here in the northeast, i like to think of this time of year as almost summer. because even if i’m wearing a scarf when going outside, or need to pull out my puffy coat for one final day or two, when the light starts to change, everything changes.  without fail, one fine evening in march or april when i’m cooking dinner in my city digs, i look up and realize – damz! it’s still bright outside!  and it’s uphill from there until at least october as far as i’m concerned.

as soon as it’s almost summer i long to get my paws on some luscious summer fruit. rhubarb first, then strawberries, gooseberries, and before long an abundance of blues hang like baubles right outside my door complete with birds diving like missiles directly into the surrounding nets for a forbidden taste. peaches, plums, apricots, oh, and how could i forget the most fleeting of all – raspberries.

this particular almost summer i am happy to get my paws on a brand new preserving book, the sequel in fact to one of the best all around preserving books of recent years.  this one focuses on, you guessed it, fruit!

having worked quite a bit with sherri’s first preserving book, i was very excited to receive my copy of put ‘em up! fruit from her generous publisher, storey. a lot of great recipes here for sure – blueberry ketchup (i must try!) grapefruit sections in lavender syrup, maraschino cherries (if that doesn’t impress your friends, nothing will!) and five spice plum sauce to name just a few. what i also love about this book is the troubleshooting section – concise instructions and tips on how to avoid such mishaps as the dreaded fruit float, siphoning, cloudy jelly, and preserves too thick or too thin. there’s also primers on acid, pectin, and reaching the gel point – essential things to know when putting your fruit in jars.

for those of you who know about my amazon larder you know that i’m on here from time to time roaring about a particular book or two i’m digging – all to entice you to buy from my amazon larder.  why buy from there you may ask? why, i’m glad you did! i receive a 6% amazon associates fee on anything you purchase from my larder on amazon, and i take that fee, and double it, then i send it all off to the humane society of the united states to support their efforts in correcting the terrible conditions that factory-farmed animals are forced to live and die in each day. together we’ve contributed $170.00 since the last time i was on here roaring about this very same thing. thank you for contributing, let’s hope we can make a difference.

in addition to being featured in the off my larder shelf series, put ‘em up! fruit is enjoying a book blog tour hosted each day by these fine blogs listed below. i encourage you to surf around and hear what others are roaring.

april 8 food in jars, april 9 punk domestics, april 10 autumn makes & does, april 11 local kitchen, april 12  mission: food, april 15  what julia ate, april 17 daily dish recipes, april 18  shockingly delicious, april 19 the hip girl’s guide to homemaking, april 22 from scratch club

but wait! there’s more. story publishing is providing one copy to a lucky winner right here! to win leave a comment in the comment section below by midnight wednesday april 24th. here’s what i want to know: if you were stuck on a deserted island with only one kind of fruit growing what would it be? and if that fruit only grew on that island that you were deserted on for part of the year, how would you preserve it to be enjoyed the rest of the year? (let’s assume of course that you had a stove and a canning pot installed somewhere in a cave overlooking the ocean, with jars, rings, lids and other miscellaneous preserving supplies sitting on that beautiful rock shelf to the left of the stove. and, hell, i’ll throw in a thick and fuzzy carpeted floor, some mood lighting and big cushy pillows too, ’cause you know, i want you to be comfortable).

winner will be chosen by that trusty random number generator and announced soon after the 24th.  let me hear ya!

off my larder shelf: a flavor of the month shout-out on books & kitchen things. why?  ’cause your
purchase on my amazon larder contributes to a very important cause and I’ll match your contribution. go!

have any of you discovered the crack that’s called early bird granola over the last year or so? our story goes something like this: one fateful day M pulled a more-or-less harmless looking bag out of his backpack at the end of one of his city bike rides. and we proceeded to fight to the bitter(sweet) end of that bag and each subsequent bag he brought home after that.

within a week he was hitting the bike for runs from long island city to brooklyn every other day just to satisfy our cravings. at over $10 a pop, it had to stop.  but more than that – because goddess knows even a homemade decadent granola is no penny saver – there was hella lotta sweet in each of those bags. it was of course, inevitable that i began to envision how i could better those crackly too-sweet-for-breakfast bags.

this is not a one or two stab at it. i have been feeding our addiction quite fiercely over these long winter months. i’ve made countless batches of chocolate and coconut laced breakfast granola. i got over my concern of eating chocolate for breakfast by (a) buying the best quality dark chocolate i know of, and (b) considered the fact that if it’s good enough for the french (croissants people!) the swiss (chocolate muesli!) and the italians (i’m sure they eat chocolate for breakfast somehow!) then it’s good enough for moi, ich, and me.

the one very good thing about having pretty much no time to can all summer, and a good sized chest freezer in the cellar is one can acquire a whole lotta frisky summer fruits just waiting for a cake, crumble, grunt, or otherwise sweet baked good to snuggle up with during the long winter months.

since i have five very prolific blueberry bushes my freezer is heavy on the blues. for this cake i wanted to play up their dark side, leaving no memory of their blueberry-pie-and-ice-cream-summer-selves. warming spices and a moist and hefty crumb make this cake deeply satisfying all the way though a lazy winter morning, or one in which the outside cold must be braved before the sun barely overshadows the horizon.

you caught that right? cake for breakfast. it’s really not as sinful as it sounds. it’s just a tad sweet, and loaded with good-for-you berries. i mean, you could drag your muffin pan out and take your precious time to butter and flour every one of those little rounds. and oh! hey! you’re eating a perfectly acceptable breakfast muffin.

but appearances aren’t everything, and more pointedly, i don’t have time to pussy-foot around. i eat cake for breakfast – hear me roar! (roaring aside the cake is really, really good. if you have blues, huckleberries or even plums in your freezer go for it! eat this cake for breakfast!)

you’ve probably figured out by now that i love to travel. whenever i do, i try to suss out the best local food, try a restaurant that i’ve read about, or even better, one whose cookbook i gush over.

i have been meaning to write to you about a lovely little restaurant on my (kind of!) recent trip to amsterdam. but first, this; if you ever find yourself in that wonderful devil-may-care city, hop on a bicycle as most amsterdamers do, and ride jauntily around the historic canals to take in the beauty and general good dutch cheer. do this of course before you grab an authentic heine, or stop in a ‘coffee’ shop (the latter dwindling down to but a very few in modern day holland).

and of course, you must eat some cheese! especially if you like a good gouda as much as this cat.

ok, let me get back to the reason i’m roaring. It’s called aan de amstel and (imo) it’s not only the best restaurant in holland, but the best restaurant i’ve eaten at in a long, long time. it’s a tiny little place a few underground stops from the center of town, owned by yvette van boven and her cousin joris vermeer whose ethos surrounding the growing, making and eating of food mirror my own. the food is so fresh, so of-the-time-and-place-that-it-is, and yes, so honest, that i could hardly stop gushing about it long enough to consume it!

i was in such gastronomical rapture, my wits not completely about me. so please, do not rely on me to give you an ingredient play by play. the first course was a glorious fish, beet, fennel and olive carpaccio. my main was that earthy beauty up on the right. fall greens, peas and flowers (!) in a vegetable based risotto style dish, made not with rice, but little round pastas and topped with a wedge of soft cheese. the flavor and texture combo was ridiculous! M’s wild meat, fall root, and greens dish was apparently just as ridiculous tasting if i were to judge by the intermittent groans and lapses of silence. our shared dessert disappeared between and beneath fighting spoons, and, if i’m not mistaken there were a couple of victorious aperitifs involved.

so of course, you really must go to aan de amstel if at all possible. but that is not all i am here to roar. yvette has come out with two amazing books that have the same honesty and vibrancy as her restaurant.

i had really hoped to get this post up before the holidays. because both are so beautiful they would make wonderful gifts. but i hope i’m not too late for the gift giving season still! because, you can always give it to you!

if i have enticed you to purchase one or both of these books then please, pop over to my amazon larder page to buy. there you’ll find details on how the 6% amazon associates fee i receive from your purchase of these, or anything i list in my larder supports the humane society of the untied states efforts in correcting the terrible conditions that factory-farmed animals are forced to live and die in each day.

i haven’t been roaring about new books here in a while, so here’s some exciting news: since the last time we spoke about this, you, me, we have contributed $372.00! (amazon associates receive their fees for the two months prior, so i’ve just received info regarding september’s fees) and since it’s the season of giving, i’m going to round up that number to an even $400. for all of you kind peeps that have made a purchase from my amazon larder in the last few months, a big tigress-sized thank you!

good tidings to all this holiday season – here’s to an enlightened 2013!

off my larder shelf: a flavor of the month shout-out on books & kitchen things. why?  ’cause your
purchase on my amazon larder contributes to a very important cause and I’ll match your contribution. go!

there are precious moments in life when i experience something to be much greater than i ever imagined a thing could be. usually it contains an infinite amount of beauty, a history full of sorrow and joy, and because of it, i feel small and very big at once. and even though i’m aware of the pitfalls of attachment, i still long for the thing when it’s no longer there. or i am no longer there with it.

given my illogical fear of sharks, some could argue that this isn’t a particularly logical pairing. but isn’t that true…

of many a love affair?

oh, and btw, i’m back. and my paws will be hittin’ the keyboard more regularly. i hope!

basically, i just want to say, fall is here mo%*erFU@(Ker$!!! i really, really hope you can get out there and enjoy it. if it’s not fall where you live, then get out there and enjoy whatever season you’re in. and make something with whatever you gotz growing on in your neck of the earth, will ya? …here let me try this again:

fall

it’s true confession time.

i haven’t canned a damn thing since i put a bunch of rhubarb in jars back in early june.

there, i said it.

there’s a few reasons for that, and given all the roarin’ about canning that has happened around here in the past, i feel i owe you an explanation:

my work is full speed ahead and summer is the busiest time for me. it seems a recurring theme that each summer i get busier and busier. so there’s that. my garden has been taking up a lot of my ‘free’ time. this year’s drought (i mean, not like the globe is warming or anything, huh?) has turned the northeast growing season on its roots. and the watering, son, the watering. i’m not used to it as berkshire summers aren’t berkshire summers without all the rain.

and then there’s the deer, note the photo of the bean patch below was taken before the deer discovered how tasty it was. you don’t even want to see the chewed-to-pieces sweet cherry tree, or my newly discovered trampled shallot patch. yes i know, it’s time to get more fencing – or a big dog. i even chose to forgo my summer kimchi-making. its been too damn hot and i was concerned the fermenting would happen too fast and the subtlety of flavor lost. which means we’ve been frantically stir-frying a lot of savoy. we are hoping (of course) that this mediterranean-like climate will be good for the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. the latter two always iffy in these hills. and so, we tend to them with even greater care.

just because i haven’t hot-water bath canned since june or kimchied even, doesn’t mean i haven’t put anything in jars. we shook a year’s worth of butter again a few weeks ago. yup, 8 gallons of cream plus a gallon of buttermilk set us up all of last year. we still had one jar left when we made the new and it tasted as fresh as the day it was made. the one below is the new batch courtesy of this morning’s breakfast.

if you’ve ever wondered what a year’s worth of butter looks like there’s a shot of my newly stocked cellar freezer (please excuse the lighting). some are in large jars, they are to be made into ghee or used for baking. the smaller jars are for slathering and are either sweet or cultured and various forms of salted, i.e. salted, salty, and chunky salt.

since we’re down here, my cellar was built somewhere from the 1830-50′s. when we bought the house there were a kazillion spiderwebs everywhere here. they were as thick as dreads. nothing a little sweeping and vacuuming couldn’t fix. because of the modern day furnace that we installed it’s not a good root cellar – unfortunately, it doesn’t get cold enough. it makes for a great larder though, it’s good enough for wine-storage (essential) and i’ve even fermented down here in summers hot but not as hot as this. those crocks are empty now tho.   (don’t worry, there will be cabbage in the fall garden and kimchi to be made!) and yes that is cheap mexican beer at the bottom, and a bottle of dom on the top. what can i say? i like to go high-low.

back to what i brought you down here for; jars. the empty ones and the full ones. see all those sad, empty jars on the shelving on the left? that side is usually much more sparse at this point in the summer as the jars make their way (i help them of course) up the cellar stairs and to my kitchen where they get filled and sealed with provisions for the coming year. then they’re brought back down again and put on the shelf to the right. i have so many still-empty jars this year, they’ve encroached on the shelves to the right! but above and below that shelf you can see some full jars, and there are more of them too, upstairs in the kitchen, and at my city digz.

you see, with my very busy and somewhat stressful work schedule, and my gardener-turned-farmer(apparently)-attitude, i’ve had to set some boundaries with myself, lest i be worn-out by summer’s end:

1. only preserve what i am growing myself (i am growing so much, the last thing i need to do is run around from market to farm buying anything & everything i’m not growing. this is mainly regarding fruits mind you, as i’ve got vegetables pretty well covered).
2. use up what i have! (there are a lot of sweet preserves left in my larder from last year, why make more of what i have? and with just the two of us, we don’t plow through a ton of sweet preserves, even factoring in gift-giving).
3. it’s ok to meander though my very limited free time and do what i feel like doing, even if it is relaxing and not necessarily productive (this is a hard one for me as tigresses are industrious by nature).

with that, i want to call attention to the index page on this site, in which i hope to have made it very easy to find what you are looking for. because there is a wealth of canning recipes on this site, and just because i’m not churning out a bunch of new recipes this summer doesn’t mean there are not a bunch here for you to churn out.

by way of summery sweet stuff, i’ve still got 2011 smokin’ strawberry jam, nectarine preserves, gooseberry chutney with bengali spice, raspberry rose jam, and sour cherry preserves left in my larder. hell, i’ve got 2011 rhubeena still and i’ve got a whole new batch of everything rhubarb for 2012 including my absolute favorite jam of all lavender rhubarb.

i’m not sayin’ that you won’t see more canning recipes around here this summer, i’m just sayin’ that my freezer may be my new best friend and while i’m in the garden…

can amongst yourselves.

there’s really only one reason in my book (blog?) to grow gooseberries. sure jam is nice, and i wouldn’t shake my spoon at a serious gooseberry chutney. but the reason i brought my three little gooseberry sticks home from the nursery that day (nay, first begged my neighbor who manages our local gardening shop to order them against his advice that they’re not easy to get started and maintain in our neck of the woods) four years ago and nursed them through that awful tomato blight that terrorized the land in 2010, various forms of fungus and other i-don’t-know-what-the-hell-happened-but-all-the-gooseberries’-leaves-fell-off-overnight-things. was. for. pies.

(note, that’s the first time i ever did that period after each word thing because i don’t particularly care for it, but alas, it’s warranted here. unequivocally.)

before we get into it, i feel i should say a few things directly to you peeps who think you don’t like fruit pies. at the risk of sounding ferocious, i think it’s because you haven’t had one of my fruit pies. you see, fruit pies do not need a lot of anything other than the choices of fruits, a bit of sugar and a kick-ass pie crust.

this particular pie, gooseberries, sugar, and a sweet buttery crust that melts in your mouth and unabashedly soaks up, without the least bit of sogginess, the full-fat cream that is essential to pour all over it, is perfection.  there is no sourness quite like the sourness of gooseberries, they were, i believe, created for the sheer joy of eating them with cream and crust.

let’s continue.

i call this nigel’s gooseberry pie as this summer continues my love affair with the writings of nigel slater. an english gardener-cook whose prose on life in his garden and kitchen make me swoon. and the man can make pie.

if you are not growing gooseberries, or have an extra quart or so of cream layin’ around, go to your local farmers market now and look around. you need this in your life.

ok, i swear i think this is going to be the last of the rhubarb posts for 2012. that isn’t to say that my willy wonka rhubarb patch is not going to continue to give. it’s just, i really do need to move on.  this season has been a busy one for me, busy with work, and i fear even more lack of time to flex my preserving prowess in the coming weeks.   i think i may have missed strawberry season entirely in the northeast. (did I?)

but never you mind with that because this little shrub-o-mine consists of one of my absolute favorite flavor combinations. it’s a winner in jam, makes this now famous rhubeena even better. and in this old-fashioned whistle-wetter, it positively shines!

shrubs are about the easiest thing you could ever make. at their simplest they are equal part fruit, sugar, and vinegar. mixed with water or sparkling water they make a refreshing summer drink sans alcohol, or use as a base for a cocktail and you’ve got a whole other party going on. for all you’ve ever wanted to know about shrubs, read this great post over at serious eats.

there’s two ways to make a shrub, either by cooking the fruit, or by what is called the cold-process method. i prefer the cold-process method as it retains the fresh fruit flavor. cold-infused herbs render a much brighter herbal flavor also. plus, you can be lazy about the whole process, which i like.

i’ve got that rhubarb outta the way just in the nick of time, ’cause i got blueberries coming at me! lots of them! (as long as i can keep the birds at bay) wait! did i just say blueberries & bay?!  that sounds like another perfect shrub combo!

see how nice things can be?

it may not be june 21st yet, but summer was yelling loud around my digz this memorial day weekend. hot and sunny was the order, a much needed 3 days off of work and emails too. and although we had no guests and took no trips outta town, we did have a rip-roaring good time just puttering around the house, the garden and the kitchen.

this cake, moist with fully-fatted yogurt and delirious with mounds of warm rhubarb is a party for two, or a crowd.

summer, peeps, it’s here.