August 2006

My favorite fruits are nectarines. Luscious, sweet, melt-in-your-mouth nectarines are available for only a brief while each year. Sure, you can get things called “nectarines” other times of the year, but they just aren’t the same. Right now, I’m talking local nectarines. Organic Yakima nectarines. We bought a full box of these sweeties (20 lbs?!) at the Ballard Sunday market so that I could make jam.

You can call me ambitious. But I’ve been craving nectarine jam, and you just can’t get it anywhere.

Today being my first day of “vacation” so to speak (the final exam for my class was last night), I celebrated by getting up early (ok, Jeff had to drag me out of bed at 6:45 thanks to my crazy ideas the night before) to make some nectarine jam.

The timeline was tight. I started the dishwasher on its shortest cycle to sterilize the jars and rings at 7:47am. To peel the fruit, I dunked each one into boiling water for 10-12 seconds, then into a cold plunge. I was done chopping fruit at 8:25. At about 8:27, I realized the recipe only called for a small portion of the fruit I’d so carefully and painstakingly peeled.

By 9:00, the eight filled jam jars were being nestled into their boiling water for “processing.” Ten minutes of boiling. Remove jars from water to cool… And at 9:20, there were eight distinct, promised, longed-for “plonks” indicating the jars were properly sealed! That is a wonderful sound!

Things I learned from my first attempt at jam-making (stuff I’m surprised about and/or still don’t know what to do about…):

1. Expect things to happen in different ways and at different times than you’re expecting.
2. Every large bowl and cooking pot in your house will be used at some point during the process.
3. Don’t buy so much fruit next time…
4. Don’t peel so much fruit next time…
5. The foam was all at the top, where it’s supposed to be easy to scoop off.
6. ALL the fruit pieces were also on the top, as if it wanted to ALL be scooped off with the foam.
7. The end result is beautiful, but the fruit is all floating at the top still.
8. Does this mean Jeff was right, I should have mashed the fruit? But then wouldn’t it still be at the top, just in smaller pieces?
9. Every surface of your kitchen is sticky after the jam-making-whirlwind dies down.

TA DA! The results:

• 8 jars of sweet, golden nectarine jam. The fruit still is floating at the tops of the jars. But based on tasting (below), it will be yummilicious anyways!
• One jar of skimmed-foamy-jam to be used right away.
• One partial jar of jam to be used right away.
• And still a half bowl of chopped nectarines (see #4 above).
• …Plus 1 1/3 box left of whole untouched nectarines (see #3 above).

Fruit happened. And I’ve got a lot more work cut out for me processing the rest of these babies.

Credits to Miriam for her wonderful jam-making tutorial, to the Good Eats show for some additional inspiration, to Jeff for helping me get supplies and my butt in gear, and to my French grandma for instilling in me an appreciation for homemade yummies.

Happy end of August!

***

Related books:

Well-Preserved:  A Jam-Making Hymnal by Joan Hassol.

Don’t worry I’m still here, and I’m still in Seattle even! I’ve been enjoying Seattle’s lakes and waterways. Kayaking on Lake Union:


Relaxing with views of Seattle’s houseboats:

I’ve been completely absent from the blogosphere lately. And not much knitting either. I’ve been pretty busy with my class, going to Al-Anon meetings in earnest finally, and doing a lot of writing and a bit of exercising here and there. I guess I’m getting a life again maybe. Not sure yet. I’m still thinking a lot about France (thanks to the kind folks who gave their encouragement…) and have been understanding that I need to incorporate France more into my life somehow. Whether that means more frequent visits or even moving there somehow remains to be seen. (But Jeff is starting a French class in September, yay!)

All this thinking about my French grandma somehow got me thinking about my other grandma too, my dad’s mom, who lives in North Carolina now. She is a Polish lady who has lived in New Jersey most of her life now and retains her strong Polish accent. She and my aunt moved down to North Carolina recently to be closer to my cousin and her family. Thanks to my dad, I’m going to go visit them in September. I’ve never been to the south so it should be interesting. And I know, I know, that isn’t exactly the deep south, but still. It may well be a cultural experience for me. They live in Cornelius which is 40 minutes outside of Charlotte.

Other than that, here are some weird things I’ve seen around Seattle lately:

This one’s for you, Evan: “Parasitic Worms” as public art. At the corner of Eastlake Ave and E. Boston, there are three different tiles depicting parasites. Go figure.

Across the street from Joe Bar I spotted this. Yes folks, it’s a knitted cozy… on a telephone pole. Get one for your local pole too!

Have you ever missed something so much you thought your heart was going to break?

I am terribly missing this place, my grandmother’s house in the south of France, in a little town situated in the hills behind Cannes. This photo shows the back of the 400-year old stone house, with the incredible climbing bougainvillea. My grandma, whom we call Mémère, never has to water the bougainvillea, as it draws its sustenance from an underground stream. At right, the view from the upper window shows a glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea beyond the neighboring rooftops.

My mother, sister and I moved to this house when I was 5 months old (my father was stationed in Turkey by the Air Force), and stayed on for a year and a half. Later, after we had moved to Seattle, my sister and I visited many summers: my fondest memories stem from those summers, and indeed they were the only times I benefited from a truly childlike carefree existence, a continent away from painful parental divorce and dysfunction. Mémère taught me to knit! In high school I independently decided I wanted to study in France for a year (I had no idea how hard it would prove to be, yet how rewarding too), and Mémère graciously assumed surrogate motherhood for a year (I wonder, did she have any inkling what a handful I would be?). In college, I studied abroad for a year in Montpellier and many times travelled the four hours by train to visit.

So in a way, this old Le Cannet house is the place I know best; I can picture every nook and cranny, imagine every smell and noise; this house has been my touchstone throughout and despite the 30-something disruptive moves I’ve made in my 33 years of life. This house where I don’t live is somehow, somehow, my home.
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It’s a good thing I chose a small project for KTC’s A Passage to India project, because I had very little knittin’ time in San Francisco–just an hour or so in the car on the way to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. And, ok, it still needs to be blocked and have the ends sewn in, but it’s virtually complete!

Drum roll please, here is the my Passage to India bracelet:

The smallest photo shows the color best. See my previous entry on this bracelet for a description of why I chose this project to knitalong with E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India.

Details:

• Pattern: Perdita bracelet by Elizabeth Klett, in Summer 2006 Knitty. Lilac option.
• Yarn: DMC Cotton #5 (embroidery floss), color 823 (dark navy blue).
• Beads: Mill Hill glass seed beads, color 00123 (pearly cream-colored).
• Needles: Size US 1 circular (it’s not knit in the round, but that was the size 1 needle I had available and it worked well).
• Time to knit: about two weeks.

We returned from San Francisco late afternoon on Wednesday, and I’ve been recovering since then. We had a great trip, saw lots and lots of sights, and plum wore ourselves out. Thanks a million, Christa and Evan, for so graciously hosting us!! Thank you, Becca, for watching after the kitties while we galavanted around the Bay Area!

We took over 900 photos in a week, is that too many? I think there are some good ones in there, but it’s going to take some time to sort through them.

I returned from holiday to find a wonderful package waiting for me. Here is the awesome “loot” I received from Paula of Golden Oasis. She sent me the book Knitting in Nature, by Norah Gaughan, which has so many wonderful patterns reflecting the beautiful natural features we can see on our travels. The only problem will be deciding which pattern to start in on first. Other goodies included scribble notes (how did she know I’m always looking for scraps of paper to jot down notes?), two beautiful Sugar’nCream yarn skeins for making very portable dishcloths, fun papers, ribbon and found objects as supplies for collaging about my travels, wellness tea, and the cutest lil’ sheep tape measure. Thanks you, Paula! I feel wonderfully spoiled by participating in my first swap.

Jan of Caffinna’s Creations received the package I sent her and she likes it too! It was quite an interesting experience selecting goodies etc for someone whom you only know through reading her blog.

I sent Jan a book which I really enjoyed called The Color of Distance by Amy Thomson, a local Seattle author. I don’t normally enjoy Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels, but this one was a riveting story about Juna, a human scientist who is marooned on another planet, where she must assimilate into the Tendu species to survive. Thomson portrays fascinating insights into human character and culture and proves herself an excellent writer. This book made me laugh, cry, love humans, hate humans, and immerse myself into a whole different “culture.”

Here’s a great review from a science fiction site. I highly recommend The Color of Distance, even if this isn’t the genre you’d normally pick up. Unfortunately this book appears to be out of print, but used copies are available at Amazon and some libraries. Also, I found an interesting interview with Amy Thomson, discussing another of her books, Virtual Girl.

Stay tuned for some San Francisco stories, coming soon!