yes we can

I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me that my newfound appreciation for canning coincides so beautifully with the election of a president who has lifted our hopes with a slogan so beautifully affirming of both the generous possibility of human communities and jam preservation.  Yes, we can.

Who knew that my own little efforts at food security would resonate so elegantly with this exciting moment in history?

The passionfruit vine in our backyard grew crazy this year, so I've been enjoying the challenge of figuring out ways to preserve it.  

In that spirit, here's how I have been making passionfruit jam:

Ingredients:

about 30 ripe passionfruits (really, though, some are awfully little, so make it more like 34)

2 1/2 limes

water

about 4 lbs of sugar

Get the pulp out of the passionfruits.  My preferred method, to get most of the pulp but few of the seeds, is to cut the stem-end of the fruits off, scoop the pulp and seeds and everything into my little food processor, and run it for a few seconds.  The food processor frees the good, tasty pulp from the seeds.  Then, you can pour it through a strainer, into a bowl.   Add the lime juice, and set it aside.   (I think a few seeds make a nice addition to the jam, so I let a few of them through, too.)

Put the rest of the passionfruits--the wrinkly outside--into a big pot, and add water until at least half of them are submerged.  Boil them for at least 30 minutes, until the white pithy parts are all moist and swollen and kind-of purplish.

Cool the fruits you've just boiled, and peel the outer, crunchy skin away from the now-moist pithy pulp part.  Compost the skin, and put the inside pulp layer into the food processor.  I only have a little food processor, so I do about 6 fruits at a time, adding about 1/4 cup of the water from the boiling pot into each batch.  Blend the pulp until it's milkshake-thick.  (You'll end up adding about 1 1/2 cups of the water from the pot you'd boiled the fruits in.)

Now, as you put all the pulp and the juice into a big pot for turning into jam, measure the volume, and add an equivalent amount of sugar.  Bring it to a boil, and watch until it begins to turn jammy.  It doesn't take long--apparently, there's a good amount of pectin in that pulp.

Put the jam into jars, and process in boiling water bath. 

fruitful life

I didn't make a conscious decision to plant holy-sounding fruits in my garden, but this week's yield certainly does have that appeal.

Here's a bunch off my Praying Hands Banana, named because the bunches (called hands in banana-speak) look like hands held in prayer.

And passionfruits, named because the flowers reminded Spanish missionaries of Christ's passion.
Pretty good choices for the backyard of a preacher who images it to be here little promised land, in the spirit of Micah 4, complete with vines and fig trees, eh?

 

So far, I've mostly been freezing passionfruit juice, or dumping it into iced tea--but I'd be very keen on hearing of any favorite uses you have of either bananas or passionfruit.  Maybe there's a jar of passionfruit-banana jam in store for whoever can come up with the best idea...

a taste of fall

I was up in Julian today, and last weekend, too; even though San Diego's weather is mostly sunny and 80, it's possible to get a hint of real seasons by going uphill for an hour or so.

We've been working on a house up there for a long while now.  Today, I had some time to walk around a bit, and find some lovely signs of fall.
Last week, after a little work, I explored the joys of apple season, with my moms.  It was a beautiful (though a bit hot) clear day.  Tasty, too.
During some canning adventures earlier this year, a friend found a recipe for Swedish Apple Pie that I love.  It's fabulous with just-picked apples.  Really, it's as much like a giant, apple cookie as it is like a pie.  A pookie, perhaps?   I'd post a picture, but it didn't last long enough to catch in pixels.  Dad suggested that it might have been even better with some oats that he brought out from the family farm.  I'm confident that it would be fun to try.
The least-expected part of my fall days in Julian was the appearance of local belly dancers at the festival.  But hey: why not?!

labor day creations

I spent part of my holiday weekend making stuff, inspired by my garden.  First came these cupcakes, which were really an excuse to use my first passionfruits in the kitchen.  That's a mango and passionfruit curd you see, right on top of a rich, dark chocolate ganache.  

"Ganache" and "curd" are new cooking vocabulary for me this year.  Exotic, eh?  I also put a little tangelo-pineapple marmalade into the yellow cake, for kicks, so this little guy could become an attempt at a 5-minute tropical getaway.  And, it's a getaway partly grown in local backyards: new heights in imaginary eco-tourism?

My adventure from yesterday involved playing with fruits and vegetables, exploring their printmaking possibilities.  Turns out I really dig the look of limes and onions as stamps.
Slowly, they're becoming napkins and placemats, I think.  I printed them onto pieces of an old duvet from the thrift store.
Here are the stamps I tried.  I wonder what else I could use out of the refrigerator...  

free

One of the women who works at the produce market on my block always laughs and waves her had dismissively when I try to put my 3 little serrano chiles on the scale to pay for them.

juicy

I gathered my first passionfruit today.  I've been keeping an eye on my vine, which is loaded with fruits.  Every time I look, they all seemed to be still green and very firm.  Then, today, I noticed something different: something deep red and purple, lying just under the vines on the ground.  

I took them inside and here's what I found!

I'm totally new to passionfruit growing, but I've since read that if I let them get wrinkly, they'll be even better.  So, I guess we'll see what happens with the two on the counter.

Anyone have any favorite uses for passionfruit?

santa fe

I'm spending this week in Santa Fe, at the Glen Workshop at St. John's College.  Suddenly immersed in both the clear air and stark beauty of northern New Mexico and in this gathering of artists and people of faith, I'm grateful for this retreat from the busyness of my summer.  A restorative follow-up to conferences filled up with church politics and strategy, this week may help both empty me out and make space for creativity.  Here's hoping.

This first morning's plans were changed by flight delays for the seminar leader, so I got a morning to explore Santa Fe.  The New Mexico Museum of Art was full of beautiful treasures, including a luminous Judy Chicago piece that's still vivid in my memory.

Lunch was tasty.
And I enjoyed walking the labyrinth under the wings of a dancing St. Francis, outside the cathedral.
Plus, I found an exquisite local chocolatier, whose work brought great delight.  :)

harvest

There are several blog posts waiting and wanting to be written, but currently I only have energy to share the joy of some summertime harvest with you.

First, the fun of blueberry harvest in some friends' backyard in Portland, where I spent a fun day of hanging out after electing some new bishops for the UMC as a part of our Jurisdictional Conference.  Here's a friend, holding up the juicy berries we picked.  I'm still enjoying them.  

And, a part of the harvest waiting for me when I got home.  Our little neighbor, of garden reorganization fame, has taken to lurking by our gate to beg for fresh tomatoes.  Who could resist and charming 3-year-old with tomato-eating ambitions?!?
There are plenty to share.

fruity

I'm pretty excited about the bananas forming in my backyard.  They're beautiful, and bear promise of tastiness.

I'm also having fun with buckets full of apricots from my family's tree.  I'm feeling better about my pie and jam-making skills, as I get more practice.  And, it's all quite tasty.

Plus, I've been delighting in other sweet things lately, including:

Matt's thoughtfulness, even from a distance, on our anniversary.

Others remembering and honoring our anniversary, too, with calls, flowers, gifts and their presence.

Good meals shared with friends, both new and old.  Even better, they've lately been made with things grown very nearby.  In the past week, my extroversion and love of company has been met with lots of visiting friends and invitations to be with others.  Sweet.

A request for prayer from someone who I know I disappointed and frustrated early in my pastoral ministry here; her asking for me to pray with her delivered to me a grace that I was hungry for.

And, I have a new computer, replacing the one stolen last week.  It's good to be back with a Mac.  

lovely days

I spent a lovely day yesterday with my good friend, Erika.  (And, happily, a good bit of it with Joel, too; besides being exquisitely fun to hang out with, he taught me useful skills like how to play lego video games and wii bowling...)

Er and I build our friendship over shared ice cream cones (with occasional enchilada parties thrown in, but, really, that came later).  She walked with me through my own sense of call to ministry and through a variety of other college adventures; I like to think that I was a decent companion to her, too, as she journeyed through seminary and ministry internships and associated challenges.  And, almost always, there was ice cream.  I anchor our friendship into JP Licks, on Newbury Street in Boston, sitting in the teacup.

Now, in Southern California for the last 10 years, the ice cream more often comes with a walk on the beach or a pier.  (Not that the ice cream sharing is as frequent as I'd like, but you work with what you can get...)  I count it as sacrament.

Martin Luther, I'm told, did theology with a beer in hand.  I'll do it with a cone.  

I have no illusions of unraveling the mysteries of why it is so wonderful.  I only testify to my experience: that, when contemplated with the cool, smooth, usually-chocolate, creamy sweetness of ice cream, theological challenges always seem more approachable. 

Yesterday, contemplating how it might ever be possible to cultivate leadership in a system as diverse and wacky as our church, contemplating how we're called to teach people the openness of our theological tradition and how that can work when we're set in the midst of a culture that makes a whole lot of unhelpful assumptions about what "right" Christian theology is, I felt hope.  Talking about our own lives and hopes for the future, I felt assurance. 

I also suspect that friendships make ice cream better, and ice cream deepens friendships.

I think I need to take my problems for a walk in the sun, ice cream in hand and good companion at my side, more often.

I also felt new enthusiasm for this work of opening an ice cream shop in my neighborhood.  Perhaps its sacred possibilities will be accessible to many who gather there.

May it be so.

good food

There are many good things to say about my trip back to Nebraska last week, to celebrate my cousin's wedding and to rest a bit, but I just keep getting distracted.  I blame that, at least in part, on Facebook.  Those word games are addictive.  But officiating at a wedding with my dad was more fun than I'd imagined.  A cool way to spend some time with him just before his 60th birthday.  (Happy Birthday, Dad.)

It was good to spend time with my mom, too, hanging at home and digging through antique stores in Grand Island.  I capture a photo of her in her most comfortable native habitat: in front of her computer with the email program open, in her bathrobe.  But, it occurred to me, posting a picture of your mom in her bathrobe is not a good way to honor her on her 60th Birthday.  So, instead, you get to see us at the big wedding dinner.   (Happy Birthday, Mom.)
Which, as it turns out, was a darn fine wedding dinner.  Of course, that some of the food--including the beef--was raised on the family farm my cousin grew up on didn't hurt.  It was so wonderfully flavor-ful and delicious.  After we ate, we noted that it was so good it would be nice to have a picture to remember it by, but, alas, this is all that remained on the table.
What do you think it means that she sat us at the "prairie chicken" table?

In other happy food news, Marian shared some of her grass-fed bison with me the other night, as she was offering the consoling ministry of solidarity with spouses of the deployed.  Wayne's not been far away lately, but away on enough little excursions in his ship to make such a dinner a really helpful thing.  At least for me.

We tried grilling beets, too--lovely, red-and-white striped beets.  They were pretty yummy--and with a little salt and vinegar, a bit like pickled beets, only with the nice addition of that smoky grill taste.  Mmm.  The squash is the first abundant crop of my garden this year.

What a cruel twist that our garden is bearing squash in abundance this year, when Matt, our family's chief squash enthusiast, is far, far away in the deserts of Iraq.

But let's not get distracted: that food was darn good, and for it, I am grateful. 

vacation destination of the day: fruitlandia

Since my blog is already a schizophrenic blend of personal sharing, craft blog, gardening and ministry stuff, I thought I'd throw in a restaurant review.  All in the name of being local.  There's some good stuff here in City Heights, little of which has fame beyond.

And, today was hot.  After a delightful haircut ('cause what's nicer than having your hair shampooed and cut?) and a run through my favorite thrift store (the Rescue Mission Thrift Store on University just east of 30th) for some bargains and crafty possibilities, I stopped to get a medium fruit salad at Fruitlandia.

A whole world of fruit, on the south side of University between the 805 and 15.

The ambiance is, well, not what draws me in (though I am fond of the plastic fruits on the rack behind the counter).
It's the wild and wonderful combination of good stuff in their fruit salad.
Everything you could want: melons, mangoes, strawberries, pineapple, apple, papaya and banana, topped with cottage cheese, honey, granola and raisins.  A delicious and decadent balance of cool, crisp, creamy and sweet.  Perfect for a hot afternoon.  Yum.

And, for the adventurously crafty, I'm told you can make shrinky-dinks out of the plastic in the container.  That's all hearsay at this point.

After getting the fruit salad, I made it home in time to meet my mailcarrier, who's been trying in vain to deliver the mail I'd been holding since, well, mid-April.  It was a whole lot of mail.  I'm appalled at the number of credit card applications we received.  Unbelievable.

Now it's almost all in the recycle bin, though, which leaves me ready to tackle the rest of cleaning out my closet for a new roommate!

fun with tangelos

Since I want to eat more locally, and since citrus fruit seems to, um, grow on trees around here...  

I raided a bucket full of very tangy tangelos (they just didn't get sweet this year) from a family tree this week, and have been playing with ways to use and preserve them.  I got a swell, stylish new juice squeezer, and have been freezing little bits of tangelo juice for cooking.  I tried making sorbet, too, mixing tangelo juice with a bunch of sugar and rolling it around in my ice cream ball.  It was yummy.

And, I decided to try making marmalade.  For kicks, I'll give you my instructions:

tangelo pineapple marmalade

ingredients:

14 tangelos, raided from a family tree

1 overripe pineapple that's been sitting on your counter all week

2 big limes, reclaimed from the curb after they rolled downhill from the neighbor's tree

about 4 cups of water

5 cups of sugar

On 7 of the tangelos, use a peeler to remove the outer layer of the peel. Chop it up into little bits and put it in a big pot.

Peel what's left of all 14 tangelos, and cut the fruity parts into little pieces. Attempt to remove all the seeds. Put the fruit and all the juice you can catch into the big pot with the peel bits.

Cut up the pineapple, salvaging all the bits that aren't too gross and brown; cut the useable parts up into bits. Add them to the pot, too.

Peel and chop up the limes, and add them as well.

Pour the 4 cups of water over the top--really, just add enough to barely cover all that fruit. Put it on the stove and bring it to a boil for about 10 minutes. Turn the heat off, leave it covered, and let it sit overnight.

Then, wake up sick the next day.  Get out of bed, contemplate what it would take to finish making marmalade, and decide to just put the whole thing in the fridge.  Some marmalade recipes call for letting the fruit sit for 24 hours or more; decide you want to be one of those.

On the third day, add the sugar to your pot, mix it in, and bring it to a boil.  Continue to heat, stirring regularly, until it does that magic turn-t0-jelly thing.
Put it in sterilized jars with and process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes, according to the instructions of someone who knows much more than I do about this stuff.

Then, set it on your counter and admire the warm, orangey color.
My recipe made enough for the six jars I had empty, plus a two-cup plastic container that went straight into the fridge.  

colorful, sweet easter treats

Three (seems like a holy number) colorful, sweet Easter treats to share:

1.  work by an artist, Tattfoo Tan, that I'm enjoying: a placemat (and, later, a mural) made of squares of color that were taken from fresh foods--fruits and vegetables--purchased at a market in Brooklyn.  What a beautiful, fresh palatte.  Check his work out.

2.  Success at dying Easter eggs with natural stuff.  I tried onion skins (see below) and red cabbage to get brownish-orange and blue (see further below.)  If I were doing it again, I would have used fewer onion skins (as I got kind of excited and put skins from most of the $1 bag of onions from my corner market in the water) and more cabbage (I used half of  a little head).  The one downside was that it made my kitchen smell like boiling onions and cabbage, but it was a warm day and the open windows cured that quickly enough.  The blue is not quite as subtle as it seems in this picture...

3.  I'm *finally* putting the ice cream ball that Er and Joel gave me (long ago) to good use.  It's fun to make your own ice cream, especially when the work involved is, like, rolling a ball around.  You just put ice cream ingredients in the littler inner chamber, and ice and salt in the bigger, outer green part and then play.  Then, you get ice cream.  What could be better?

That's my cheer for the day.  I'm feeling tired after an intense weekend of church creativity.  I love our Easter Vigil prayer stations.  And Easter worship was a fun trip today, too.  We shattered old plates with a hammer and made them into a swell new mosaic.  You don't always get to swing hammers in church.  ;)  So, it's mostly a really good kind of tired I'm feeling.  I think I'll sleep well tonight--no more clever worship bits to plan.  At least for a few days.

winter harvest

Thought I'd share dinner tonight.  I still marvel that one can grow things in January in this part of the world.  Like, things to eat.

Mostly, the garden's pretty bare, waiting for us to get around to heaping on more compost and things.  But, I couldn't resist starting a few broccoli plants.  And they were yummy.

My question for tonight is: would you wear a shirt silkscreened with an image of broccoli?  Just askin'...

eating seasonally

My quest to eat more locally, and to eat what it in season, seems hardly fair when you live in San Diego: I made fresh pasta sauce out of tomatoes and basil I picked from my garden this weekend.  Yum.

My tomatoes are not nearly as bountiful or gigantic as during the summer months, but one should never complain about fresh tomatoes from the garden in December.  I give thanks also for kind people at the church, who shared both persimmons and tomatoes with me last week!
Winter sun, compressed into juicy orbs.  

eating some very local food

Yesterday and today, I've been enjoying fruit from the yard. Marian came over, and we ate figs, with goat cheese. (Don't worry: I don't have goats in the yard. I got that at the store.) Delicious. I'm liking learning to eat figs well.

We made 'em into a little pizza, too. A splendid combination of savory and sweet. The rosemary from the yard set it off perfectly.

(We made a tomato and basil pizza, too, but didn't take a picture. It was good, but nothin' like figs and goat cheese. Marian told me: "They can't all be figs and goat cheese." I should just be delighted that it was fresh and tasty.)
Tonight, I had my first corn from the garden. My favorite summertime meal: a blt and fresh corn. Good stuff.

i heart tomatoes

for breakfast, lunch and dinner
in salsa, soup, salad and sauce
tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes!Not that you asked for it, I thought I'd share my tomato joy. It's joyous enough that I've been able to share with neighbors and friends. (I'm hoping that my sharing will prompt the neighbors across the street to want to share their Chinese water fruit with us, so we can try it... See, I have my motives.)

I'm rather enjoying this summer harvest (even if I am a bit disappointed with our zucchini's resistance to growing well, and if my flower bed looks fairly wretched and rather patchy...)

Here's what the vegetable garden looked like before camp, the last time I thought to take a picture when it was light out. The corn has grown considerably since then--this was July 13, I think.
I keep thinking these long summer days will give me time to do more projects around the house, during the week. Alas, so far, this has not been the case. By the time I get home from the church, I'm ready to just sit on the couch. I try to convince myself that, because I don't have a television to turn on, it's not that bad. But I spend a lot of time living vicariously through other more-active people's instructions for how to make cool crafts and revolutionary gardens.

Oh, and searching for the ideal colors for the exterior of our house.

If you lived in a neighborhood where you could--really--paint your house ANY color and it woudn't look out of place, what color would you paint a cute, little (and did I mention "little"?) wood-sided house built in the 1920's?

figgy

It's been a while since I've posted, so I thought I'd share a tasty piece of today's joy. My first fig.



It comes after another break-in at the house. So, I'm praying that it's a signal of Micah's good promise for us (and all creation) about the time when we'll all have vines and fig trees and no one will make us afraid.

And, it comes after Jr High Camp, which was most excellent. I'm glad I get to hang out with junior high age people sometimes. It's good for me. As are the fabulous adults who work with them.

and off again

So many things seem blog-worthy, and then I let them slip by...so here I find myself checking last things and packing for my week away in warm ol' Redlands CA for our Annual Conference meeting. Church meetings in smoggy, hot inland CA. And, yet: I look forward to them. I get to room with dear friends, and share time with folks I don't see often enough. So I stayed up a bit longer than I meant to, making a pie to share.

I've been into making and baking lately. Since my dear husband's parents' apricot tree came into fruit, coincidental with the height of my Eat Local resolve, I've been working apricots into every meal, and experimenting in preservation. So, tonight, it was a batch of apricot salsa and an apricot pie that I thought I might be able to bring to offer to our gathering. Turns out that apricots make a pretty mean salsa... (And are good with carrots, salmon, ice cream, pie, bread, and more.)

Since our last batch of kitchen cabinets came to hang in our house, it's been fun putting things where they might *actually belong* in the kitchen. And then getting used to them. (I am amazed how even bizarre locations for cooking supplies, when they become habit, can seem "right." You'd think I'd adjust more quickly to the new locations. Maybe that's a part of my extra motivation for cooking these days--to re-set my habits in reaching for the right cupboard. It occurs to me that there's likely a good metaphor here somewhere, but I'm not quite ready to make reaching for the olive oil into a spiritual practice...)

Preparing for trips always brings me a mix of excitement, anxiety and pressure (to pack the right things and remember the little stuff. Who am I kidding: to remember the big stuff. I'll not forget to Women's Retreat where I forgot to put my suitcase in the car, but remembered the odd supplies for activities...)

In addition, Conference brings added excitement and anxiety: will the church (my church, and the folks I'm closest to in it) find vision and hope in its gathering? Will we make decisions that will be beautiful? We get to do all those rites of passage: ordination, retirement, memorial service. All of which make me wonder what the church will be like when I get to the latter two.

I hope we'll find ways to move forward boldly, hanging onto the good stuff that gives us life.

Certainly, though, we'll get to share apricots.