Chive Jelly

We have a chive plant that is more than just a plant in our garden.  It is a part of our heritage, a legacy.  We got the chives as a small split off of my husband's grandmother's plant at her house.  We planted it at our first house, when we were first married.  When we had our first daughter, we built a new house, and the chives moved with us across town.  Over the last decade, they have grown, and grown, and grown.  And we have shared the chives with many others.  My kids give them to teachers as gifts.  They invite friends to sample from our plant and then send them home with a split off of it so that they can plant chives in their own yards.  This particular plant has taken root in dozens of yards around the Chicago suburbs.  And it keeps going strong, just like my husband's grandma did for so many years.

This winter, sadly, time finally caught up with our beloved Gigi, and our family journeyed through one of the saddest goodbyes we've had to face.  Then, this spring, her chives popped up in our yard once again, a reminder that life grows.  We miss her terribly, but I know we will always remember her with such love, and I know that she felt that love while she was here.

As far as cooking goes, there are so, so many ways to use chives.  My kids will eat them straight out of the garden, but they also like them sprinkled on eggs or potatoes.  I mix them in with chicken dishes or with fish.  They are great in savory muffins or quick breads.  But after reading an online article about herb jellies, I started thinking about trying out a chive jelly. I'm a big fan of the more savory jellies, like onion jam and pepper jelly, and I thought that the chives would be a great spread for crackers or bread, or to use as a glaze for meat.

I started by chopping up a big bunch of the chives, about 2 cups.

I put the chopped chives in a pot with 2 cups of water, and brought it all to a boil for a couple of minutes.  Then I poured the chives and the water into a separate container, covered them, and let them seep for a couple of hours.

The next thing I did was to strain liquid from the chives through a fine mesh strainer, pushing the chives to get all the "juice" out of it.  Kind of like a chive tea.

I prepped several canning jars and lids, boiling the jars for 10 minutes and then keeping them in the hot water until I needed them.  I soaked the lids in some of the boiled water as well to soften up the seals.

I took the chive tea and put it in a large pot with 1/4 cup of white vinegar, a pinch of salt, and 4 cups of sugar and brought it up to a boil.  Then I added one package (3 ounces) of liquid pectin, brought it back to a boil for one minute, and took it off of the heat.

There was a bit of foam, so I skimmed that off of the hot jelly and then poured it into the prepared jars and put the lids and seals on.  I got about 4 pints of jelly total.

Listening to the pinging pops of the lids as they sealed made me smile.  Opening up the first jar, spreading it onto a cracker and popping it into my mouth made me smile even more.

Chive jelly is a good thing.  A really good thing.  It tastes sweet and savory, clean and grassy, and it's almost like having a bit of spring in a jar.  Very little fuss for a whole lot of yum.  Definitely worth a try!

From Scratch's Top 10 Recipes from 2014!

As we kick off 2015, there's a lot great things on the horizon!  But today, I'm looking back, to the top 10 most popular posts from last year.  And let me tell you, you readers have got good taste!  There's a year's worth of tastiness summed up in these 10 posts!

May's Preserve Trifecta Part Two: Rosemary Rhubarb Jelly

All right, so I've already shared the Meyer Lemon Rhubarb Marmalade, and now it's time to continue on the rhubarb train with Rosemary Rhubarb Jelly, another great recipe I tried from Preserving by the Pint!

May's Preserve Trifecta Part One: Meyer Lemon Rhubarb Marmalade

Eating locally and seasonally is a hot topic these days, and while I like it in theory and the intentions behind it, it's much hard to practice than it seems on the surface.  I mean, Illinois has a relatively limited growing season, and there are just some things that will never grow here, even in our sweltering summers.  Bananas, pineapples, pretty much any citrus...if I strictly ate locally, these would be off limits.  Then there's the tricky issue of seasonality.  I try to store, freeze, and preserve as much fruit as we can hold, but there's some times when nothing will do except for some fresh blueberries, or a real strawberry.

But I do try to make the most of seasonal foods while they're here.  I'm just on the start of my canning journey.  I've been canning a couple of years, and while no one's gotten botulism yet, I still am not super comfortable with my canning skills.  Following a recipe, possibly making small alterations to the flavoring?  Cool.  Making my own up out of the blue?  No way, Jose.  Enter Preserving by the Pint, by Marisa McClellan, a great cookbook that my family gave me for Christmas.

Sweet and Spicy: No, Not Just Me, the Pepper Jelly Too!

We get a lot of peppers of all sorts from our vegetable CSA.  Sweet ones, mild ones, hot ones, uber-hot ones...and I'm one of those freaks who loves pepper flavor, but doesn't like crunching straight into a raw pepper.  As far as spice goes, I tend to stay on the mid-to-mild side of things as well.  I don't mind a kick, but I hate things that burn just for the spite of it.  So sometimes, when the CSA is pepper-plentiful, I get in over my head with the hot peppers.

I can grab a serrano or two and whip up some salsa, I might chop a red chili and throw it in some beef broh with onions and noodles for a warming lunch, but when I have handfuls of pepper and an hour or so on my hands, I can whip up a mean bunch of pepper jelly.  You can do it too.

Chop up some sweet peppers, about 3/4 cups chopped.  Throw them right into a one cup measure.  Then chop up some hot peppers and fill the measure to a full cup.  Keep a few seeds in there, if you want more heat.  I usually take most of them out, but I don't stress if a few find their way into the mix.  Feel free to play with the ratio, more or less spice as you like.  This is what works for me.  I had a variety of hot peppers: some Hungarian wax, some chilies, some serranos, and some...I really am not even sure.

Making the Best of Things: Green Tomato Jam

The weather's getting colder, and it's finally starting to feel like fall around here.  Which is both invigorating and depressing.  On the one hand, it's kind of a relief that the work-intensive gardening season is coming to a close.  On the other hand, I hate not being able to go out and grab something for dinner from the yard.  But, for now, I'm just doing my best to harvest and preserve whatever fresh homegrown veggies I can from my gardens.

Tomatoes are tricky things.  If it's not warm enough, they won't ripen.  And if a frost happens to hit, they pretty much roll over and die.  So, with this cooler weather, I had bunches of tiny green cherry tomatoes on my bushes, and not much hope for them.  I mean, I do love fried green tomatoes but that battering, dipping, rolling and frying is a lot of work for tomato slices that are only an inch in diameter.  My middle child, the adventurous eater and tomato snatcher, grabbed a green tomato and popped it in her mouth...and then immediately started spitting it out all over and racing for something else to get the taste out.  So naturally, I had to try it too.  They are pretty gross.  Bitter, astringent, a little sour, but not in a good way.  But then it came to me...currants, some gooseberries, things like that have those qualities too, and they make amazing jams and jellies.

I mean, what can go wrong with dumping a ton of sugar on something and cooking it down until it's a sticky, delicious mess?

Lilacs Lilacs Lilacs

I love lilacs.  A lot of people that I know love lilacs.  I think it's hard not to.  They are purple, which is one of my 8 favorite colors.  They smell divine.  And when they appear on their bushes, you know that summer is on its' way.

My personal love of lilacs may slightly have been influenced by the town that I grew up in: Lombard, Illinois. Otherwise known as the Lilac Village.  And let me tell you, they are very VERY serious about lilacs.  Hardcore.  I'm talking a Lilac Ball, a Lilac Queen crowned, and even a Lilac Parade.  It sounds like something you'd find in a quaint country town...and it feels like it too...but it's smack dab in the middle of the suburbs of Chicago.

Jelly From the Weeds

I love that saying that talks about how you can think of a field of dandelions as a field full of weeds, or you can see it as a field full of potential wishes.  Not that I want that field to be my yard, personally, but it makes me smile to think about it when I see a field of dandelions somewhere else.

Dandelions also make me think back to high school, where they were the focus of a well-intentioned school project gone awry.  You see, in my advance literature class one year, we divided up into groups, each group was to read a chosen novel and then create their own project to present the novel to the class.  When I saw the title "Dandelion Wine", it called to me.  Baby, I was born this way. So, spearheading my group, I instigated several courses of dandelion edibles that we would serve as our final project.  This was back in the day before Google, so I was largely dependent on some Native American cookbooks hidden in our library.  We had crispy fritters made from dandelion greens and cornmeal, a lightly dressed dandelion green salad, candied dandelion flowers, and, the grand finale, our dandelion wine...which was a few bottles of sparkling grape juice that we shoved dandelion flowers into.  I mean, you can't being alcohol into school, duh.