Tim and Jen Live Here

Holy crap! Where did the first half of 2009 go? I know I saw it around here somewhere just a minute ago . . .

As usual, I spent a significant chunk of that time reading or listening to books. A brief summary of what I’ve read so far this year, with a few highlights of books I’ve loved:

• 34 books read
• 39 books listened
• new author challenge – should have read 25 new authors to meet goal
• new author challenge – I started out slowly, but I actually got exactly 25 in the first half of the year!

Up next – I’ve got a lot of books lined up, but I’m particularly excited to read the next installments in series by Leslie Langtry and Toni McGee Causey. Also, I realized that between following authors on Twitter and reading authors’ blogs, I’ve got a LONG list of authors I follow whose books I’ve never actually read. I’ll remedy at least a few of those in the New Author Challenge in the second half of 2009.

Highlights:

I keep reading the Troubleshooters books by Suzanne Brockmann and absolutely loving them. All of them. I also enjoyed my second book by her husband, Diary of a Serial Killer, by Ed Gaffney. He writes seriously good thrillers. I recently found out the two of them co-wrote a play being performed in NYC next spring. My mom and I are strongly considering taking a trip there to shop for dresses to wear to my brother’s wedding next summer. Of course, we’ll go when the play is being performed and see it!

I finally read the last two books by Lani Diane Rich that were on my bookshelf and awaiting a read – Maybe Baby and The Comeback Kiss. They’re a pair, and I loved them both. Fun, sexy romps in the world of bird thievery and wine making. So enjoyable!

As far as listening goes, I love anything written by Neil Gaiman, and if he narrates the audiobook, so much the better. This year, that translated to Coraline and The Graveyard Book for me. Both were wonderful. I listened to and loved my first Terry Pratchett book – Going Postal. I also was introduced to Ariana Franklin and Garth Stein, both of whom will be featured when I get caught up on the new author challenge posts.

Finally, though I could definitely have lived without the prologues in which an old man tells of the stories to little children (and you realize that these are very explicit, hot, sexy stories), I could listen to Dick Hill read anything. I really enjoyed his reading of the Circle Trilogy books by Nora Roberts

For those of us who did not grow up with a mother, grandmothers, aunts, neighbors who canned the year’s harvest in order to eat well over the winter, the concept of canning can be a bit scary. But in my desire to eat more seasonally and more locally, I decided last year to jump in with both feet and see what this canning business was all about. I bought Ball’s Home Preserving Book – a wonderfully complete guide to canning – as well as the necessary equipment, then started out small – canning applesauce and tomato-based pasta sauce. Tomatoes and apples were both in abundance in late summer and early fall, so they were logical choices.

The applesauce is wonderful, and the tomato sauce was pretty good. We ate it all, so it couldn’t have been too bad, but the recipe I found called for cinnamon and nutmeg, and those just didn’t quite work for me. Still, I’ll do both again later this year, but I’ll need a new pasta sauce recipe first.

This year I’ve been canning rhubarb. So far, everything I’ve canned has required only hot-water-bath canning. I bought a pressure canner in the hopes of expanding my canning repertoire, but you can do hot-water-bath canning with a large stock pot that has a lid.

The key issue when using water-bath-canning is the pH of your finished product. Fruits tend to be highly acidic (low pH), so they are unlikely to develop people-harming bacteria after canning. For less acidic foods, a pressure canner allows you to boil water at a higher temperature than normal, killing off more of those bacteria during processing. If you live at high altitudes where water boils at a lower temperature than 212F you may need to consult local canning guides for food safety. But here’s my process for canning highly-acidic rhubarb sauce using a water bath.

Start with a large pot full of chopped rhubarb. Bonus points if the pot is really pretty. Consult your recipe, then head to the grocery store after realizing you forgot to buy more sugar after you used it all up during your last baking effort. Finally arrive back home and add the desired quantity of sugar. I don’t remember the numbers now, but recipes are plentiful in books and online. Let them sit for a few minutes so the sugar can draw the juices out, then cook until the rhubarb is nice and saucy.

Meanwhile, assuming your stove is large enough, you can process both the jars and the lids to make them safe for canning. The size of your canning pot will determine the number of jars you can process at once. Fill it up with cans, then both surround and fill the cans to about 3/4 full with water. Turn up the burner heat and bring the water to near a boil, but don’t actually boil. Then, shut off the heat. Do the same with the lids to the jars. It’s not necessary to process the screw-on jar lids.

When your rhubarb sauce (or whatever you’re canning) is fully cooked, remove the jars from the water using a jar lifter (seen in the left of this photo).Dump the water back into the canning pot and place the jars on the counter. Use a canning funnel (the big, brown, plastic thing inside one of the jars) to assist in filling the jars to the recommended level in your recipe. In this case, the recipe called for 1/4″ headspace – or filling to 1/4″ from the top of the jar. The other recommended equipment I haven’t yet mentioned, but that can also be seen in the photo, is a glass of wine. If you’re going to spend your evening in the kitchen, why not enjoy a glass of wine?

You can use a magnet or any non-metallic gripping-type device to remove the lids from the pot of water you almost-boiled them in. After wiping the jar tops down, place a lid on each and finger-tighten the screw bands in place. There’s no need to wrench them firmly in place. The magic of physics will cause the lids to seal when they’re boiled and cooled with or without the screw bands.

Place the lidded jars back into your water bath and add water, if necessary, to make sure the water level is at least 1″ above the top of the jars. Place the lid on your canning pot and turn the heat up high. Bring the water to a full boil and allow to boil for 10 minutes. Turn off the burner and let the jars sit in the water for 5 more minutes. Remove, again with the jar-lifter, and set on the counter to cool. You should hear a very satisfying pop as each jar seals. If any jar fails to seal after 24 hours, either re-process (see your canning cookbook for specifics) or refrigerate and eat quickly.

Finally, prepare to do this all over again with strawberry preserves, since strawberries are the next great in-season bit of produce. And don’t worry when, once again, you’re all ready to start the canning process and realize that you’ve used up all your sugar making rhubarb sauce. Just squash and measure the strawberries and put everything else on hold until tomorrow. At least, that’s what I’m doing. Tomorrow, I’ll be canning strawberry preserves.

I had hoped to get to this posting closer to when I actually read the book, but I’m still behind schedule. So first, let me just say that I loved this book. It was one that I was really looking forward to, and it did not disappoint.

Driving Sideways presents Leigh, who sets out on a road trip with her new kidney. She has few goals, but one of them is to meet her kidney donor’s family. Along the way, hijinx ensue (of course!) and we get to laugh as Leigh laughs, cries, gets angry, gets horrified, gets purse-snatched, gets lost, gets followed . . .

I found this book, I think, through a posting on Eileen Cook’s blog. It took me a while (always does) to get around to reading it, and then I couldn’t imagine what kept me from it for so long (never can). Jess Riley has a fabulous sense of humor, and it shows up repeatedly in this story. My very favorite line might be:

I hate when people call their parents “‘rents.” People who do are real ‘holes.

I fell further in author-love with Jess Riley reading her blog regularly. She’s just funny by nature, and I can’t wait for her next book.

Another report on my veggie share for the week. We’re still in “lotsa greens” season for another couple weeks probably, but I have pictures of those greens this week.

This week’s share includes:(clockwise – my apologies to anyone who read this before I deleted the “counter” from before clockwise – from lower left)green garlic, bunching onions, kale, lettuce, bok choi & mei quing choi (yeah, that’s new to me too), spinach, swiss chard, turnip greens, garlic scapes (the stems cut off to let the bulbs develop more), arugula, snow peas, parsley, radishes. And yes, that’s Roger’s butt on the left.

Curious about those long green things?The lighter green, more bulbous plant at the bottom is green garlic – young garlic before it starts forming bulbs. This may be the last week, as it’s really starting to mature in the field. The other is bunching onions, green onions, or scallions.

These are the chois. The white ones are bok choi. I cooked up some of the previous weeks’ bok choi and nearly vomited eating it. I need to find a better way to cook these this week!

Garlic scapes are so cool looking! We get them once when they cut off the garlic tops to allow the bulbs to develop better. I put some into my green custard tonight. The rest might go into salad or anything else. Taste is somewhere between garlic and onion, but mild.

But seriously, I don’t think there’s another vegetable more beautiful than northern lights swiss chard.The dark green leaves are frilly and curly and textured. The stems are bright white, yellow, red, so many beautiful colors. When I hold a bunch in my hand, I am in awe. Plus, it’s a really mild green that tastes good with very little enhancement.

Every year fighter jets and other planes congregate in Chicago to wow the masses gathered on the Lake Michigan waterfront. Watching rehearsals the day before the show is fabulous – planes fly in and out of the Chicago skyline, and you can see it from anywhere in the downtown area. Grab a drink at a rooftop bar, visit the animals in the Lincoln Park Zoo, take photos of the bean in Millennium Park – really cool planes will be there.

Last year we watched some of the air show action from the Hancock Observatory. If you’ve never been at eye-level with an approaching B-2 bomber, well, it’s an experience I can whole-heartedly recommend. She sneaks up on you out of nowhere!

Some photos from the 50th anniversary Chicago Air & Water Show.

Oak Street Beach is less popular this weekend, but still crowded enough.

Oh, wait. You wanted a crowded beach?

Have you always wanted to get married under fighter jets? Well, you know which weekend to book in Chicago.