My apartment is one freaking half block from the New York Premier of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, so why do I not have a ticket?!?! I do have tickets for the midnight showing next week, but come on!
I guess it's good that I have to work, else I might throw myself into the ranks of panting fans lining the street.
Guess which way I'm walking home tonight? Anyone want to come oggle with me?
You just have to know when to get out of the way.
When I was about nine years old, an elderly neighbor of ours diedin a home canning accident. I never heard all the details, but I knew it was a pressure cooker thing. Hers was one of the early funerals I attended (my third, I think), and for years I was haunted by visions of her crumpled old body sprawled in her kitchen, streaked with blood and pickling spices.
So I vowed never to get a pressure cooker, which I thought meant I couldn't can. I saw no need for a pressure cooker anyway ~ nothing I will prepare in my kitchen needs that much cooking! And memories of my grandmother's slimy pressure cooked green beans still turn my stomach (no wonder I ate no vegetables growing up).
But when I found water bath canning, I jumped into the fray. Little did I know that peppers can still 'splode at you.
It began auspiciously enough for Amy and me during our latest Canning Adventure.
A market pepper sale set us up with four pounds of red bell peppers, which we roasted, peeled, seeded and stuffed into jars ~ 2 pints and 2 half pints.
We whipped up a garlic, oil and vinegar pickling solution, poured it over the peppers and dunked them into their 15 minute bath.
Thank god for pot lids! We really didn't even hear the explosion. We only found the floating remains when we lifted the top to fish out the jars.
We are fine. It wasn't even scary (just a little gross ~ soggy red peppers are less than appetizing). Thus, in spite of our kamikaze pepper jar, we will continue to can and freeze and explore all the fun that the farmers' market has to offer this summer.
Do you notice that as the days get warmer and longer, we can pack in so much more of everything? Winter days dissolve on the tongue, darkness and snowflakes whispering away while I toll at my desk. Most of the memories of I have of my life take place on warm evenings, in sunsets and long shadows, as I savor the hours between work and sleep when streaks still stain the sky and no one wants to be the first to give up and relinquish the day.
This weekend, we had more lovely post-thunderstorm sunsets at the Boat Basin...
...and more fun and frolic time with friends ~ especially since we stayed out listening to Michael Jackson sets until 4:30am, eating grilled things and onion rings, drinking buckets of beer.
But we also had more sadness. On a lovely June morning, some of our friends moved away.
We gathered and loaded Len and Sandy and their two Boston terriors into a moving van and shuffled them off to Illinois. Ben and Len have known each other for over 20 years, and they've lived near us in New York since 2001, so this will be quite the adjustment for all of us.
Ben and I consoled ourselves with brunch at Lalo, where we've not been for years ~ I regressed back to my usual old order of Greek yogurt with goat cheese. Yay for more sunshine at breakfast, and for olive bread!
Coming soon ~ there was also...more canning! And our first Canning Mishap (oooh, the excitement!)
And while there is more knitting...you can't see any of it. It's all secret stuff right now, so enjoy the clouds at sunset instead. Soon, I promise. Meanwhile, school is out for summer! Two months, no classes!
ETA: Those weird clouds we captured Friday night even made the news. Ben looked very concerned, as he ordered us another round, under alien skies.
Did I tell you? Last week - or the week before? I've lost track... - Ben stood in line to snag tickets for us to see a free production of Twelfth Night in Central Park, performed by the Public Theater. The park was freezing (for June, that is) so I huddled in wool and the skies threatened throughout the night, but it only rained (appropriately) during the final song (hey ho, the wind and the rain) and, in all, the show was a screaming success.
Anyway, I'm reminding you of this because The New York Times just ran a great review, if you're interested. Anne Hathaway stars, and the supporting cast is excellent to the extreme.
And you thought you were bored.
Sheep Performance Art. LED style.
Why not?
Amy and I spent last Sunday inside again on a cool, rainy afternoon, canning to our hearts' content. The only problem with this canning scheme we have going on right now is, in fact, the weather. While these days are good for huddling in the kitchen, slaving over a steamy stove, they are not so good for growing things to use in said kitchen.
I suppose anyone in the New York area involved in a cooperative (as we are) or frequenting a farmers' market has noticed the scarcity of...everything. Fruit is falling off of the vine. Tender young vegetables are washing away in the flash floods, drowning in the downpours. So far this year, the harvest is deplorable. The stands only offer up a trickle of shell peas, radishes, turnips and greens.
We're supposed to be swimming in cherries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries ~ but the pickings are meager, and what does appear at the market has been spectacularly expensive (raspberries at $5 for a half-pint, anyone? I didn't think so.)
I scraped up three pounds of blueberries for a basic jam. A little sugar, some lemon juice and 20 minutes of brisk stirring...
...and we poured out six half-pints of dark and lovely jam.
Our cherries we pitted and plopped into a pot with a bottle of wine, some sugar, cloves, orange juice and zest and simmered into a decadent sauce.
I plan to churn up some homemade buttermilk ice cream soon and spoon some of our preserved Cherries in Wine Sauce right over the top.
Our canning technique has improved; we only shattered one jar this time, and we've progressed from 2nd degree burns down to 1st degree. Staining, however, peaked this week, with all of the purple splatters from the berries and cherries and cabernet. Our "canning outfits" [black tank top, black biking shorts, hair flopped in a mop on top of our heads ~ sex-ay!] will be fully deployed for the next go around.
One item the market did spew forth in abundance this past weekend was garlic scapes (although they still weren't turned out in the expected quantities, nor were they cheap).
Our haul of about a pound and a half whipped right up into a giant batch of spicy, freezable pesto. We added olive oil, parmesan, salt and pepper, combined the mess in a food processor and after a lot of noise, we had cups and cups of thick green paste that we can tuck into a plate of hot pasta for a quick and easy dinner.
Yesterday, every time I jumped on the internet, I was inundated by tales of the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. I had no fewer than four Facebook status updates directing me to the Blondie and Brownie food blog review of this little ice cream cart.
As it turned out, none of the people I knew had actually visited TBGICT. A friend from Hawaii even posted, frantically begging her New York network to check it out and give her the scoop (hehe, scoop!)
I sucked it up, left work early and did my duty.
You guys owe me big time for enduring this kind of torture. This is equal to an extra 45 minutes on the ArcTrainer some time later this week. And it's all for you, of course.
On my way to give my final presentation for my Entrepreneurship class, I swung by the cart to claim the final cone of the afternoon. I even ordered the version featured on the food blogs ~ vanilla ice cream with dulce de leche and crushed Nilla wafers (although I was sorely tempted by the Extra Virgin Olive Oil with Sea Salt topping...)
Do I even need to tell you how yummy it was? I mean, you see that photo up there, right? I'm sure you've already licked your computer screen a few timed (don't deny it, I know. Obviously it was a decadent exercise in creamy, goopy delish. The Nilla wafers crumbs were fresh and the dulce de leche was sweet and the smile and nice chit-chat from TBGICT man made that extra 5 block detour worth the effort. The truck gets around, but he's often on the West side of Union Square during the day, it seems.
Will I be going back? Aw, yeah, baby! If you make it there, let me know, I want photo evidence!
Then our professor served wine during class, rounding out about the best Tuesday evening I've had recently (not that any of my Tuesdays have been particularly spectacular lately, given that they've all been monopolized with work and school nonsense).
Now I have this overwhelming urge to dust off the ice cream machine and whip up a few concoctions of my own...
Don't you miss Buffy the Vampire Slayer?
Ever wonder what would happen if sparkly old Edward from Twilight saddled into Sunnydale?
Now we know.
...when it's 50-something degrees outside and raining for 18th day in a row.
I felt guilty about missing the baby shower deadline for a sweater for a friend's upcoming little boy, so I got cracking so I at least will have this sweater coat ready by the time he gets here.
The fabric has turned out a lot more dense than I imagined. And plagued by too-small newborn stuff, I made this baby knit bigger than usual. Maybe too big, it turns out. I have begun to suspect that a two year old might be able to snuggle into this.
I have only the border and button to finish. Actually, though, I like the look of the bottom edge sans border.
On Sunday, I had to go down to school for about four hours of business classes. Trust me, I learned my lesson from last summer - weekend classes are the worst, never do it! But I was tricked into this one. It's a weekNIGHT class, but the professor canceled the last class and required us to come in one Sunday afternoon. Take a moment to imagine my displeasure.
I missed a romp through the beer garden, the local BBQ fest and a bunch of other stuff, but after running a few company valuations, I was set free to enjoy the rest of my weekend.
So I did this.
That is black gold, dear ones - otherwise known as strawberry balsamic jam. It tastes like canned euphoria and I made it, from scratch. My friend Amy and I have always had fond canning memories from our early years, but we've hesitated. From what we remembered, canning was a lot of work. And you end up with a LOT of jars of the same old thing lying around. But inspired by this book about small batch canning in New York, we have set a summer challenge : we want to give it a try, to jump into canning, freezing and dehydrating in-season fruits and vegetables.
I've never canned alone. I mean, without an elderly expert canner at hand. We are babes in the woods, but I dare saw our first venture was a success.
On a warm summer afternoon, we opened all the windows in Amy's apartment, for canning is a hot business. We took about 8 cups of fresh, hulled strawberries and 5 cups of sugar and cooked them for 40 minutes. After adding a generous splash of balsamic vinegar, we portioned the jam into 5 (and a half) half pint jars, stuck on the lids and boiled them for 10 minutes. That's just a summary, but you get the jist of it.
We didn't quite have all the right stuff ~ in lieu of a canning pot, we instead brought a lobster pot into duty. We didn't have a proper rack on the bottom, so one of our jars went all wonky sideways, balanced on a cake cooling rack. I don't think it mattered.
The tense moment came after extracting the jars. We waited, whispering encouragment at our jars, hoping to hear that metallic *plink* that would signify successful sterilization. It was only a minute or so before we heard it. *plink* *plink* Two successful. Another wait. *plink* *plink* and *plink* again! Of the five we stuck into the pot, every one popped just like it should (Amy lay claim to the 1/2 jar of jam and didn't worry with sealing it. Her jam pantry was bare.)
We celebrated with a bottle of wine, then moved to our next venture: Asparagus.
Pickled asparagus! We blew through 6 bunches of stalks (with lots of stems left over for soup) to generate 4 pints of pickled asparagus tips.
These were easy (which was good since we were a bottle of Cote du Rhone into the evening already). The laborious part was trimming the stems to the exact level to fall just below the jar rim. After that, they just needed a quick blanch before the vinegar/water/red pepper/dill solution could be poured over them and the jars sealed.
Again we plunked them into the water where they bubbled about for 10 minutes before we pulled them free. The *plinks* were slow to come this time, so we stuck them back in for a bit. On the next try, though, we were rewarded and *plink* *plink* *plink*.......*plink!* Asparagus!
Which, of course, called for celebration with a bottle of savignon blanc. Monday morning was a bit rough for me, if you can imagine.
Initial taste-tests of the jam have been delightful. I can't wait to get my hands on my jars tomorrow, when Amy and I meet to collect our co-operative vegetable haul, so I can dive into them (they have to "rest" after canning, and since we canned at Amy's place, they are resting on her counter until she schleps them down to me). The asparagus must "cure" for at least 4 weeks, so stay tuned for an update on that one.
This coming weekend we plan to whip up some more strawberry balsamic, some rhubarb-strawberry jam (if rhubarb is available at the market) and we aren't sure what else. If you're interested, I'll document our process next time.
