Thank you Mr. Craib

I can't deny that running a small preserve business has it's challenges at times and there are moments when I wonder if all of the hard work is really worth it. And then, people like Chris Craib send me an email out of the blue and it puts a little spring in my step and makes me happy to head back into the commercial kitchen. It quite simply makes all of the hard work worth every single moment. So thank you Chris for passing along this little email. You brought a smile to my face.

The Mason Jar

It gladdens this preservers heart to see that in June's Canadian House and Home, the little ol'mason jar made the news-ideas-hot topics-trends page. I don't feel so alone when I know that others find the shape of the mason jar beautiful in it's simplicity.

Aigre-Doux

You want to get my attention you just need to use words like; caramelize, reduce and red wine. Instantly my eyes dilate and my ears twitch with anticipation. So a month ago when I was doing some online research and I stumbled upon this cookbook called "The Preservation Kitchen" I knew I was hooked the instant I read the word Aigre-Doux.  These recipes had all of those words and MORE! There were even jam recipes where you 'smoke' the apples before you make the jam. 'Smoked' is another word that can grab my attention in case you were wondering why I put it in quotations. I needed to know more. I am not ashamed to admit that I had never heard this term before, so I did a little research. The definition I came across was this: The French term for the combined flavors of sour (aigre ) and sweet (doux ). An aigre-doux  sauce might contain both vinegar and sugar.

Paul Virant describes Aigre-Doux in the cookbook as preserves for cheese snobs and wine geeks. Now I can't go so far as to describe myself with either of those terms. I fall into the category of a cheese lover and perhaps I aspire to be a wine geek. But it was close enough for me. I loved the idea that an aigre-doux could be turned into a vinaigrette, a pan sauce, a condiment or a glaze. As someone who always makes her own salad dressing, flavours her own vinegars and loves a good glaze, Aigre-Doux felt like a challenge I had to face.

I happened to mention that it was a book that I wanted on twitter or perhaps even here on my blog. Well last week, my amazing cousin Nadine sent it to me as a belated birthday present. For the first 2 nights after it arrived, when I would get home from work I would curl up with it, sitting on my couch or a chair and flip through it reading all the delicious titles of recipes. I knew that it wouldn't be long before I would have to attempt one of the recipes and there was one in particular that stood out - Mandarin Aigre Doux.

Now I can't share the recipe online, but there is one of Paul's Blueberry Aigre-Doux recipes here if you love the idea of it as much as me and want to try making it on your own.

What I can tell you is that there are juicy mandarins; peeled and sliced, with an entire bottle of red wine, some red wine vinegar, sugar, salt and black peppercorns combined in these 500ml jars and they look almost too good to be true. He suggests using it as a glaze for roasted duck, or whisking the pureed contents with a knob of butter and drizzling over scallops (helloooo!) and I intend to do as he tells me.

The recipe made 4 - 500ml jars and my friend Barbara Best is going to be a recipient of one of these jars cause she is having me over for dinner next Friday! Lucky her, eh?

Pickled Green Beans

So I don't mean to brag...but I am gonna :). I make some mean pickled green beans. To me, they have the perfect balance; not too spicy and not overly vinegary. The mustard seeds, cayenne and dill all play really nicely off one another. These babies are PERFECT in a Caesar.

But I am always interested in new ways of preserving things. So when Reesor Farms gave me the challenge of doing some dilly green beans when they placed another order, I jumped at the chance. The past month I have concentrated on filling up my inventory for the farmer's market and the show, that it had been a while since I actually got to go into my OWN kitchen and try a new recipe.

I started off with a gigantic bag of the freshest green beans I could get my hands on. I love when you snap the ends off and you can hear the crunch. These would be perfect for the task at hand.

Then I consulted an old dill pickle recipe my mom passed down to me and pulled the combination of different vinegars from it together. White wine vinegar, distilled vinegar and distilled water. The distilled water helps keep the vegetables nice and crisp and stops them from changing colour as much as regular tap water.

They wanted dill...so I used a combination of dill seed and fresh dill. Pickles are just not pickles in my opinion without a nice fat clove of garlic, so I peeled one and added it to each jar.  Then I boiled the vinegars, added some pickling salt, filled the jars as full as humanly possible with the green beans and added them all together in the jar.

After their allotted time in the hot water bath, I pulled them out and now they rest on my kitchen cupbpard upstairs. I will probably wait at least a couple of weeks for the flavours to develop and then James and I will sit down, crack open a jar and see how they turned out. If they are good, I will share the recipe. If they are less than good, I will share my sorrow. Just looking at the jars, they look pretty fine, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.

The real test will happen even after they get the thumbs up by us, will they get the thumbs up from Reesors Farm. Stay tuned.

The Made By Hand Show

So this weekend I was one of the many vendors (I think there were over 160) at The Made By Hand Show. It was my first time at an event like this so it was filled with a lot of great learning and discoveries. With over 1700 people passing through the doors it was a pretty busy day and I was kept hopping from the moment the doors opened at 11am until they closed at 5pm.

I want to say a great big thank you to Doris at Publisher Production Solutions who printed my banner. Not only did she do a fabulous job on printing it, she turned it around quickly and even dropped by the booth to introduce herself and ended up buying some jam :). She was a real pleasure to work with and if you were doing a show like this and needed a banner, brochures or business cards printed I would highly recommend her.

I kow you can't really see it in the photo, but the gorgeous necklace I am wearing I bought from Nancy Lismer of Adornments jewellery who was also at the show. Her booth looked fabulous and if you have never seen her stuff, you should really check her out.

My taster sized jars were a huge success, so I will be rolling those out into as many of the different jams and jellies as I can in the coming months, so stay tuned for that.

The one question I have for anyone out there reading this who might have some experience in this department is around sampling. When my booth got busy and there were times when I have over a dozen people trying samples, asking questions, etc., it got hard to replenish the samples fast enough even with the help of my amazing mother in law and wonderful husband. Does anyone have a great way that they do sampling that they wouldn't mind sharing with me? I would be forever grateful.

The Tomatoes - update

I know you are all just dying to see how my tomato plants are doing. Well even if you aren't, I am going to show you. You want to to know why? Because I am excited. Excited about the fact that I bought these seeds from a small Ontario seed supplier, planted them, watched them grow, transpanted them, watered them and soon they will be big enough to start hardening off and be planted outside.

And then they will grow, get staked, produce tomatoes and I will make jam. Lots and lots of glorious tomato jam.

86 is a nice number

Part of what I find fascinating since I started my blog is looking at the stats. How many people come to my blog, where they come from, what are they interested in reading. It could be because I work in Digital Marketing and I am always looking at those types of numbers for clients.

Today I had 86 unique visitors to my site. That is a pretty nice number I think for a girl who is just blogging about jam :).

So this is just to say thank you...to the 86 people who thought I had something interesting enough to check out. I hope what I have to say continues to keep your interest.

When It Rains, it pours

Not that I am complaining...seriously, this is all good news. But tonight I got reacquainted with an old saying 'when it rains, it pours'. I have flirted with this saying many times in the past - but it had been a while since I actually found myself muttering it to myself over and over again.

You see this weekend I am taking part in my first big craft show. The Made By Hand Show where you will find me at Booth #64. So for the past few weeks I have been going to the commercial kitchen and building up my inventory, getting a gorgeous 8ft banner printed for my booth, adhering labels to my jars, printing off information pamphlets, buying crackers for sampling and generally just getting the 'house in order' so to speak.

And now here comes the 'when it rains it pours bit', I get an email order for my preserves from a great little store in Collingwood and then tonight while I am stirring jam with one hand, responding to emails with the other, the phone rings and I pick it up with my third hand...oh right, I don't actually have one of those. But I digress...the phone rings and it is a call to let me know that Reesor Farm Kitchens wants to repeat their order from last month.

In one breath I am yelling 'yahoo' and in the next in honour of my friend Cori Sandler, I am saying 'oy vey!'

It's gonna be a busy month. :)

Justin Hill made me cry

Now before any of my male friends decide to jump to my defense and hunt Justin Hill down and give him a once over, I should quickly express that it wasn't really his fault. He probably doesn't even realize that this woman he met once has been reduced to tears because of him.

I met him last month at the UTSC Farmer's Market. I spotted him very early on as he was setting up his table. His bright red juicy tomatoes were calling me from afar. But as circumstance would have it my booth was so busy that I didn't have time to go over to his table til later in the day and he only had one small basket of juicy red tomatoes left. He did however have quite a few onions left. Ontario grown onions that would be perfect in my Garlic Onion Jam.

Cutting these onions was like nothing I have ever experienced before. They were so fresh, so juicy and so tear inducing that just 2 onions in and tears were streaming down my face. They are also perhaps the most flavourful onions I have cooked with. Justin Hill...you haven't seen the last of me!

A Long Time in the Making

About 6 months ago I started down this preserving path. Turning it from something I did for friends for Christmas gifts into something just a little bit more serious. I still don't know where it will lead, but everytime I go into the kitchen, whether it is on a Saturday morning bright and early when my body wishes I could have stayed in bed for a few more hours or in the evening after what has already been a long day at work - I find myself energized and excited.

This morning was no exception. When my alarm went off I groaned and rolled over wanting to keep sleeping but then I remembered that I was going to the kitchen. That this would be where I would be spending my morning.

And on top of that...that today would be the first time I would be using my new jars. Not only did I finally get my order of nice new jars from Richard's Packaging, I had also gotten a new size jar, a nice small jar perfect for sample sizes.

I got right to work making Ginger Jelly and then Apple Early Grey Jelly. I spend hours in the kitchen mixing, stirring, boiling, sterilizing, ladling, and pretty much smiling my face off.

Once I was done I rushed home. I wanted to see how my BRAND NEW PACKAGING would look and I have to say I love it. I can't wait to get back in and make tomato basil jam because these new jars look damn sexy!