I have been working on sweet spreads without added pectin, with mixed results.

Last week I did an orange rhubarb butter, recipe from Food In Jar‘s May Can Jam entry. Huge Hit! The butter was light and sweet, but not too much like jam at all. It is perfect on a hard cheese or herbed bread.

I also tried the Rhubarb Mango jam from the Can jam, but this did not work out so well. I am not sure if something is missing from the recipe or what, but my rhubarb macerating (12 hours!) definitely did not produce enough juice. Also, the rhubarb did not nearly cook down or soften up in the time provided. I ended up adding about 12 ounces of mango juice from a can, and 1 cup more sugar and a little water, cooking for MUCH longer, and still having a sort of too sweet chunky rhubarb spread. It tastes good enough, especially for on cheese, or maybe a sweet cracker, but not at all what I expected.

Last, but not least, I tried my hand at a strawberry-blueberry all natural jam. I added in 2 diced granny smith apples as well, since I was using the very last of my frozen strawberries from last year, and I have no idea what freezing does to the pectin agents in the berries. It did take longer to cook, which I expected, and produced a little less jam than I was expecting. It is a deep, dark purple, and not too sweet.

Check out Beth and Bill’s house in Tacoma Park, Md, on Apartment Therapy today.

And Helicon Works, holistic builders.

Who doesn’t want a little truth window in a lovely straw bale home? I want I want!

Image copyright Apartment Therapy 2009.

Hopelessly Adrift

Yup, this is me today. And apparently everyone who is coming to check out 241 Water. Time to go bake a pie.

As described above, these seems like a neat idea, a good way to help generate and create an online community around a single issue or interest. I wonder if these created/generated communities ever work, though? Everyone I feel like I have any relationship online with is because I have read and regularly read their blog, we share other blogs we regularly read, and I have something I want to say based on an ongoing knowledge. All of these blogs I came across based on my own actions and searches, my own interests and wanderings online. [example, if someone reads here because they are looking for info and canning, they may also see a link to B’s, D’s, or even T’s websites and all of a sudden they found new music or design or religious debate that they are also interested in.

I am definitely not arguing against making a deliberate move to create a community based on shared interests. In many ways, this is what the internet is for. However, there are some strange and interesting pitfalls related to method. First of all, this is not a poetry blog! Again, my having no idea how I became included in this blog roll makes me wonder about this. I do talk about poetry sometimes. Is it often? I honestly don’t know. There must be some way to do a search of word use and tags on my own blog, but I have no actual interest in this. Even if I talk about poetry a lot (more? often?) I do not discuss or post my own poetry. I talk about reading poetry, teaching poetry, studying poetry, and about the writing process. But I am not using this medium to write or distribute my own poetry.

This is a blog about my daily life in Wisco, while I am away from my friends and family, and what I do with my days. I don’t expect this would even be an interesting blog for people who are interested in canning and literature, since I don’t write literary analysis here or even provide the recipes for the things I can. I just talk about the process and my thoughts and feeling about that. I guess if you want to about the process and experience to become a foster parent, this might be interesting. But poetry? You are not going to find that here.

So I have a bunch of new visitors here because of this created community blog roll, which I don’t know how I got into and I am definitely not convinced is really appropriate for me. Some seem to be just clicking, reading a little, hopefully realizing this isn’t what they were looking for, and moving on. A few are interested in what I am saying here, and reading and commenting (thanks guys! Welcome!).

But there have been a couple who have tried to talk about these posts as if they were poems. This doesn’t make any sense. Worse, it is insulting to them and to me. Poetry is my JOB. I write, study, and teach poetry every day- how to write, what is working, techniques, strategies, etc etc etc. I am not confused about when or where I might be using personification. And talking about a real person, who is alive and breathing, is not personification. Neither are my jars of pickled asparagus a metaphor. I have 14 pints of pickled asparagus in the cupboard. Real. If you are an architect who designs homes, and someone comes to your house for dinner and starts talking about how the plate they are eating on is an interesting architectural design, what would you say? It isn’t a home, it is a plate.

** Edit: Just to clarify, since some comments have implied I don’t want people reading or commenting on this blog… I was frustrated with a couple of comments. I have removed them. I am happy people are coming here to read this blog, I just don’t understand WHY. Not that I don’t think I have something interesting to say, but the link to get here implies there will be poetry on this blog. There is not poetry on this blog. **

If you want people to join in these deliberately created blog communities, instead of letting them grow organically, how do you regulate who and what is included? Apparently for some people in this group anything written by a poet constitutes poetry. As I poet, I disagree. I don’t think I can take Water241 out of the blog roll, but I am apparently not really a member. Odd situation.

** Edit: The reason I am not actually a member is because the blog roll (rally?) is for blogs where people write and publish their own poetry. This blog does not meet the criteria. If the organizer of the blog roll/rally cared or took it seriously, than I would never have been included.**

And now I have pounds and pounds of ends to do something with. I am not so picky and do can the ‘ends’ if they are long enough. But even so I am still left with pounds and pounds of little, odd shaped pieces of asparagus. I am thinking a risotto for some friends coming over, and then maybe soup for the freezer.

I realize I haven’t gotten week 2 and 3 of the CSA up here yet, so here goes:

For Week 2 we had lots more greens, including gorgeous Spinach, Pizzo, Bekana, Komatsuna, a lettuce mix, and Yellow Frilly Mustard. We also got more Turnips, scallions, green garlic, and leeks. New this week was Cress Micro Greens (YUM!) and Rhubarb. Just a little rhubard and I don’t know anything to do with it except jam etc, so it promptly went in the freezer. N, my friend sharing the CSA with me, makes a rhubarb crip, but he was out of town and busy with work. I am thinking we will either get strawberry jam (I know, very boring) or a rhubarb orange butter recipe I just found this morning.
There were also frozen strawberries last week, but somehow I missed them when I went to pick up. I am so annoyed! They said the strawberries were like candy. Oh well. Next time.
I made a couple of omlettes and salads with all that.

This week, the spinach is AMAZING. Dark, wide, leaves, super tasty, and a lot of it. Yum. We got Swiss Chard for the first time- I still don’t know that to do with that. More Pizzo, Komatsuna (soup time?), Yellow Frilly Mustard, and Cress micro greens. Also got some lettuce heads and some lettuce mix, (small, light, sweet, perfect), and some onions. New this week, and for me, were the Pea Tendrils. OMG I almost ate them all in the car on the way home. These are great! And we got parsley. What do you do with tons and tons of parsley?!? A couple stalks (literally, 8 stalks) of asparagus, and another bag of tomato puree.

For dinner last night I made a mixed fresh and warm salad. Still had a large leek left from last week so I sauteed it up with a nice scallion and the asparagus, made a big leafy green salad and mixed it all together. The only things not green, and not from the CSA, were some small green tomatoes I added, the olive oil, and a bit of asiago cheese for topping.

The weather here has been too cold/hot/cold to really do well for the asparagus. Maybe that is why we got so few? Anyway, another veggie farm where I usually got for pyo later in the season has lots of asparagus, and they are guessing it is the best right now, so I am thinking I should pick up a few pounds and get to canning. I found a few pickled asparagus recipes to try, including a hot pepper spicy one, one with horseradish, and a regular old garlicy one. There is also that rhubarb butter I want to try. And no such thing as Wisco peaches, but I know I won’t make it through the winter without a half dozen jars of whole peaches in light syrup, so if I see good peaches in the stores this week I will do that too. Wow, I am in for a lot of canning!

And here is a great note from the blog Food In Jars on canning jar etiquette.

The school is done, the canning and reading has begun!