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Rattletrap
Hillery will be here tomorrow morning for 4 days. I need to try and cram a weeks worth of house cleaning into one day since I didn't life a finger towards cleaning the house yesterday and organizing all the junk I brought up from Virginia. Hope Hillery is a high stepper...she will need to be to get around in this basement!
What I did do yesterday was a couple of experiments. Chokecherries are in high season as is sumac... and wild apples are just now coming on good. I made juice from the three and then created chokecherry and sumac jelly and wild apple and sumac jelly. Upon inspection this morning the apple/sumac set up great. Use 2 cups of each juice and one box commercial pectin...bring to a high boil and add 4 cups sugar. Bring to a rolling boil for a couple of minutes...place in sterilized jars and seal.
The chokecherry/sumac is pure liquid...but that is okay...I will let it set and use the liquid to make drinks or syrups out of later and will run a new batch through the kitchen in the next couple of days. Generally choke cherries have a high pectin ratio but remember sumac juice has none...next attempt will be 3 cups chokecherry juice and one cup sumac and I will let you know how that turns out.
As always the by product of apple juice for jelly is lots of apple pulp. I made muffins with unsweetened apple sauce, red clover and amaranth seed. I left the amaranth seed whole though and now think it will work better if I at least crack it...or soak them over night before using. They are so tiny though it is no problem for me to eat them like this...but it might cause a problem for someone with dentures.
I also put away 3 quarts of applesauce for later. One thing I do so love about wild harvests...it is free other than my time. Love seeing full cupboards and knowing that the main items didn't cost me anything but a day walking in the wild.
With all this going on the kitchen was a mess...I was beat tired and supper was needed...having an ample supply of purslane on hand I whipped up a cream of yard soup with various veggies and weeds chopped pretty good and put in a sauce pan to sautee in butter. Covering the pan helps steam harder veggies like carrots and all I do from there is add flour, milk and a couple of slices of American cheese. You can always add nettles, daylilies, lamb's quarters and other wild greens as well as salt, pepper, garlic and my (infamous onion in everything) to add flavor.
This soup is always different around here and my daughters always calls it her favorite. I like it because it is quick and easy. Made one with fiddlehead ferns this last spring that was to die for.
Now...to get to cleaning this house and find some time to write a couple of articles this week...I do believe I need a clone or two!
Melana Hiatt