Homemade Pancake Syrup

In my Pancake Sausage Muffin post I urged you all to not by syrup unless it is real maple syrup because store bought syrups are essentially poison.  Seriously, read the label.  Real maple syrup is full of nutrients your body needs and even the sugar make up is not nearly as problematic for your body as other sugars.

But, if you don't want to pay something like $50 a gallon for maple syrup then make your own syrup.  No pictures here in this post but making homemade syrup is super easy.

Here is what you need:

1 cup water
1 cup granulated white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put the water in a pan over medium heat.  Add both white and brown sugar.  Stir.  Bring to a boil then turn down heat to get a nice simmer.  Continue to stir until you get a thick syrup.  If you have a candy thermometer cook the syrup to about 225 degrees.

Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract.  Some people like to add both vanilla extract and maple flavoring (1/2 teaspoon of each).

You can use the syrup hot right away on your pancakes or waffles.  Once cool store in a jar in the refrigerator.

This recipe doubles and triples nicely so make as much as you will need for the next couple of weeks.


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Saving Seeds - Part 1 Dill, Cilantro, and Peas

As promised in my earlier Seed Packages post, here is the first in a short series of posts on saving seeds.  I will add to the series as seeds in my garden become available for saving.

The first of the plants to set seeds in my garden are the early spring leafy greens including various leaf lettuces and spinaches.  When the weather gets warm these leafy greens bolt, meaning they send up a flower stalk with the intent of reseeding themselves.  I do not have any pictures of my early greens but they follow the same lifecycle and their seeds can be saved in the same way as the dill and cilantro. Chives and onion seeds can also be saved as described in this post.

As you may have noticed, most plants produce a flower at some point in their lifecycle.  These flowers may, after pollination, produce a fruit in (or in the case of strawberries on) which the plant's seeds are found or instead the flowers may go straight to seed without producing a fruit.

As a side note, have you ever wondered about the real difference between a fruit and a vegetable? If the part of the plant you eat grew from the plant's flower, then it is a fruit.  If you eat the plant's leaf, root, stalk, flower, or other part that didn't grow from the plant's flower then it is a vegetable.  So that makes tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, avocados and many others fruit.  Somewhere I read that "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit but wisdom is knowing NOT to put it in a fruit salad."

It makes sense that the first plants in the garden to have seeds that can be harvested and saved for future growing seasons are vegetables (and herbs) since fruits take much longer to develop.

In general for vegetable and herb seeds, you can simply collect the seeds from the plant when the seeds are full sized but before they have completely dried out or started to drop from the plant.  The harvested seeds of this type are best collected in paper bags (lunch sized works for most) then allowed to dry in the house in a cool dry location.

One day many years ago I planted one, just one dill plant.  I haven't planted one since.  But I get dozens of plants every year.  Why?  Because one dill plant can produce a bazillion seeds (ok maybe more like several hundred).  And those seeds can stay in the ground lurking for years until just the right environment exists to germinate.  And with each passing crop of dill, I am incapable of collecting all the dill seeds so the problem is perpetuated from season to season.

Well I guess I could yank out all the dill plants, but I like them so I let them grow.  I do collect and save dill seed each year.  For me, the dill seed is for pickling and cooking rather than starting new plants.  Once the seeds are ready for long term storage (meaning they have fully dried out) I keep my dill seeds in a jar in the spice cabinet.  My garden sufficiently produces enough new dill plants each year I never need to plant a dill seed on purpose.

Dill flowers

Dill plants start to flower after only a few weeks of germination.  The flowers are tiny and yellow growing in an umbel shape.  This is the same flower shape found with carrots and Queen Annes Lace which isn't all that surprising since all three plants are from the same family.

Dill seeds ripening, ready to be taken inside and dried

After a short time the flower dries out and seeds begin to form.  Pictured above you can see some dill flowers in the far right.  The majority of the picture are the swelling seeds that have grown from the flowers.  Once the dill seeds get to this size, you can clip off the whole head of seeds and store it in a paper bag for drying.  And no matter how familiar you are with your seeds, always label your paper bags.  Dill is pretty obvious because of its pungent fragrance but with many seeds, once dried, you will have no idea what those seeds are.

Dill seed a few days away from reseeding the garden

If you leave the seeds in the garden they will continue to dry out on their own like the ones shown in the picture above.  Dill seeds only take a short time to go from plump green seeds to the fully dried and ready to use seeds below.

Dill seed ready to cook with or plant

Cilantro has a similar life cycle to dill and is harvested the same way.  Below is a nice cilantro flower.  These flowers hang around for a few days then start to fade as seeds form.

Cilantro Flowers

In the picture below you can see cilantro seeds in various stages.  The bright green ones to the left are fully grown but have not yet started to dry out.  In the lower middle of the picture the seeds that look a bit pink have started to dry, seeds in this stage are the best to harvest.  The darker brown seeds are fully dry (see how much smaller they are than the other seeds that haven't dried yet).  These brown seeds are hours away from falling to the ground to produce new cilantro plants next season.

Cilantro seeds on the plant, some dried (the darker brown near the top right corner), and some in process, ready to be picked and dried inside (center)

You can harvest cilantro seeds at any point in their cycle once they have plumped to full size.  Again just pop the seeds in a paper bag to dry in your home in a cool dry place.  The dried seeds are the spice coriander (which is used in many curries and other yumminess) which taste nothing like cilantro.  So this is a double duty plant.

Coriander, also known as cilantro seeds 

If you don't harvest the seeds, next year your garden will look like the picture below.  I didn't plant any of these cilantro plants.  They were all grown from last year's seed that fell to the ground.  As you can see, not harvesting seeds can make a real mess.  There is also a volunteer cherry tomato plant in the picture.

Volunteer Cilantro

Peas take a little longer to produce seed.  Now to be clear, if you eat a pea it is food.  If you let the pea dry out on the vine it is a seed that will produce a new pea plant.  In fact, there are many peas that stay on the vine too long in my garden to be eaten so I just let them dry into seed.  The longer a pea stays on the vine the more of the natural sweet sugar in the pea turns to starch making the pea taste bland and, well, starchy rather then sweet.  Once the pods start to get a little leathery is usually when the peas have past their prime eating stage and are better left for seed.

In the picture above these pods are obviously dried out.  I just pluck them off the vine and pop the pod and all into a paper bag.  You can shell the dried seed peas out of their pods after they are fully dry.  I recommend shelling the peas after they have dried for a couple of weeks rather than leaving the peas in the pods until next year.

Sometimes I wait until the entire pea vine has died back to harvest the seed peas.  Peas on a vine that looks like this are almost completely dry and usually only need a few extra days of drying inside.

Again just label your bags then keep them in a cool dry place while the seeds finish drying.  Please note that this method is not the right method for dealing with wet seeds like those of tomatoes, cucumbers, or peppers.  More on those later.

Once your seed are fully dry, you can move them into the Seed Packages you made earlier.

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Storing Onions

So you may remember my post on Harvesting Onions with all those beautiful onions hanging on a ladder in my garage to cure.

Well those onions have now dried and look like this. 

 

The next step is to cut them down and put them into storage waiting to be used up.  With proper storage these onions will last many, many months.

The first thing I did was cut the bunches down by cutting the twine off the ladder.  Next I cut each onion off of the bunch with scissors cutting the next about an inch or two above the onion bulb.  A few of the larger onions still had wet necks, meaning the stem growing out of the top of the onion was still wet of juicy when I cut it.  These onions need to dry more or they will not store properly.  I moved these into my kitchen to be used first, just in case.

Ready to move from the garage into long term storage

I have a pantry downstairs which is underground.  It stays cool and dry all year long.  That is the perfect place for my onions.  There are a number of ways to store onions.  Some people use bins with lots of small holes to allow for air circulation.  Some people encase the onions in panty hose, knotting between the onions then cutting off onions as needed.

I use this hanging mesh toy storage thingee I purchased from IKEA years ago. 

I put the onions in a single layer in each level of the mess hanging thingee (what is this thing called anyway).  The mesh allows for sufficient air circulation around the onions. 

I check the onions periodically to look for any that are getting soft, smell bad, or have sprouted. Remove any of those types of onions immediately to keep the rest of the onions from going bad.

Keep in mind that home grown onions will not store as long as grocery store onions because grocery store onions are sprayed with a sprout inhibitor right before they are cured.  Homegrown onions often try to sprout before the next year's onion crop is ready.  You can eat sprouted onions.  Just don't leave sprouted onions to set with the rest of the storage onions too long.

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Harvesting Onions

This weekend it was time to harvest our onions.  Most years we grow two or three varieties of onion from seed with the goal of planting enough onions to last until the next year's harvest.  This year with the weird weather not allowing us to get seed into the garden early enough, and with our thoughts on moving (how much stored produce do we really want to move across country) we planted a small number of onions from sets.  Well a small number for us anyway.

An onion set is a small onion bulb.  Some grower somewhere planted onion seeds and grew them for a while until each seed grew into an onion bulb about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch in diameter.  The grower harvested all these little bulbs, cured them, bagged them up, then sold them to a middlemen who sold them to a retailer who sold them to me. 

We took the bag of onion sets home, prepared a garden bed for them and planted them in the soil.  Two months (give or take) later the onions were ready to harvest.  Onions tell you when they are ready to harvest by falling over.  Garlic does the same thing.  Rather handy actually.  If you leave the onions in the ground after they fall over, it won't be long before all those green onion tops dry out and eventually blow away making it difficult to find the onions.  So I try to harvest before the tops dry out.

Onions laying down and ready to harvest

Harvesting onions is simple in a properly prepared bed.  Grab the neck of the onion as close to the top of the bulb as you can and gently pull.  Usually the onions pull out easily.  In the picture below you can see how few roots the onion bulb has.  While it was growing it had a much larger mass of roots. 

Pull gently

I put all the onions into trugs for easy hauling around the yard.

Onions harvested, now the real work begins

Now that the onions are all harvested, we have to do something with them.  If I only grew a few, I would just rinse them off and keep them in the kitchen to be used up.  But I have more than a few days worth of onions so I need a way to store them for a longer time.  In order to store onions, they need to be properly cured.  Curing is a process where the outer layer of the onion bulb and the neck of the onion (the place where the green top grows out of the bulb) is dried so that the onion inside stays usable for months and months.

I like to rinse the dirt off of the onions before I cure them.  First I laid the onions out on the driveway in a single layer.

Laid out and ready for a rinse

Next I rinsed the dirt off the onions with the hose.  My helper had great fun with this task.

My helper

As you can see from the before and after rinsing pictures below, this is not going to make the onions dirt free.  But it will make them a lot cleaner.

Before

After - not perfect but much cleaner

Once the onions are all rinsed, I leave them on the driveway to dry out for a couple of hours. 

Rinsed off and left to dry

After the onions dried out on the driveway for a couple of hours it was time to tie them up in bunches.  Depending upon the size of the onions, I group them into bunches of 6 to 10 onions then tie up each bunch with twine.  I use 18 to 24 inches of twine for each bunch.  After each bunch is tied up, I cut off the green tops 8 to 10 inches or so above the twine. 

Tied and ready to cure

In the picture above you can see all the onions tied up in neat bunches ready to cure. 

The pile of onions above the bunches are onions that either did not have a green top to tie up (because I pulled the top off while trying to get the onion out of the ground) or were not really fit to be cured.  A few of the onions had really thick or big necks.  An onion with a large neck will not cure well.  Usually those onions rot after a month or so of harvest because the neck never dries out "sealing" the onion inside.  So this pile of onions I just move into the kitchen to be used up first.

The last step in curing the onions is to store them somewhere where they will get lots of air circulation and be able to dry out the outer layers and neck properly.  For us, this is our garage.  It is warm all summer and has ceiling fans running constantly.  I hang the onion bunches on a ladder in the garage and leave them there for 2 to 3 weeks until they are ready for storage in a cool pantry in our basement.  Someday I hope for a root cellar.  For more information about storing onions, see my Storing Onions post here.

Curing

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Strawberry Jam

It's that time of year!  My strawberries are finally ready to go and only a month late.  But this is certainly a better-late-than-never situation.  My little one eats her weight in peanut butter and jelly through out the year (she might eat her daddy's weight too).  So I make lots of strawberry jam for her PB&Js.

The strawberries we grow ourselves in a lower and upper bed.  This year each bed is producing well but the lower bed is out pacing the upper bed.  I tried making Strawberry Rocks this year to help cut down on the chipmunk nibbling. Click here to see my strawberry rock post. And it actually worked!  There still is some nibbling but nothing like the damage done last year.  So I heartily recommend the strawberry rock approach.

The first step in making strawberry jam is to acquire strawberries.  I love growing my own.  I know who has touched them, what has (or has not) been applied to them, and where they have been.  Essentially I know each strawberries' whole life story.  I like that.

Whether you grow your own, pick your own, buy store bought fresh or frozen, you are going to need between 10 to 12 cups of washed strawberries. 

Washed and ready to can

The next step is to hull the strawberries.  If you bought frozen strawberries, yours are already hulled and just need to defrost a bit. 

For fresh strawberries you need to remove the stem and inner core.  You can buy a fancy strawberry huller gadget, or use a pairing knife, but I just use my thumbnail.  I dig into the top of the strawberry with my thumbnail and gouge out the stem and core; not pretty but very effective. I also remove any bad spots that I do not want to make it into my jam.

Half way hulled

After the whole batch is hulled, the strawberries need to be crushed.  I just use a potato masher.  But you could just squish them with your hands (properly clean hands that is).

Ready to crush (or mash)

Crushing the strawberries with a potato masher
























You want to end up with about 8 cups crushed hulled strawberries.  You do not need to obliterate the strawberries in this step.  They will do that themselves in the cooking process.

Next put your strawberries in a non-reactive pan.  Strawberries are rather acidic so you don't want to introduce odd flavors into the jam by making an unfortunate pan choice.  Into the pan with the 8 cups of crushed strawberries add 6 cups of sugar.  Remember we are essentially making a dessert here.  Stir it all together and you will get a mixture that looks like this.

Now put the pan on medium heat and let it cook without a lid.  You want to stir often.  Oh and do not walk away for very long .  The strawberries will boil up on you like a covered pan of pasta if you are not watching.

If you noticed, I did not act pectin to my jam.  You can add pectin to make the jam set faster and have a thicker consistency.  Instead I add a lot of slightly underripe strawberries which have a higher pectin concentration than the fully ripe strawberries (the recipes I have seen recommend using about 1/3 underripe strawberries).  I had to cook my strawberries for about an hour and a half to get them to gel stage. 

Cooked to gel stage

From the good folks at Ball jars there are three tests you can perform to ensure your strawberry jam made without the use of commercial pectin has reached the gel stage (these are their words, not mine... credit where credit is due).

1. Temperature Test Cook the soft spread until it reaches a temperature of 220°F, or 8°F above the boiling point of water. Measure the temperature of soft spreads with a candy or jelly thermometer. Always insert the thermometer vertically into the soft spread and ensure that it does not contact the surface of the pot.

2. Sheet Test Dip a cold metal spoon into the boiling soft spread. Lift the spoon and hold it horizontally with edge down so that the syrup runs off the edge. As the mixture cooks, the drops will become heavier and will drop off the spoon separately but two at a time. When the two drops join together and “sheet” off the spoon, the gel stage haven reached.

3. Refrigerator Test Chill two or three small saucers in the freezer. Place a teaspoonful of soft spread on the chilled saucer and place in the freezer for 1 minute. Remove the saucer from the freezer and push the edge of the spread with your finger. A mixture that has reached the gel stage will be set, and the surface will wrinkle when the edge is pushed. Note: To prevent overcooking or scorching, remove the soft spread from the heat before performing this test.

If the test you performed shows that the gel stage has not been reached, return the mixture to the heat to cook for a few minutes longer, then retest the soft spread.

Once your jam has reached the gel stage you are ready to store the jam.  I choose to can my jam for long term storage (at least a year).  Excellent instructions for beginning canning can again be found here again from the good folks at Ball.  I will not turn this post into a full canning tutorial.  If you have never canned before, it is easy but must be done correctly or someone can die.  (Was that dramatic enough to make the point?)

First I sterilized my jars.  I did that by running them through the dishwasher while the strawberry jam was cooking down.  I took the hot jars from my dishwasher to be filled one at a time as needed.  More traditionally you boil the jars in your canner while the jam is cooking.  The key here is the jars need to be clean and very hot.

While the jam is cooking and the jars are heating I put the lids into a small pan to scald.  Scalding is basically heating the lids up so that the seal (that orange band around the edge) gets soft in preparation for sticking to the top of the glass jars.  Do not boil the lids, just simmer them a bit.

Lids scaled and ready to go

First jar filled

Each jar is filled with the jam leaving one quarter inch head space. Head space is the space between the top of the jam and the top of the jar.  You want the head space for the jam to expand while being processed. 

Lid goes on

Before the lids go on the jar, you need to wipe the rim of the jar clean to make sure there is no jam coming between the lid and the jar which can cause the seal to fail.  The lids are hot so I just this handy dandy little plastic wand with a magnet at the end called cleverly enough a lid lifter to take the hot lids out of the hot water and place them on the jar. Once the lids are in place I add the screw band just finger tight.  Do try to crush the lid on with the band that will cause the seal between the lid and the jar to fail.

Into the boiling water bath canner

Once all sealed up, I use my handy dandy jar lifter (another catchy name) to put the jars into the boiling water canner.  The canner is just a big pot big enough to fit my canning rack.  I use a canning rack to keep the jars from sitting on the bottom of the pan.   

Jars ready to process

Once all the jars in are place, make sure there is about an inch of water over the top of the jars.  Put a lid on the canner and turn up the heat to get a vigorous boil.  Once boiling, set a timer for ten minutes.  Leave the lid on an wait.  Don't mess with the heat, just let it boil like crazy.

After ten minutes is over, remove the lid, turn off the heat and set the timer for another five minutes.  When the five minutes is over, remove the jars with the can lifter.  Do not tip the jars or even dry them off.  Just set them on a towel or a trivet in a corner of your kitchen where they will not be disturbed.  Cover the jars with a towel to keep a draft off of them while they cool.  Leave them alone to cool over night (or at least 5 or 6 hours).  The jars will make a popping sound as they cool.  That is normal.  Once cooled, check to make sure each jar sealed properly.  The lid will be indented into the jar because a vacuum seal has been made.  You should be able to get the screw band off with your fingers but should not be able to pry off the lid with your fingers.  If you can get the lid off with your fingers, the jar did not seal properly and either needs to be reprocessed with a new lid, or it can just be put into the refrigerator and used.  After the jars are completely cooled, I write the date on the lid and put into storage for another day.


























Strawberry jam is very easy to make even though it takes some time.  But the time is worth it!

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About me

I am forty-something living in the northern plains of the mid-west. I have a wonderful husband and five year old daughter. And now I know why people have children in their twenties rather than their forties. We have friends from high school with grandchildren the age of our daughter.

So we are pretty much never going to be able to retire. But we are also not able to sink quietly into old age either. Old age is a sneaky bastard. Before you know it you are planning your schedule around reruns of Jeapordy and a late dinner at 4:30.

I have been practicing law for twenty years and before that I was a chemist.  I have my own law firm so my schedule is pretty much my own, which has been really helpful having been a mostly full time mom for the last five years.  When my little one goes to kindergarten in the fall my clients are going to be happy to see more of me.  I will probably cry.  OK I know I will cry.  Which brings me back to the point of this blog. In a perfect world, in the fall I won't be actively practicing law anymore.

I love Jesus, plants, animals, computer games, epic fantasy (that is a type of literature), wine, chocolate, useless trivia and Handy Manny. I am bossy, opinionated, and unable to not speak my mind which actually makes me a good attorney but not such a good employee hence why I work for myself.  That last trait also makes me a challenging friend to have but I am also loyal, honest, trustworthy and kind (in a brutally honest sort of way).

I was born and raised in California, went to law school on the East Coast, and now, live here in flyover land.  My husband is a Texas boy and a horticulturist. We have lived up here for thirteen years and now think it is time to make a big change.

Me in my happy place (a decade or two ago)

We have made small steps along the way: trying to live a more simple and sustainable life; trying to become more self-sufficient; learning new skills; getting out of debt; reevaluating our priorities; and many more.  Now we are trying to work out a move to the country to live and start our own related business.  Details to come!