Fall Preparation

School started again, so I, Gillian, have a good excuse as to why I haven't posted in a while. Everyone else is just slacking. Anyway, this morning we had such a good breakfast that it was gone before it could be photographed: giant popover with poached pear and quince. Mind your p's and q's! I used a recipe from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors, which seems to be my cookbook of the moment. I also failed to photograph last night's pot pie. It makes me very happy that pot pie season has arrived! But I did take a picture of this back-to-school feast that I made a week ago. The pear and quince frangipane tart was the star of the show, but we also deliciously used up a ton of kale in potato-kale soup and Jenn's famous massaged kale salad.


Theresa and I were motivated by rain-free but distinctly cool weather to move a couple of tomato plants into the greenhouse to see how long we can keep the tomatoes ripening. I dug out some potatoes that had been very ill-treated all season, from when I accidentally let them sprout in the cupboard, to throwing them out in a dark corner of the garden to fend for themselves, to deciding that even that location was destined for more glorious plants and planting tomatoes much too close to the potatoes. I got a whole big bowlful of potatoes from only two much-abused plants, which I think is pretty good! We also did our first planting of garlic--about 20 heads. I'd like to plant at least that much more, but we are out of garden space until we pull out the rest of our tomatoes, and they're still producing.

All in a Day's Work

I, Gillian, am spending a big portion of my school vacation filling our pantry with homemade canned goods. 23 jars of Green Tomato Chutney + 5 jars of Poached Quince Slices in Vanilla Syrup + 5 jars of Blackberry-Oregon Grape-Blue Elderberry Cordial = 1 whole day spent in the kitchen + 33 jars of success. I also made a byproduct that is more exciting than the products--a quart jar of gorgeous pink quince juice, sweetened with the leftover vanilla syrup, which I hope can keep me from getting sick this winter.

When I lived in Japan, one of my friends was Araki-sensei, a retired Home Ec teacher and a wonderful person who was involved in everything in our little town. She took me to restaurants, helped me buy brown rice directly from a friend of hers, taught me how to behave at the onsen, and took me with her to cooking lessons at the town community center. She also gave me some of her homemade preserves, which were usually medicinal. Preserved kinkan (kumquats) were for a sore throat (they made your mouth numb, so they worked!); karin hachimitsu (quince honey) was to prevent colds. As far as I could tell, it was sliced raw quince in honey, which then diluted the honey with quince juice, and then the resulting mixture fermented a bit. You were supposed to take an ounce or so in a glass of hot water every day. I got colds anyway, but it tasted good.