There Is No Internet At Sea.

And not much on board ship.  Slooooow doesn’t begin to cover it.  But as most of the people on the ship are about a hundred years old I doubt it’s a problem.  For them.  So I will try to catch you up:

Getting Here

“Bad news” Wally said the day before our vacation was to start.  “On the leg from New York to Berlin they give our seats away 90 minutes before the flight leaves.  So it’s conceivable that we won’t have any seats, and there’s no flight to Berlin until the next day.  Since we still need to get to Copenhagen, and since the ship leaves the day after we arrive, we’re screwed.”

“Great news” I said.  “So let’s go tonight.  We can grab a hotel near the airport in NY and get half a night’s sleep...”

Half an hour after I got home we were on the way to the airport.   At warp speed.  We made all the flights - barely.  

Maybe we do live a charmed life...  

Disneyland With Beer

It stays light in Copenhagen well past eleven.  We were enchanted with the evening, strolling through Tivoli Gardens, listening to the Danish Beyonce, riding all the scary rides (you should see the bruise on my arm from the roller coaster.  Safety tip: never take the outside seat.)

Try the Star Flyer - it’s like a swing set in the round.  At 500 feet up.  The guy behind us chickened out. Not us - Whee!!!

Wally downloaded my photos to his ipad and erased them, so you'll have to check with him for a really cool photo.

There are little white kiosks sprinkled thru Tivoil, about the size and shape of a fridge.  There’s an indentation about five feet up, it looks a bit like the water-thru-the-door thingie at home.  But these are beer kiosks!  No ID required - if you can reach the indentation you get your cup filled.  What a country!

Off To A Good Start

There is this delicious Danish yoghurt-ish stuff called tykmaelk.  We have it with organic, local, biodynamic, blessed-by-the-reindeer granola.  Yum.  Remind me to put pumpkin seeds in my granola.  I am addicted.  

Danes are the happiest people on earth thanks to three things: Political freedom, lack of corruption, and they don’t believe in decaf.  

We walk the pedestrian streets:

And check out the sights.  You can’t get near the mermaid except by sea:

Cupcakes are king here too:

We go to Nyehavn to take a canal tour.  One company has an open boat, nearly empty as it has been pouring off and on.  We go to the company with a covered boat: full.  We buy tickets for the next boat, and hot dogs:

And when the next boat arrives, the one we have tickets for is open.  And the one we don't have tickets for, the one that had the open boat before, has a lovely covered boat.  We dash for the covered boat.  Bob and Nancy take their chances in the open boat and come back looking like blue condoms - they bought ponchos on board - for the same price as a ticket on the covered boat.  

From the boat we see beautiful buildings with twisty towers:

Some you can even walk up:

More Copenhagen later, this glacial internet is making me crazy.

Overheard On The Street

Walking by the fish department at Lunardi's today, I overheard a woman asking a man, "Oh, I've always wondered about that.  How do you cook it?"  No idea what the food was, if it was fish or fowl.

And he replied "I don't.  I feed it to my turtle."

On so many levels.  Turtle?  Exactly how big is your turtle?  And feed it to him?  Is he a snapper?  a gentle soul?  How long have you had him, how old (the turtle not the man), is he your first?

I envision a painted-shell turtle from a childhood birthday now the size of an ottoman, the paint long ago worn off,  lumbering around this man's apartment, he having given up his dreams of marriage and children for the care and feeding - and companionship - of the turtle.  And perhaps he considers it a fair trade...I know a fair number of women, some married, who could not hold their own against a turtle.  Perhaps not even during its hibernation.

I love Leah Garchik, love the Public Eavesdropping shaded box in the middle of her column.  My current favorite, yellowing and taped to the kitchen wall:  "My parents didn't really raise me with manners.  They didn't want to stifle me as a person."

A little more stifling, please God.

From a recent Leah Garchik column:

Public Eavesdropping

"She's really smart, she just can't handle nonstructured situations. Like life."

Man to woman, overheard at Southpaw BBQ on Mission by Clint Wilder

What's the funniest thing you've overheard lately?

Friday

Have you ever felt this way?

It's Friday.  In your life.  No one's going to do it for you, you're in charge.  Enough with the emails, get yourself down to your local independent bookstore (like Rakestraw) and buy yourself something.

And a final thought for those of you who are saying "I don't have time, I don't read fiction, I don't have time to read anything"...

A Marriage Made In Heaven

I’ve been making jam since Neva Westfall taught us how in 7th grade Home Economics class (another time and place, dear).  The boys took wood shop and I’m pretty sure they’re not still wood-shopping their little hearts out.  At least for the sake of their home decor, I hope not.

But I still make jam and jelly - cranberry and pomegranate jellies in the winter, peach jam with a hint of nutmeg at the height of summer.  Blood orange marmalade from the oranges we grow  - organic, of course.  (See my post on marmalade for the recipe.  And the how-to.)  

But I have never had the reaction to anything I make that I get to the strawberry rhubarb jam.  

“Best Thing I’ve Ever Put In My Mouth” a dear friend says.  “Awesome!” says Liberty, my youngest cooking pal.   I’ve had calls from friends, from 8 to 88, asking if there is any left, if they can have just one more jar.  

Fat red strawberries, sweet with a hint of tartness to keep them from being sappy, and thick red stalks of rhubarb have been at Lunardi’s (and in the farmer’s markets) for a few weeks, but they’re almost over.  And while you can find strawberries (of uncertain quality) later in the season and in the freezer all year, rhubarb is leaving.  You can’t make this jam without it, and I was disappointed with the quality of jam made with the rhubarb I chopped and froze last year.  Thought I could outfox mother nature.  Not.

I dare you not to eat it with a spoon.   Double dare.

So before Strawberry and Rhubarb seasons are over (and isn’t it nice the seasons coincide?) I am making enough strawberry rhubarb jam to have on my toast, and to share.  And just because I think it would be great over ice cream, but the jam sets up hard and fast, I am making a strawberry rhubarb compote.  Inspired by David Lebovitz’s blog.  Check it out.  His recipe is way more complicated, I am in love with mine.

It’s basically jam without the pectin, and since I’m not worrying about it setting I cut back on the sugar - part of rhubarb’s charm is its tartness.  I’m thinking over home-made vanilla ice cream, or a spoonful stirred into a  tall glass of soda water on a hot summer day, sipped by the pool (or in the pool if it’s really hot).

So here are the two recipes:

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

You will need half-pint canning jars, a water-bath canner and a canning rack (or a towel on the bottom of the pot, but that's complicated) for this recipe.  Jar tongs and long silicone potholder/gloves help too.  Check out the photos on my marmalade post.  Oh, and a heavy-bottomed pot to cook the jam.

4 cups diced rhubarb - just the red part, not the leafy bits

4 cups ripe strawberries, hulled (that means cut off the top leafy bit)

4 cups sugar, divided

1 box Sure-Jell No Sugar Needed Pectin (pink box)

1/2 teaspoon butter - not margarine.  Throw that stuff away.

Before you start, wash and sterilize (I run them thru the dishwasher) 8 or 9 half pint jars with two part lids - canning jars.  Separate the lids and rings, cover the lids with boiling water.  Set the rings aside.  And put your water-bath canner on to heat.  I start with the hottest tap water I can get, you're not cooking pasta, you're not eating the water, so who cares?   And it cuts down on the time it takes to come to a boil.  

I start the canner before I start chopping fruit.  Don't start cooking the jam until the water in the canner is boiling!!!  It takes a lot longer than you think, and you don't want the jam to cool or it won't process properly.  Plus you could end up with one huge congealed mass of strawberry rhubarb stuck in the pot.  Not pretty.

Chop the rhubarb, hull the strawberries (see the little leafy tops? Cut them off and throw them in the compost.)

In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup of the sugar into the pectin.  Put this and the strawberries and rhubarb into a big heavy pot (Dutch oven sized, this will boil up), mix in the pectin and crush the strawberries a bit with a potato masher.

Add the little bit of butter - this will help keep the jam from foaming.  With apologies to Ferran Adria of El Bulli, I'm looking for jam, not molecular gastronomy.  

Bring the mixture to a full rolling boil - a boil that can't be stirred down.  Pour in the remaining sugar, bring back to a rolling boil and boil for Exactly One Minute.  No more, no less.

Immediately ladle into hot clean dry jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space.   Wipe the tops and threads of the jars, top with lids, screw on the rings and hand-tighten. Firmly.  

Put jars in a canning rack and lower into water bath.  Process for 10 minutes.

Remove jars, place on a towel (if you put them on granite or marble they may crack). and let cool.  The lids should suck down with a ping!  Store any jars that don't seal (there won't be any) in the fridge and use them first.

Eat.  Share.  Make more.
Makes about 8 half pint jars

Strawberry Rhubarb Compote

4 cups diced rhubarb - just the red part, not the leafy bits

4 cups ripe strawberries, hulled (that means cut off the top leafy bit)

3 1/2 cups sugar, divided

1/2 teaspoon butter - not margarine.  Throw that stuff away.

Prepare jars and water bath as above.  

Put strawberries, rhubarb, sugar and butter in a large heavy-bottomed pot.  Bring to a rolling boil, boil for about 5 minutes or until slightly thickened but still quite runny (it gets thicker as it cools) and remove from heat.

Fill jars and water-bath as above.
Makes about 8 half-pint jars.

Bad Hair Day

More than twenty years ago, I spent my last $400 on this.  It was money I'd saved to run away from home, to get a divorce and get my life back.  And there, in a sand stream, in the middle of the San Francisco Landscape Garden Show, was this time-washed face, carved by Marcia Donahue.

It is the face my mother draws still, the face of my childhood, the face of love notes and cards and cheery mornings with our all-girl family.  It graced my mother's grocery lists, our birthday cards, reminders taped to the back door (turn off the teakettle. watch for barn owls. get milk.)

And there it was.  It was the last unsold boulder in her sand stream.  The features are faint; you can only see them in oblique light.  How Marcia found my mother's drawings and translated them into stone  is still a mystery.  I have another of her sculptures now, a huge tranquil face purchased much later, made just for me.. It sits just outside my kitchen window.  I love it, it calms me.  But this one spoke to me like a jolt to the heart.

The problem was, it had never found a comfortable place in my garden.  At the base of the dogwood it just looked like a stone.  Propped against a hedge it became a doorstop.  It had never found a home - until now.

I was cleaning up for a party and I had the stone tucked under my arm, looking - again - for the perfect place, a place where it would feel right.  Look right.  Be comfortable.  Sit well.

As I walked past the Miscanthus in an old galvanized pail (trash can), I pulled out some spent pansies with my spare hand, and left a big lot of bare dirt in the pot.  Front and Center.  Oops.

So I set the face in the bare spot and went inside, and when I walked out the door later her smile stopped me in my tracks.  She is perfect.

Thank you mommy.  For all the sandwiches, filling up to the edges and cut on the diagonal.  For fevers weathered together, for fudge beaten on the back steps.  For sleeping outside all summer, for dresses loaned (and sometimes ruined - sorry!) for skirts altered for cello recitals.  For perfume removed from purple prom dresses.  For always being there.  With a smile.  I adore you.  You are my best friend.  I love you so much.

Marmalade Skies

In a burst of enthusiasm - a big garden! unlimited space! (well not really, but that, as Des says, is a Whole 'Nother Oprah) I planted a bunch of citrus trees.

Since I'd been making marmalade for years and buying blood oranges (I know, I know, Seville oranges, but wait 'til you taste this! and the color is divine).

Anyway, as I was saying before I got carried away, I got a bit carried away (not me!) and I planted three blood orange trees.  One Tarocco, one Sanguinelli (even the name sounds bloody) and one Moro.  What I didn't know is that they would all come ripe at the same time.  Maybe not in your garden, but here?  Yes.  Definitely.   And since they're more than ten years old, we get a lot of oranges.

So I have been making marmalade.  Lots and lots of marmalade.  With Cathy, my partner in Jam (the most fun), by myself late at night - inevitably the batch you start latest takes the longest to finish.  That must be Murphy's Law Of Marmalade.  You heard it here first.

I started with a recipe and I've changed it  over the years to suit my taste.  Feel free to do the same.  If your turns out better (not bloody likely) let me know, share your tips.

So! Four pounds of oranges...

...organic and from a nearby garden if possible.  Washed, stem buttons removed.

Yes there will be a recipe.  Patience please.  Cover whole oranges in the kettle with water and simmer until easily pierced with a fork.  Forgot to photograph that part.  But if you can't do that part without a photo you probably should back slowly out of the kitchen and take up needlepoint.  On second thought try something that doesn't involve sharp objects.

Back to the marmalade...Let the fruit cool, in the juice or out.  Drain them (save that juice in the pan!) slice them thinly, removing the pits, add four pounds of sugar, and cook until a candy thermometer registers 221 (at sea level.  9 degrees above the boiling point of water, the original recipe said, but I've never made these above 600 feet in elevation, so you're on your own,  Sorry.)

As you can see, they cook down quite a bit...

As you're cooking any pits you've missed will float to the top.  Different specific gravity.  Who knew there would be a physics lesson?  Plus the pits have a very red base so they're easy to see.  I fish them out with a teaspoon, the wooden spoon just chases them around.  So high school.

Look how many I missed when I was slicing!

I also took out a rather unattractive orange bottom.  How would you like to see that on your toast?  Could put you off marmalade for life.  Not good.

When you've made this a few times, you can tell by the thickness of the syrup when to start paying attention to the thermometer.  Not that I've ever burned anything...not me.

Fill hot clean jars  - I use the dishwasher, first to clean, then on the plate warm cycle to keep the jars hot.  Cold jars will crack.  Trust me on this one.  And if you don't have a canning funnel, get one.

Wipe the rims with a damp towel - I use paper.

Put on the lids, tighten the rings.  Pretty tight - you don't want the jam leaking out.  Just the air.

I still use a canning rack, even tho the little jogs in the handle that supposedly let you hang the rack half-out of the boiling water are actually just there to tip the jars over when you lower them into the water and the handles have to come in.  Machiavelli must have made marmalade.  Or canning racks.

So into the boiling water they go...

I have these handy silicone mitts my friend Pam gave me.  I don't think I could get the jars in the water bath and all standing upright (very important!) without the mitts.  Thank you Pam.

And you can see the handles trying to tip over the jars.  Honestly, does anyone who designs this stuff actually test drive it?  Apparently not.

Ten minutes in the water bath, then onto a towel to cool.  If you put them directly on a granite or marble counter you risk cracking the jars, and after all this work I'm not taking any chances.

Another dozen jars of marmalade.  It's actually deeper in color and prettier than the photo but it's late and I'm too tired to fuss with the photo.

Home grown, home made.  Delicious, and properly sealed so you can store them in the wine cellar.  Won't your husband be thrilled!  Or in the pantry.  Not as much fun.

Sometimes I add some Scotch.   This time I meant to add Irish Whiskey but I forgot - it goes into the kettle at the end, after all the cooking, and if you're like me, things get a bit chaotic then - looking for lids and jar rings and tongs, taking the hot jars out of the dishwasher and burning my fingers...you get the idea.

So here - finally - is the recipe.  Oh, and check out the labels available at My Own Labels.com!

Classic Orange Marmalade

You must have a candy thermometer to make this.  !!!

4 pounds blood oranges

1 large lemon

8 cups water (more or less)

8 cups (4 pounds) sugar

1/4 cup good single-malt scotch or Irish Whiskey (optional)

Wash the lemon and oranges well.  Cut off the woody bit where they were attached to the tree, put them in a large non-reactive dutch-oven sized pan, add enough water to cover and simmer until tender enough to be pierced with a fork.

Let the fruit cool.  If you remove it from the juice it's less messy to slice because it's less juicy, but I am lazy and let them cool in the juice. 

When the fruit is cool, cut them in half the long way, remove and discard the seeds, and slice thinly.  Before you start slicing, put your boiling water bath canner on to heat, because it's going to take a lot longer than you think.

Return the oranges, lemon and the juice to the kettle and bring to a boil. 

Add the sugar and continue cooking, stirring as needed to prevent scorching, until the candy thermometer reads 221 degrees. (see above for above sea level)

Immediately remove from heat, and if you are adding scotch, pour it in now. It will foam up and boil off the alcohol. Stir until the fuss dies down.

Ladle into hot sterilized jars with two piece lids.  Put on the lids and process for 10 minutes in boiling water bath.  Makes about a dozen half pint jars.

Multi-Tasking

Our Italian class came over for dinner a few nights ago -it was a potluck in the garden.  An Italian potluck in the garden.  Highly recommended.  Much less stress for the hosts, fabulous new recipes.  Laughter, stories, more laughter.  What's not to like?

Margaret was standing in the kitchen leaning against the counter, talking to Barbie about multi tasking.  I was taking lasagna out of the oven, pulling serving spoons out of a drawer, only half listening.  Until I heard her say: "Hey, when I sneeze, I pee.  And if that's not multi-tasking, I don't know what is."

We all cracked up.

It's good to have friends.  It's great to have friends who bring dinner.  And Gina Stearly's Italian class - it's the best.  Here's to you.