What's Ahead: Gardens and Storytelling

Coming home is a slow process. It takes a few days to get back into the rhythm of home life and catch up with all that needs to be done. It took me until this morning to finish putting away my clothes from last week, and my books and other supplies that I took with me are still in their crate, waiting to be re-shelved or otherwise stored away. It's almost as if I am trying to extend the memories by not putting them away too quickly.

But all good things must end, and there is much that needs to be done here at home. The rain came earlier this week and cooled things off, and brought much-needed moisture to my poor wilting flowers. The second planting of cucumbers is coming in and Larry brings me baskets full every day. I made dill pickles yesterday and am making more today--yesterday was dill slices, today will be whole pickles and spears. The tomatoes are beginning to ripen quickly too, and yesterday I made 14 quarts of pasta sauce while working on the pickles.

Elderberries are hanging heavy and I will gather them tomorrow, and the grapes will be ready to pick next week. As I write there is a five-gallon bucket of shucked corn waiting for me to cut it off the cob and freeze it. We are not canning as much this year as the cellar is still quite full and we need to use up some of the backlog, which is a nice feeling. But I don't want anything to go to waste either, so if we can't use it, I'll be looking for someone to take the excess veggies off my hands.

I am catching up on storytelling projects too. A storyteller has to plan ahead to stay employed and I have several irons in the fire. Here's some of what's ahead:

Storytelling friend Jo Ann Dadisman and I are planning a storytelling concert and workshop featuring the very talented Susan Gordon of Frederick, Maryland, to be held November 14th and 15th at the Frank and Jane Gabor WV Folklife Center at Fairmont State University in Fairmont, WV. The workshop will focus on telling the stories of the Grimm Brothers, challenging material in our politically-correct times and yet stories with deep meaning that resonate right down through the years to today's world. The concert will feature Susan Gordon as well as Kirk Judd who will perform works from his new poetry collection, My People Was Music. Jo Ann and I will also be performing at the concert. The workshop with Susan will be held all day on Saturday, November 15 at the Folklife Center.

Another new project is a ghost walk to be held in the town closest to me, Ripley, WV, in October. We're in the planning stages right now, looking for funding and working out a possible route while we are also seeking stories to be told on the walk. I am very excited about this as it's something I've wanted to do for a long time. I'll share more details as our plans progress.

But before either of these events is a trip to Philadelphia, PA to tell stories at a house concert hosted by my friend and storyteller extraordinaire Megan Hicks on September 6th at her home in Media, PA. I am really looking forward to seeing Megan again and telling stories with her and Tommy Pryor. From Megan's publicity for this concert:

Bridging the Great Divide between 

The Big Apple

and 

The Mountain State

Tommy Pryor —Author, blogger, storyteller and host of the monthly storytelling event, Yorkville: Stoops to Nuts (at the Cornelia Street Cafe) will be revving up for the October release of his new book, “I Hate the Dallas Cowboys.” Tommy grew up on the Upper East Side. He makes it sound like the most magical place in the world for a kid to spend his childhood.

Storyteller Granny Sue —Author, blogger, storyteller, gardener, second-hand dealer and balladeer Susanna Holstein is coming down from the mountains to spend the evening with us. Don’t let that downhome accent fool you. She may look harmless, but Granny Sue packs a wallop.
Sounds like a fun evening, doesn't it? Let me know if you live in the area and are interested in attending, and I can send you particulars.

There's also the West Virginia Storytelling Festival in October, the Museum Day event in late September, and the Christmas programs later on. Variety is the spice of a storyteller's life.

So lots coming up in storytelling, and lots coming in from the garden. Now I'd better get back to the kitchen and those pickles!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Pickled Red Cabbage Recipe

Some of you asked for the recipe for the Red Cabbage Relish I made the other day. It's actually called Pickled Red Cabbage and comes from a cookbook I've had for years called All About Pickling by Ortho (yeah, the chemical people but they did a good cookbook!). I like this cookbook because it's arranged alphabetically by vegetable and the directions are easy to follow. There is a misprint in a couple lines of this recipe but it was still pretty easy to figure out what they meant. I made one minor change in the recipe, noted below. My copy of this book is falling apart and stained because I have used it a lot over the years. Maybe time for a new one? Several are available on Amazon.

 Pickled Red Cabbage

2 small red cabbages (I had 6, used them all, so I adjusted the rest of the ingredients accordingly)
1/2 cup coarse salt
1 quart cider vinegar
3 whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 bay leaves
    2 tablespoons pickling spice
    2 tablespoons sugar

1. Quarter, core and shred the cabbages (I chopped them finely with a knife; my kraut cutter didn't want to cut these very hardheaded cabbages!)
2. Mix cabbage and salt in a bowl and refrigerate 2 days.
3. Drain the cabbage, squeezing it as dry as possible; Pack into hot sterilized jars.
4. Boil the remaining ingredients. Adjustment: I put the cloves and pickling spice into a bag because I think the cloves can turn pickles dark. Here is also where the recipe is misprinted in my copy--the lines are mixed up or there's something missing. What I did was to boil the ingredients for about 10 minutes so the spice flavoringss got into the brine nicely, then removed the bag. Then I ladled the brine over the cabbage in the jars, making sure to cover the cabbage completely with the brine. (Isn't it interesting how the color changes when the brine is added? Check this site to make red cabbage turn green!)

5. Seal and process 20 minutes in boiling water bath.

That's it! Pretty simple, really. and tasty!


Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Grape Leaves

A friend on Facebook mentioned that it was time to pick grape leaves to use in cooking. I have always wanted to try cooking things wrapped in grape leaves, but never thought about it at the right time of year. Her nudge was what I needed.

Can you preserve grape leaves, I wondered? I remembered seeing them in grocery stores, packed in jars in some sort of liquid. My friend wasn't sure, so I looked online.

There are a lot of ways to store grape leaves, I learned. This website tells how to brine them (store in salted water). Another has every preservation method you can think of including drying, and I found others that also cover brining and freezing. I found recipes too, including this one and this one that I am going to try. I learned that the wrapped bundles of meat and rice are called dolmades or dolmadakias and there are many variations with different herbs and spices. How did I live this long and not try these?

I decided to try the brining method, and since I've never tried to cook with grape leaves before and don't know if I'll like them, I thought one good-sized jar of leaves was plenty.

Walking through the vines a couple years ago

We have a lot of grapes on our place--about 12 vines, I think, so I had plenty to pick from. It's not so easy as it sounds, though. I needed leaves that were fairly young, large enough to wrap things in and with no holes. Since Japanese beetles arrived this week, the "no holes" rule proved the biggest challenge. However after some careful picking I ended up with a big basket full of leaves that looked like they were the right kind. I made sure to nip the stems as close to the leaf as I could too, so they didn't poke any new holes.

Inside, I washed and dried each leaf, then stacked them up in stacks of about 12-15 each. I rolled them up from big end to little end because that way it was easier to secure the bundles into the "cigar" shape I saw on other websites. Was this right? I don't know, but it seemed to work. I could not get the bundles to stay wrapped, however, until I got some thread and wrapped a long piece around each bundle. I didn't have to tie the thread, just wrapped it around several times and it held the leaves in place perfectly.


Then I got a gallon of water and added a pound of pickling salt to it. The recipes said that the brine was strong enough when a raw egg (in the shell!) would float on top with about 3/4" of the eggshell breaking through the surface of the water. The one pound salt to one gallon of water ratio worked perfectly. You don't need to heat the brine.


I filled the jar I was using, a half-gallon blue Mason jar that I just love--about 2/3 full of the brine and packed my grape leaves "cigars" into the jar tightly. I had enough leaves (and I'd picked about 100, I think) to fill the jar completely full, with about a dozen leaves left over. I put the leftovers in a plastic bag, squeezed out the air, and put them in the fridge to use this week.


I put the cap on the jar, and I was done! How simple was that? Now I'm anxious to see how the leaves do and what they will be like when I am ready to use them. I have to say, they look pretty cool in the jar.


Have any of you tried preserving grape leaves, or have a recipe you love? Please share! I'm ready for a new food adventure.

Crisp Dill Pickles--With Salmon

For 35 years I have tried every recipe I have found to make CRISP dill pickles. I have failed, time and again. I finally gave up and decided that while I could make killer bread-and-butter pickles, and even sweet alum pickles, dills were out of my reach. I bought them at the store. And complained.

I decided to try again this year because we have lots of cucumbers and I love dill pickles. So if the pickles came out wrong, oh well--the chickens could enjoy them.


I searched online and consulted Joy of Cooking, my kitchen bible. A recipe I found online was very like what I found in J of C and seemed easy enough.

Well.

I started with the online recipe, which called for slicing the cucumbers and putting them into ice water for two hours. I was okay with that, but I only had four trays of ice and it didn't seem like enough to really keep the cukes cold. What to do?

In the freezer I had a big plank of salmon, frozen solid. Why not put the frozen fish on top of the pickles to add a little extra frost? I put the salmon (sealed in plastic) on top of the cucumber slices, and covered everything with two thick, folded bath towels.

The online recipe didn't call for sprinkling salt over the cucumber slices either but I remembered from past attempts that salt drew the moisture out of the cucumbers and made them crisper. And Joy of Cooking recommended it. So I sprinkled some salt (non-iodized, the only kind for pickles) over the slices beforecovering them with the towels.

After two hours the fish was still frozen. Time to move on to the next part of the process. I drained and washed the cucumber slices, put the salmon back in the freezer, heated water to sterilize my jars, and heated the brine (made with 2 cups vinegar to 1 cup of water and 1/3 cup salt, with 2-3 cloves of garlic for each jar). I packed cucumber slices and stems of dill into the sterilized jars, covered them with the boiling brine (leaving the garlic cloves in the kettle) and screwed down the jar lids.

Today's canning books recommend hot water baths for pickles, but I have never done that. I recommend that you follow the most recent guidelines for canning pickles however.

After two days, we decided to try a taste test. Verdict? CRISPY dill pickles, full of flavor. Success! After so many years of trying, I think I've found a process that works for me. I made another 13 pints this weekend and I am so glad I've finally made good dill pickles.

I think it was the salmon. Although the ones I made yesterday I used frozen steaks...you decide. You think it might have been the salmon that made the difference?

I am pretty sure it was.

Dilled Zucchini Pickles

I promised to post this recipe yesterday but ran out of hours. I have not yet made it this year, but it's a family favorite. I remember who gave me the recipe although I don't recall her name.

In the early 1970's, my first husband and I joined an organic gardening club in the Northern Virgnia area. We'd been getting Organic Gardening magazine and were looking for land. We saw an ad in the paper about this group and joined up. Everyone in the club was older than we were by about 20 years (we were 21 and 22 at the time). We learned a lot of things from this group, although none of them were really farmers--most were suburban gardeners, and only one other couple had dreams of moving to the country.

The group's founders were an elderly married couple who remembered their childhood days growing up on farms. My recipe was from the wife; she was one good cook. When my sons were young this was about the only way I could convince them to eat zucchini, and they actually liked these pickles.

Dilled Zucchini (makes 3 quarts)
6 lbs zucchini, trimmed and sliced thin (but I also made it in chunks)
2 cups thinly sliced celery
2 large onions, chopped (2 cups)
1/3 cup salt
ice cubes
Mix zucchini, celery, onions and salt in a parg bowl or pan. Place a layer of ice cubes on top; cover; let stand for 3 hours. Strain well.

2 cups sugar
2 tbsp dill seed (I also used fresh dill)
2 cups white vinegar
6 cloves garlic, halved
Combine sugar, dill seed and vingar in a kettle; heat, stirring occasionally, to boiling. Stir in vegetables. Heat, stirring several times, just to a full rolling boil.

Ladle into hot sterilized jars. Place one or two pieces of garlic in each jar. Seal. Process using standard recommended times for pickles.