Recipes (if you can call it that!)

Hearty Collard Stew (for a 6-8 people or for freezing)

Vegetable broth or water with seasoning

Gallon size bag of collards (with thick stems removed and chopped into about 1 inch pieces)

1 large onion, chopped

4-6 Carrots, sliced

1-2 large Potatoes, cubed

1 can or 1.5 cups cooked beans of your choice (I used pinto)

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

2-3 tbsp of lemon juice of white vinegar

Saute the onion and garlic over a little oil or in a thin layer of water in a large pot.

Add collards and cover with broth or water, bring to a boil the reduce to simmer for at least 45 minutes (probably more like an hour or hour and fifteen minutes. Collards are tough!)

When they are nice and soft (you might have to add liquid) add carrots, potatoes and cook for another 15-20 minutes. Add beans last.

Salt and pepper to taste!

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Cream of Collard Soup (for 4-6 people or for freezing)

Water or vegetable broth

1 gallon size bag of collards, (stems removed and cut into 1 inch pieces)

1 potato

1 cup cashews

1-2 tbsp onion flakes (or sauté some onion)

1-2 tbsp garlic powder (or sauté some garlic)

Place 1 cup cashews and 1 cup water into your blender and set aside. Do not blend yet.

Place collards in a large pot, place enough liquid in the pot to boil them (about half way up the side of the pot) As they cook, you can add more liquid). Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer for over 1 hour.

Cube the potato and add. Cook for another 20 minutes or so. Add onion, garlic or other seasonings.

Blend your cashews and water VERY thoroughly. Can add a drizzle more of water if it’s too thick, but the consistency should be that of heavy dairy cream.

If you have a good immersion blender use that, if not, pour the cashew cream into the warm pot of collards, stir, then put in batches into the blender. I had to do two batches. Puree well. It should be a thick, creamy soup.

Serve warm and salt to taste 🙂

 

 

Island Style Fall

Fall has always been my favorite time of year. The crunchy leaves, chilly days, pumpkin picking and glorious colors make my heart sing!

But wait- I live in Hawaii.  Fall means something different here! Rougher ocean waters begin this time of year, surf is gearing up for the massive North Shore waves of winter, it rains a little bit almost every day, but the days are still filled with sunshine and average temperature of 82 degrees fahrenheit.  In some spots it’s a good time to plant cooler weather varieties of things though, as our micro-climate up on the mountainside actually does drop to the low 70’s at night. So chilly! 😀

So in order to try and re-create the fall of my youth, we do visit our local pumpkin patch and eat a lot of locally grown corn this time of year.  Family has commented that it’s funny to see us at the pumpkin patch in shorts and flip flops, but if we decide to hit the beach afterwards, it makes sense, right? 🙂

What doesn’t make sense and frustrates me is that there is only one farm on our whole island that actually grows their own pumpkins. It just happens to be a place I won’t go because they were indicted on charges of human trafficking for farm work a couple years ago. The whole case is sketchy and I won’t go there. So we go to another farm, Waimanalo Country Farms where I’m fairly certain they don’t grow all these pumpkins. I think they perhaps grow some smaller ones and gourds, but the pallets of pumpkins that have been shipped in was my first clue. And really, I’m just not sure how they could possibly meet the demand. The farm was so busy on Saturday! We had to wait for a table to sit and eat our corn chowder (yum!) and they have expanded the kids activities to include pumpkin painting, hayrides and a little train that pulls them around the farm.

Pumpkin selection is serious business!

So we picked our pumpkins and then went home to enjoy some fresh Waimanalo sweet corn, compliments of the College of Tropical Ag (where I work!) There are some perks to my office job, one of which is the occasional delivery of produce to staff.

Our university grows several varieties of corn, all traditionally bred (not GMO) and the flavors really are quite different. A few were a bit rotten on the ends so our hens got those, but the rest were lovely!

 

My favorite: I love the mix of white and golden kernels!

 

All in all, a fabulous re-creation of a “traditional” fall- without frost on the windows or heavy coats!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a Gardener Goes Permie

Part One of Six:

Our first weekend of the Oahu Permaculture Design Course began here, in the amazingly beautiful Waiahole Valley.  If you have never heard of permaculture, check out anything by Bill Mollison or do a quick Google search. Then promptly find the closest design course, sign up, learn and become a converted Permie. It didn’t take much convincing for me really, one of the things I learned this weekend was that I’m already there. I may not have the skills and technical knowledge yet, but I realized that a good chunk of my life has been living many of the the Earth Care, People Care, Resource Share values.

Our group of about 20 will spend 6 weekends together in different areas of Oahu, experiencing and learning from the ahuapua’a system. I wrote about this system earlier here. What I’m most excited about, in addition to the fantastic learning that we are doing, are the relationships we will build and grow together. It’s hard to find people who are on the same page. Many friends whom I love and adore, have glazed eyes when I start jabbering on about food security and companion planting.  I seem to have found my peeps in Permies. 🙂

We spent time working a taro patch (lo’i) preparing for planting, a fair bit of time chasing goats back into their designated areas, and admiring the hard work of ducks fertilizing a fallow lo’i.

I took more than a dozen pages of detailed notes in a large unlined notebook. My brain was engaged in a way that it hasn’t been since grad school and I’m so thankful for our instructors. We are a lucky bunch! So many people have to travel far for a permaculture course, and ours is in our backyard.

The other obvious advantage to doing this type of course on working farms is the knowledge one gains about the rhythms of life.  I spend a lot of time outside, but in urban areas, all those places are managed places. I came face to face with more species and life in one weekend than in weeks in town! From bugs, to birds to crops, this place is teeming with life and I’m grateful for the opportunity to experience it.

There are many changes happening in our lives, which is the reason my little blog was put on the back-burner for many months. We are settling into our life as adoptive parents and I am perhaps most excited about being able to share my new knowledge with my children, and pass a very important set of skills to them.

 

 

 

A recently planted lo’i (taro, Kalo)

Cacao (chocolate) not yet ripe, on the tree

Taro (Kalo) in different stages of growth

 

Another Box is Born

 

The garden started on a sidewalk.  Scrap wood, attached at the corners to make a walkway-to-nowhere into lettuce, chard, basil, cucumber bed.  Most of the plants in the sidewalk garden we moved from our other house, and they survived, surprisingly.  Then came pots.  Lots of them- with annoying weeds and grass growing between then, stuck in sunny corners, moved about to get light and plants outgrowing themselves.

Then came the Green Box Garden.  Two boxes to start with, from four shipping pallets.  Our little resistance to a system that depends on the outside to ship everything to us.  Then we built another one.

And today, another was born; our fourth box.  Just in case you are new and didn’t see how we did the first three, here’s some clues.  Simple simple simple…and cheap!

Painting..more mistinted green! We keep getting lucky.

Lined with landscape fabric and ready for dirt!

We used lag screw this time to make it more sturdy.

Fourth box gets some long term residents: Okinawa sweet potato, heirloom purple brussels sprouts and kale.

Protecting the recent transplants from wind and sun…and yet more uses for plastic produce boxes I have friends save for me.

Some questions I have answered to friends about the boxes:

Why use pallets, why not just put the stuff in the ground?

Most houses are built after several inches of top soil have been removed.  So most home gardeners spend a lot time amending their soil so they can grow anything.  Plus, we have dogs and a toddler who trample over anything so the little plant babies needed protection in the form of height.  Plus, shipping pallets are FREE.  We just ask for them and most places, like Ace Hardware and City Mill have been happy for us to take them.  If we were to have spent the money on new materials to build these, I would be blogging about the $54 tomato.

Why bother painting them? Isn’t that a lot of work?

It is an extra step, and takes the longest of all the steps.  There’s many sides of the wood to paint, but it’s worth it.  First, the bare wood probably wouldn’t last one year if we didn’t paint them.  Also, it looks nicer!  And the green, well it was just chance that it was the mistinted paint on sale one day.  It very well could have been the Pink Box Garden, but now that there are four of them out there, I’m glad they are green, as it’s a little less shocking to the eye and blends in nicely.  Not so feng shui to have like bright purple pallets in the backyard..course, it could be cool too!

What do you line them with?

The main four we have lined with black landscape fabric.  Another tiny one tucked back in a corner I did with burlap.  It’s experimental to see how long it takes for the burlap to break down, because I’d rather use a natural fiber, but not if it’s disintegrated in 6 months.

How do you space your plants? What do you put in each box?

This is not scientific.  I try to follow some general guidelines about companion planting, but ultimately, if a seedling is ready to be moved from the kitchen seedling rack, it goes where ever it will fit!  Today I tucked squash in around the corn and interspersed lettuce by the carrots.  Small gardens have to bend the rules.

About a day to complete one of these. That is on our island time, we don’t get in a hurry. 🙂

Farm Fair Watercress Salad

The 2012 Hawaii Farm Fair was earlier this month and I spent a whole day out there talking tree grafting with other Master Gardeners, sampling local farm produce and hanging with the family doing pony rides and bouncy houses. Good times had by all!

We brought home a HAUL of farm fresh produce for some great prices.  Papaya, watermelon, eggplant, Maui sugar, Kona coffee, avocado, pineapple and corn.  Lucky live Hawaii, for sure.  I came home with a bunch of watercress from Sumida Farms in Pearl City. I used to drive past this every day when we lived on that side of the island, and it is a true anomaly.  There you are, sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, concrete all around you, strip malls, parking lots, traffic lights and wait- is that a farm? Yes it is.  And they grow some tasty green stuff.

Here’s a light summer salad- totally vegan and if you live Hawaii- can make almost completely from local producers.

Adapted from Sumida Farm Watercress Recipes “May’s Tofu  Salad”

1 Block Aloha Tofu, firm cut in cubes

1/2 Medium Maui Onion, diced

1 medium tomato from the Green Box Garden, cubed

1 bunch Sumida Farm Watercress, cut into 1 inch pieces

1/2 cup chopped Green Box Garden green onions

Dressing:

1/4 oil (Oils of Aloha Mac Nut oil is good)

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 cup Aloha Shoyu (soy sauce)

1 tbs sesame oil

Juice of 1/2 Green Box Garden Lemon

It’s a salad, so you know, you mix it all together and put the dressing on!  If you make it ahead, you can drain off excess water from the salad before putting dressing on and serving.  The original recipe calls for cooking the garlic first, but I’m too lazy to do that, plus I like strong garlic.

The Small Boy ate most of my place of this! He loves the green onions, tofu and shoyu flavors.

Tara Hummus from Kauai! This stuff is tasty- and available on Oahu at the Kapiolani Community College farmers market and Mililani Market.

Sampling the delicious Maui Gold, super sweet pineapple!

 

Getting Serious About Seeds

Our house glows.

I know why growers of “alternative” herbs, ahem, wink wink, do it in the closet.  They are not ashamed.  It’s because grow lights are FREAKING BRIGHT.

Pulling into my driveway the other night confirmed for me that the neighbors must be talking.  Because there is so much light coming out of every window that night-dog-walkers probably turn off their flashlights on our corner.  It’s ridiculous.

But this is what must happen to prevent this:

Leggy, sad seedlings.

You see when seeds germinate and stick their little heads up out of the soil, if they are not met with intense bright light, they will reach for light- and in our case, even having them next to a “sunny” window was not enough to prevent this from happening.  They were reaching, and reaching, and not growing roots or stems.  “Leggy” is the term.  I rotated, I used seed mix that was for “root growth” not leaf growth- but it was, I found, a light issue.  The intensity of the sun outside was too much for them, but window light was not enough.  I lost a whole tray of seedlings to this “legginess.”  Filing this one under “garden lessons.”

Because of the year round growing season here, having a constant supply of vegetable seedlings ready to go when some plants stop producing will save this Girl a bundle, so seeds it must be.  Plus, there is so much more variety in seed selection, I get to choose interesting purple Brussels sprouts or heirloom Cherokee tomatoes- not gonna find these at the local ma and pa garden center.  I wrote a while back about seeds vs. plants, but I’m thinking for the long term, it’s going to be seed growing.

So I hauled home a metal bakers rack from craigslist, bought a couple fluorescent fixtures and outfitted them with daylight bulbs.  The “grow” or “aquarium” bulbs would likely have been even better, but it was about 3x the price, and I just wasn’t sure it was worth it.

Here I have set up a pretty simple system from stuff I already had: reused nursery pots from my stash in the shed (sterilized with bleach water); under the bed storage box, and an interesting variety of seeds! They were amazingly fast to germinate and develop leaves in this new set up: 4 days.  It took about 2 weeks with just window lighting.  And I’m pleased to say, no leggy ones in sight. Everyone is developing good strong stems and leaves, and staying strong in their little pots.

The advantage to having them in a plastic storage box is that you can water from below, thus reducing chance of damaging delicate little seedlings.  It’s good to keep them moist at first, but as they grow, they seem to get stronger if allowed to dry out in between waterings.  Kinda like tough love for a kid.

I’m so happy with this set up that I’m increasing the number of seedlings I’m growing to fill all three shelves of the rack.  Whatever I don’t plant myself, I hope to sell for a few bucks out on the curb to folks who might want something different for the garden, like an heirloom squash or red romaine lettuce. (YUM!)

I’ve been getting seeds from three places:

University of Hawaii Seed Lab (open pollinated & hydroponically grown varieties)

Landreth Seed Company (oldest seed house in the USA.  Their $5 catalog is a wealth of information and it’s beautiful.  I read it before snuggling into bed.)

Seeds of Change (all organic) and really interesting varieties. I’m having good luck so far with my carrots from this company.

I have to say, that our little set up looks remarkably similar (yet low tech) to this futuristic kitchen design:

We are the future! Muahahahaha!

Happy growing people! Or Glowing, as the case would be.

Bartenders Make Good Gardeners

Good bartenders have skills.  Not just the mixology of course, that can all be learned.  The skills I speak of are not easily taught.  You either have them or you don’t.  The people skills, the chatting, talking story, seeing bullshit a mile away kind of skills.  In a previous life, as a resident of the great city of London, England, I was a good bartender.  I left the fancy drink making to other more theatrical types and instead focused on pulling a good pint, playing peacemaker and serving as stand-in therapist for our regulars.  I’m certain I should have been billing them for services.

So why do bartenders make good gardeners?

It is perhaps the English in me that loves both a good pint and a lovely garden, but it is the mostly powers of observation, friends.  The ability to read body language across a crowded dark pub in order to prevent a tussle from occurring is not so different than observing ever-so-slightly different shade of leaf on the cabbage plants that tell me something else is going on.  Leaf miners and rugby fights: I don’t like either one.

So when I returned to my garden after an extended absence (shout out to my mom for keeping it all alive) I observed very easily that everyone needed some breathing room.  You can have too much of a good thing, it turns out, when smaller plants are struggling to get light and pests can just hop from one leaf to the next plant because they are all on top of each other.  Balance had to be struck- like making sure you don’t let too many Liverpool or Chelsea fans in the pub when the Manchester United game is on.  Observe, people.  Prevention and balance.  Peace and pruning.

A great deal of time was spent today cutting back all the herbs and veggies.  I ended up with an under-the-bed-storage box full of fresh cut twist-tied herbs to sell.  After scribbling some labels with herb names a simple uses, my mom and the handy-hubby did the rest, nearly selling out my plastic bin of greens right on our our curb.

Honestly, I was shocked.  I didn’t figure we would sell two bunches, just sitting out there, kind of random like on the street corner with “FRESH HERBS” on a sign.  But people are desperate for fresh food.  You see it in them.  They pick up a bunch of mint, stick it to their nose, close their eyes, and inhale like it’s the first pleasant thing they have ever smelled.  Neighbors stop by just to talk story, give .50 for some basil; talk about road construction.  A lost truck needing directions doesn’t buy anything, but shares what veggies he is growing himself.

Neighbors and commuters bought green onions, mint, chives, lavender, arugula and Mexican oregano.  Someone’s dinner might taste better because of me and my little garden. Like any good bartender I kept a close eye on what was really going on out there.  And what I saw was very interesting: a table with fresh herbs might be like therapy for a neighborhood.  The way a barstool was therapy for so many people I knew in my other life.  Gaining a sense of humanity, community, bonding; simple sharing of stories; all because herbs needed some breathing room.

Or I could just be talking bollocks and in that case I owe you all a round.

Cheers, here’s to the herbs.

 

Know Your Farmer

While we work to make ourselves more self-sustaining, it is not realistic yet that we could possibly grow everything we need on our little rental property in the ‘burbs.

And we eat a lot of papaya and banana, so I thought it would be a nice family field trip to go see where our fruit of choice comes from.

So off to the North Shore we went!

Starting with a fabulous lunch, which we devoured so quickly I didn’t even get a photo (hint: the Farm Pizza and grilled panini were divine!)  We ended lunch with quite possibly the best dessert I’ve ever had in my whole life.  That is saying something, ‘cuz this Girl has had a lot of desserts.

Grilled. Banana. Bread. Ala Mode.  Its their specialty, made on-site from scratch.  Some things should never, I repeat never, become automated or outsourced!

After dessert, we played with some outdoor toys and balls at the cafe.  Very smart and simple to provide these things! It’s like someone has seen restless children before.

Next up, we all pile onto the wagon to go for a ride around the farm.

Papaya trees are so beautiful with the sunshine coming through the leaves.

You may or may not know that bananas are formed from flowers (a basic difference between a fruit and a vegetable, which is why it can be argued that cucumbers and tomatoes and eggplant are fruit too, as they form from flowers.)  The enormous purple flower of the banana tree blooms and inside are what will become each banana.

It was perhaps the most beautiful day we could have gone on the farm tour, and the breeze, sunlight and crunch of mulch under foot was so relaxing.

On Kahuku Farms, they grow a variety of things, but as a commercial operation, one of the most important is the dryland taro which is grown exclusively for the leaves.  These leaves get wrapped around pork, chicken and sweet potatoes and sold as packaged lau lau, one of the most popular local dishes.

All the harvesting, processing and boxing up of produce is still done by hand here, and this building is where it all happens.  Also inside is the certified kitchen where yummy goodness like the banana bread is made.  They also are doing a great thing by having those solar panels on the top, which according to our guide, produce almost all the energy they need.

This was a great way to spend an afternoon.  From our first hello at the cafe counter to the tour and fruit samples at the end, I was impressed.  I always knew that being a farmer is hard work, especially when you are doing what you can to stay sustainable, diversify and provide workers with meaningful employment.  I can’t think of more important reasons to buy local.

So hey, Kylie and Judah, if you guys need a master gardener to help with that farm-to-table concept at your cafe, hit me up! And thanks for the fun afternoon. You folks are doing a good thing. 🙂

Adventures in Aquaponics

Use fish to grow food without soil.  This pretty much sums up what aquaponics actually is, the combination of “aquaculture” or raising of fish and “hydroponics” growing of plants in water.  It’s becoming really popular, but systems can get pricey. Our little house is entering our seventh month of experimentation with this system and I have a few things to share about our journey.

This is the first system we tried.  It was a kit available locally and we spent a good deal of time talking story with the guy who sold it to us as he was a wealth of knowledge.  It was worth the money we spent because we were newbies, hadn’t done much homework and just wanted to try it out.  This small set up was perfect for that.  And we feel that since we bought the things, we can call and ask questions!

A variety of things happened.  First we had fish retention issues.  Like, they jumped out, birds ate them and they died mysteriously.  We were using comets in this system.  Since there was some time lapse between getting more fish, fixing issues so they wouldn’t happen (net over the water to keep them safe, etc) the plants began to weaken.  Aphids moved in.  Not much you can spray on these systems that is fish-safe and after five months, I took the surviving plants out, dunked them in vinegar water to remove aphids, and replanted in our soil-based garden.  Two survived!

Meanwhile the hubs got to work  scheming a new system.  Bigger, better and new location! (We think it was too hot in the former spot.)  Also, after checking prices on ready-made systems, it just wasn’t worth the cost unless we built it ourselves, from things we already had.

This is why we make such a great team! I do not have the patience for this level of detail- but he does!! After a couple cups of coffee and a few sketches, he was ready to set it up.

The two original bins became grow beds and he added a third.  Fish are now held in half a 55-gallon barrel, pump is larger and required three PVC pipe dispensers for the grow beds.  We are now using tilapia instead of comets.  Bench they are all sitting on was a curbside find and the barrel we already had.  Purchased items were only the PVC pipe, glue and fittings.

The plants I chose this time are a bit hardier varieties and I spaced them more than in the first system.  Things got crowded very quickly in the other grow bed, which contributed to the bug problem.

Water flows constantly through the system and it has a nice water feature effect on the backyard.

We love learning a variety of ways to grow food.  We may not always have outdoor space or soil to have a garden, and learning these skills feels so empowering.  We are also teaching our son simple science in the process.  He will be three years old next month and I heard him explain to a friend who was visiting, “That’s Daddy’s fish. They help Mommy’s plants grow.”

So true! They are Daddy’s fish, and Daddy’s brilliant scheme to make all the flow, pressures and valves work- but Mommy looks after the little green babies on top.

And should those aphids strike again, we now have an aquaponics safe recipe for spraying them! We are undecided on whether we will eat the tilapia once they get big enough.  Some people do, and then just replace them with new fish.

Any aquaponics experts or novices out there eat their fish?

How to Screw Up Easy Jam

I’m a work in progress, let’s just say that right up front.  If you want to follow beautiful cooking blogs with amazing recipes, please click away now.  This might not be the place for you.  But if you are willing to suffer through some descriptions and photos, I might just save you from wasting 4 hours of your own life messing up “easy” to can jam.

It all started with the “Ball Complete Guide to Home Preservation.”  On page 24 is the Pineapple Jam recipe, and since we have cheap pineapple a-plenty (actually two growing the backyard right now) this seemed like the obvious choice!  Besides, how hard could it be, after I had successfully done salsa, which was way more difficult?

It seemed so simple: dump some pineapple, sugar, lemon and water together, boil it, can it. Done.

Lesson #1: Do not count how many cups of pineapple you are putting into the pan while singing Thomas the Tank Engine theme song.  You will miscount and not put enough.  This was likely the mistake that made it all go downhill.

The steps are as follows:

Prepare jars and lids.  For me, this means dishwasher for the jars and boiling the lids to sterilize.

Dump the pineapple (measured accurately!),sugar, water and lemon into another pan. (Shout out to the pineapple-chopper extraordinaire, the Hubs, for prepping all this the day before!)

The recipe says to leave the lemon unpeeled and to slice it thinly, but if I did this again I would be pulverizing that lemon in the food processor because the rind doesn’t break down or get soft- in fact the end product, which I have now tried, has chunks of lemon rind which are so tough I had to spit them out! Bad idea, Ball Canning Book. 

Then, you are to boil the mixture until it thickens into the “gel stage” which is described with photos in the book.  It’s supposed to look and feel like the jelly you get in jars for $3.79 at Safeway. (Which is why I was making this to start with.  I wanted to avoid purchasing jam and DIY!)

I had doubled the recipe, so I figured it would take longer than the 15 minutes stated to get to this stage, but after boiling for more than 45 minutes, it was STILL not thick.  The foam forming on top didn’t happen until 30 minutes in- this was my first clue that something was not right.

After a “gel stage” has been reached, I was supposed to skim off the foam and spoon into jars for processing.  Except by the time the stuff was finally thick enough to resemble jam, it had also been a bit, well, scorched, burned, whatever and there was no foam left!

I should have removed myself from kitchen duty for the rest of the day.

But I was determined!! The flavor wasn’t that bad- it was the texture that wasn’t right.  I spooned it up into jars and processed it anyway.  The hubs came in halfway through to a sweaty wild-haired woman and encouraged me to keep going and to NOT throw the whole thing out the door.  He is the patient one.  And he had chopped all that pineapple and wanted some jam.

Due to the fact that I obtained the “cute” squat little 8 ounce jelly jars, I could only put two at a time in my canning basket.  How annoying.  I will, in the future, stick with the more narrow jars that fit in the basket.

And they all sealed!  I had hoped this jam would make a nice impromptu gift, for a dinner host or to cheer up a friend who might be having a crap day- but I’m afraid I won’t be letting any of these Burnt Brown Beauties out into the wider world.  I tried some on toast this morning, and though not completely awful, the texture wasn’t right, it was too sweet and the slices of lemon rind were very off-putting.  *sigh*

The good news is our little house will be happy to eat strange looking jam on PB & J.

We just aren’t that fussy.