making "sweetie mint" (or mint syrup)

our landlord came by a few weeks ago and wasn't cool with the grey gardens-esque look of the property, so i committed to weeding all of the flower beds. so far i've been a bit overwhelmed by the task and have only completed the beds around the back deck (gout weed anyone?). at this point, the front garden has completely grown over the ornamental piece of antique farm equipment in the centre. i thought i'd start by cutting back some of the mint and making a mint syrup for iced tea, lemonade and mint juleps. add bourbon and crushed ice to this concoction, and you have yourself a delicious summer bevvie. there are lots of ways to use your garden mint - emily sent me this post that has a mint pesto recipe that i'm going to try this weekend. booyahkasha!

preserving the harvest

been doing a bit more preserving. my mom, sister and i picked up a flat of strawberries and a basket filled with asparagus (split between the two of us) at a farmer's market in london last week. i turned half of the strawberries into jam early this week with leah's help and brooke did the same with the rest later on, with some black pepper added.

jam was new territory to me but it went pretty smoothly. i mean, i'm pretty sure strawberry jam is almost a no-fail, especially when you're making the over-sugared, pectin filled variety straight out of the Bernadin book of home preserving. the asparagus however...a bit of a nightmare. because my mom and i had split the basket, i didn't have quite enough for the recipe, but i thought no big deal! this isn't a jelly, these are PICKLES. no problem! very wrong. i'm still a bit confused about what happened but somehow i ended up with not enough liquid to fill the jars and so have just these two measly jars of pickled asparagus and a tupperware filled with some much less pickled & unpreserved.

oh well. this was once again from the Bernadin cookbook and though i haven't cracked either one of these puppies open, the ones in the tupperware taste like they will be a little sweet for my liking. they did have some good tips though, like putting your asparagus into the jar floret side down so that you don't make a mess of them trying to get a spear out to snack on. we had spicy pickled asparagus from Hy Hope a couple of weeks ago (the inspiration for this undertaking, actually) that were head side up and they were so delicate that they pretty much disintegrated when jostled by a fork or someone's finger (mostly alnis's fingers...).

 if anyone reads this and has a recommendation for a great preserving cookbooks, please pass it on :)

foraging for lady herbs

last week the red clover was blossoming on our li'l ol' sideline, so emily, alnis, esker and I all went picking blossoms for red clover tea and tincture. the blossoms are still drying, and the tincture is still soaking, but wise herbalists have told us that red clover is a delicious way to improve circulation, strengthen bones in pre-menopausal women, relieve symptoms of pms, and improve breast health. I'm not sure we harvested enough, but I hope to drink the tea daily once the blossoms have fully dried and I'll post the effects I feel in the comments section of this post. Shout out to Nicole and Laura for your herbal wisdom:)

eggs eggs eggs

we think that all of our chickens (there are 8) have started laying. wahoo! happy chickens.

rosemary rhubarb lemon syrup

i was trying to think of fun gifts for my little sister's 19th birthday last week and got inspired by the lemon rosemary rhubarb spritzers kate made last week using this recipe. i went for it.

the sour lemon helped tone down the sweetness of all the sugar and the savory rosemary complimented the rhubarb, leaving us with a very interesting and intensely flavoured drink. we ended up having it with vodka & soda (it was a birthday party, after all) but it as great sans alcohol as well. i would love to try it with prosecco or some other sparkling wine next time!

yum. i love finding new ways to use my favourite produce (i'm talking to you, rhubarb. next up: sweet & sour rhubarb pickles).

happy solstice!

garage sailing

last weekend was the annual town wide garage sale in claremont. we were there by 8am and weren't done until 1pm. the treasures that we scored were rivaled only by those scored during the roncesvalles yard sale day, 2010. we met our neighbor there with her 2 grand daughters, a women who was selling rag rugs for $20, and an amazing gardener selling home grown perennials and herbs. then when a certain husband left my wallet at the bank machine, it was promptly returned to me by friendly claremontites. we. love. that. town. if you're not the jealous type, take a gander at our new most prized possessions.

spring foraging + preserving

brooke and i have a goal of making at least one preserve a week, all summer long. this may prove to be difficult because we're trying to do without buying what needs to be preserved and we aren't sure what we have access to that we can preserve this week. have you found any patches of wild asparagus lately that we could get our hands on? or rhubarb? 

last week we tried violet jelly and lilac jelly, both firsts for the two of us...and neither of them set. wah wah. granted, i made a mistake with the violet jelly (too much liquid...not paying attention. bah!) but what happened to the lilac one is a mystery. now we have two delicious floral syrups which fortunately taste delicious with lemon juice, vodka and ice - mmm. 

ah well, we're beginners. if i can nose out some more lilacs with esker later on today, we'll try again and this time be more careful with boiling times. 

for the lilac "jelly" we used this recipe. i looked at a lot of different recipes and they were all very similar. i chose this one because we only had one package of certo and the other ones were for bigger batches. the lilac syrup really has that strong floral perfume-like quality of the flower.

for the violet recipe i used this one. the violet flavour isn't very strong though the colour is beautiful!

brooke made some labels for the lilac "drink mix" using the 'water-slide decal' technique in christine schmidt's (of yellow owl workshop) AWESOME book Print Workshop. we're going to have to get some jars unadorned by raised designs because the sticker obviously doesn't mold very well over all the bumps and ridges, but no matter. i cannot wait to do more of the projects in this book, they look incroyable. yup.