i have been meaning to roar about this for months, and while i know what i’m about to tell you might not come in handy this very moment (that is, unless you live far, far away from me and you actually do have an abundance of fresh grown chiles that you need to take care of right now) i’mma give it to you anywayz…

back sometime in august my chile bed exploded. eighteen or so plants dripping at once with teardrops and baubles in a myriad of greens, yellows and reds. there is only so much fresh eating and pan-frying of chiles one chile-head tigress and her chile-head husband can do. we had fire mouths for the entire month!  the red ones were hung and dried for winter cooking of course. but because our season is short many of my chiles never reach full ripeness.

not willing to let even one hard earned chile go to waste – and not too fond of throwing them in the freezer either (am i missing something – what are they good for?) this is what i did last summer:

i know, i know, when they’re pickled they’re not as pretty, but they are good!  try them in a grilled cheese sandwich, in scrambled eggs, or anywhere else your little chile-head heart desires.

…and if you, like me, are waiting once again to have an abundance of homegrown, or neighboring farmer grown chiles that you need to take care of, pin this – ’cause you’ll need it later.

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.

it’s february and i’m up to my old tricks again. i have no idea if you peeps are as gaga over indian preserved pickles as i am, but i’m thinking like my absolute fave vegetable kohlrabi, if not today, it will eventually have it’s day.

meanwhile, i can’t help it if i’m ahead of the curve. my mouth puckers at the mere thought of an indian fermented citrus pickle. all at once they are hot, sour, salty and sometimes sweet. unlike your run-o’-the-mill north african preserved lemons, they should not be rinsed before eaten. and, unlike them, they can make a meal out of nothing more than yogurt and plain rice. but i like them most of all as an intense condiment served on the side of a curry or even a quick vegetable stir-fry. if you have an indian pickle in you fridge i guarantee your kitchen will be void of boring one-dish meals, they are so flavor packed they could most certainly perk up an old leather shoe.

not that i’m suggesting your cooking tastes like old leather shoes mind you.

i’ve settled on a basic recipe with which i play each winter. it contains equal amounts of salt and sugar (although the sugar goes unnoticed in the finished bite) turmeric for color and earthiness, and a quarter cup of ground chiles. i grind up my homegrown and dried cayennes, which if truth be told i grow specifically for indian pickles. they of course render my pickles mouth-explodingly hot, but you could be a bit more subtle with yours and use a milder chile powder or lighten up the load. i do suggest you go somewhat hot though to get the full effect.

i’m particularly excited about this batch because i’m using meyer lemons from the lovely lemon ladies, and a typical bengali spice combo which is sometimes referred to as indian 5-spice. and with good reason, it’s ubiquitous in eastern india where it’s enjoyed in all manner of fish, vegetable and legume dishes. back home, i’ve found it hits all the right notes of exotic and familiar when introducing someone to indian flavors. it’s simply one part each of whole fennel, cumin, fenugreek, black mustard, and nigella seeds.

if i have peaked your interest over the last couple of winters, dear readers, with my endless roaring about indian fermented pickles but you have not quite taken the leap, i say, give this one a try! i think you’ll love it.

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!

last year when i said I was going to attempt to grow more beans this gardening season, many of you were interested in doing just the same. well i did grow more beans and i am happy to report that i ended up with two full quarts each of dried yin yangs, jacob’s cattle, and tiger’s eye (changed to tigress’ eye around my digz). that equals twelve meals for a family of two – not bad!

all of the beans were of the bush variety, which means there was no need to tie each plant to a trellis. why make more work i say? the seeds went directly into the ground the second week of june and didn’t need much except for a bit of watering during the first couple of weeks. one twelve foot row produced approximately one quart of dried beans.

yes, i know you just did the math, there are eight rows there. the two exotic looking rows in the middle are black garbanzos. they were, apparently, a little too exotic for my new england growing season. that experiment didn’t go so well. there was just one other caveat in my bean growing adventure; bean-lovin’ deer! the bed you see above was one of two – the deer devoured the other one in a bean eating frenzy one fateful july night. i woke up to a sea of trampled, beanless stems. ugh!

the best part of growing your own beans, other than of course, eating the most fresh, juiciest and plump-when-you-cook-’em beans you could possibly eat is that they are pretty stress free to harvest. i just let mine dry on the vine as they say, up until the middle of september. then i plucked off all of the dried pods and threw them, by type, into brown paper bags. they can sit around like this all snug in their fall-looking pods until whenever the mood strikes you. you can do a lot at one time, or just enough for a meal. you can drink wine while you do it (my fave way) and listen to good tunes. you can tell your significant other that if he wants dinner he better get his paws on those pods, you can even have a bean shucking party. there are plenty of ways to get dem’ beans shucked, and no hurry to do it either – you have all winter! (unless of course you want to write a blog post about it and you need to find out your total yield and take photos).

so next season, grows some beans for winter! i know i am.

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!

it’s no secret i’m a hothead. i love me my chiles and those of you in more hot & dry climes may not know it, but this year the northeast, and more specifically for me, the berkshires, had a damn good chile year. that’s not particularly easy to come by in the short – and usually wet – season we call summer.  these juicy little hotties burning up my paw above were the prize from my garden’s chile patch. red hot cherries! perfect for homemade sriracha.

this is how i do it:

is there anyone out there still dealing with end of season tomatoes? i just used up the last of mine in the best tomato paste i have ever tasted. i ain’t lyin’, it’s roar-worthy.

i know i’m not the only one to find myself in the unwieldy dinnertime predicament of needing a tablespoon of paste here, two tablespoons there. half the time i end up omitting it all together because the store bought stuff is nothing to write about. for the past couple of tomato seasons i was set on making some paul bertolli, italian grandma type number. you know, the kind that calls for eighty pounds or more of crushed and pulpy san marzanos spread across a well-worn, nay, ancient cotton sheet, held taught by a quadrant of gnarly old olive trees and basking for days in the fig-scented mediterranean breeze.

not.

yet anyway.

in a frenzy to find new ways to use up almost too-old tomatoes i found a wonderful tomato paste recipe over at gilt taste. i was desperate enough with my tomatoes-on-the-verge to give paste making a go, sans any previous romantic notions.

other than doubling the recipe i didn’t veer from it at all. i froze mine in ice cube trays – approximately 2 tablespoons per tray. they didn’t quite pop out, i had to use a knife around the sides and get a little jiggy with it. but eventually they came out and were placed in a freezer bag for said dinner time predicaments. if you have small jars or plastic containers that can hold a couple of tablespoons even better. just take them out individually for use.

there’s no need to recreate a perfect recipe, so please consider this a public service announcement. if you’ve still got tomatoes hanging around your digz, follow this link to francis lam’s perfect new world tomato paste recipe. i highly recommend it!

pawnote:
in an effort to fully disclose and still offer up a pretty photo, please know that i used mostly amish paste tomatoes for this, with a couple of those little red heirlooms up there thrown in.