Today's challenge - can I turn all these bottles of adult beverages into jelly?
I scored 35 half-pint jars at the thrift store this week. I have a couple dozen pint jars too. I may have to make a sugar run.
Alcohol jelly
Ingredients
3 1/2 cups wine
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 (2 ounce) package dry pectin
4 1/2 cups white sugar
Directions
Combine wine, lemon juice, and pectin in a large
saucepot. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Add sugar, stirring until
dissolved. Return to a rolling boil. Boil hard 1 minute, stirring
constantly. Remove from heat. Skim foam off top, if necessary.
Ladle hot jelly into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/2
inch headspace. Tighten 2 piece lids. Process for 5 minutes in boiling
water bath.
My contributions to all the holiday parties I've been attending this holiday season have been some of my homemade jellies, along with crackers and goat cheese, and they seem to have been a big hit. They're absurdly simple to make, too! I tried my hand at a merlot jelly first, and a pomegranate jalapeno variety as well. They both work off the same basic recipe:
4 cups liquid 4 cups sugar 1/2 cup lemon juice 1 package powdered pectin
That's it for the wine! Whisk the pectin into the sugar, bring the liquid to a gentle roil, whisk in the sugar/pectin mixture, bring back to a boil and let cook for 5 minutes, can and boil in a water bath for 5-10 minutes. For the pepper jelly, just a couple extra steps. Split and seed 10 jalapenos (and 2-4 habaneros if you want extra kick) and simmer in the juice for 10 minutes, strain out the peppers, and then again, whisk in the sugar, simmer, can, boil, yadda yadda. I ended up doing a second batch after I blew through the first (each yielded about six 1/2 pint jars), so instead of merlot wine the second time around I used mead.
A cracker, smeared with goat cheese, and a dollop of gourmet jelly on top? Heaven!
Canning season, that is. I fell out of the habit the last couple of years, but in Christmases past I'd give tasty sweet things for presents to my coworkers, jams and lemon curd. I've decided I need to start up again, so am getting a head start. Tonight's accomplishment: 15 8-oz jars of papaya strawberry mango jam:
Next - bragging over a fun find. I dropped into one of my favorite antique stores during lunch yesterday and they'd just put out a bunch of antique keys, including some little bitty ones:
Ooooh, am I going to have fun with these!
Still continuing to get new pieces in the store. 38 days till Christmas!
Day one of busy weekend. Today, I rousted the family out of bed (husband) and away from the Saturday morning cartoons (munchkin), and we headed up to Seattle for the University Street Fair. After we had our respective toasty beverages, a double short latte for the husband, a chai for myself, and a hot chocolate for mini-me, we wandered up and down University Avenue to see the sights. We got there as it was just getting started, and not everyone was completely set up yet, but we also avoided the crowds and got a parking space just two blocks over, so it was a good trade-off.
There are a few pictures posted to my flickr photo album here, but the favorites went to my deviantart account.
My favorites we didn't actually see at the fair itself, but on the side road where we were parked. There was a wonderful flowering bushy plant:
Unfortunately, he couldn't find his business cards, and I can't match him up with any of the vendors listed on the fair's site.
We had to check out the vendors at the farmers' market, and I finally got a shot of the water tanks that catch the rainwater off the top of the University Heights center:
And now we're home, and the husband has mowed the back yard, and we have some wild-caught fresh ahi tuna steaks for the grill, and I also managed to make a new necklace and a batch of blackberry jam:
