Currant events

Really hot, dry weather, and a bad encounter with bumblebees (again unappreciative wildlife) left Mrs. Phactor looking for a less stressful garden job this weekend.  Just such an opportunity presented itself  because late June is when one of our perennial fruit crops ripens: red currants.  The plants do OK in partial shade and 3 bushes form a transition zone between a flowering tree/shrub garden and the kitchen garden. They are mostly a trouble free plant, even the birds leave the fruits alone (probably a good thing the cedar waxwings have moved through the area much earlier in the year).  The berries take quite a bit of patience and persistence to harvest, and since it just isn't berry jelly making weather, the currants are striped off their racemes, washed, spread on a baking tray and frozen.  They are then bagged up and left frozen as individual berries until such time as it's cool enough to cook jelly that comes out as pretty as the berries. Note you can also use cranberries along with currants for jelly, or even black raspberries as they latter ripen at just about the same time.

University landscaping put to good use

TPP thinks with some justification that the entire campus grounds functions as his classroom.  In particular just a one building from TPP's office is a crabapple tree that is a true champion.  All crabapples did well this season with loads of fruit, but this particular variety has really big fruit, well over 1" diameter apples, dark red, hard, and very tart.  This year the tree's branches are bent down under the weight of the crop.  Some years ago, actually a couple of decades ago, TPP discovered that these crabapples made damn good jelly, and the Phactor household has been enjoying tart/sweet red crabapple jelly all of this time by taking advantage of this otherwise wasted resource.  The campus landscaping provides a number of such goodies that no one else ever takes any advantage of.  To get native pecans you must compete with the squirrels.  One year a local microbrewery harvested all the hops growing up the side of our building, the greedy buggers.  TPP had to take it out in trade - value added hops, so to speak. One of the best trees died and hasn't been replaced unfortunately - a butternut tree.  As a graduate student TPP discovered a trove of butternuts on another campus, and kindly made some butternut tarts to soften up his examing committee.  The department chair took an inordinate interest in the tarts and demanded to know where the nuts had come from (and their species name - easy).  Who knew he hadn't had any nut gathering competition for years and thought of them as his personal property. After all, what other than who gets there first determines ownership?  This year quite a number of people asked my students what they were doing, and if they had permission (of course TPP gave them permission) to pick crabapples (you didn't think he picked his own did you?).  This week's lab on gels, waxes, oils, and latexes will give them a chance to make some jelly of their own.

Keeping currant

Always aware of currant events it has become apparent that by not keeping currant the supply of jelly has been seriously diminished. One of our favorites is made from a combination of currants and cranberries, a deep red, tart confection to spread upon a toasted muffin. Redesign of a small portion of the garden has produced the correct location for some currants, but no one, no one, carries currants as garden stock. This tells you a great deal about people who think all jelly comes from the store not understanding what a pale imitation it is. Never have more people been further removed from where their food comes from; and curiously something a easy to make as jelly is looked upon as a terrible imposition. Kids just don't know how things are made anymore at all, or what kind of tree tomatoes grow on. Maybe mail order is the only option. Now to strain my latest batch of worchestershire sauce, which isn't hard to make either.

Relief from winter doldrums: 4. Fun in the Kitchen

Yes, the Phytophactor likes to cook and make things in the kitchen having had the fortunate childhood background of parents who cooked and still did lots of "old fashioned" things like canning fruits and vegetables, making katsup, jam, & jelly, and smoking their own bacon and ham. Once you know what the real stuff is like, and have the satisfaction of having made it yourself, the commercial facsimilies seldom compare well. A surplus of red currents and cranberries long stored in the freezer were turned into a wonderful jelly. A stash of black and yellow mustard seeds and a bottle of stout that was not to my liking were combined into a stout mustard. A big pot of mulligatawny soup was made to keep us fed a couple of days during our busy week. And lastly a whole array of items were combined into a batch of home made Worchestershire sauce, and even more amazing, everything needed (tamarind concentrate, molasses, soysauce, anchovy fillet, cardomom, chile de arbol, cinnamon stick, garlic, ginger, onion, sugar, pepper corns, cloves) was in the cupboards! This amazing recipe came from Saveur magazine (Jan. 2009), and is well worth the effort, but the 3 week wait while it all steeps challenges the patience. And the frigid weekend passed without hardly a moments boredom.