My mother told me this would happen one day, and yesterday was that day. I have a friend who is always concerned with exploding jam jars, and while that is not what happened, we did have one break in the canner. My mom told me that you will know when it happens by the sound that it makes as you lower it into the hot water. I heard it, and it is a difficult sound to describe. I would say that the best description is that of glass popping in a fire, not really a shattering sound like I thought it would be. Annie and I heard it and wondered. We decided to process the jars and then see what was cracked when we took them out. After opening the lid on her canner we saw:



That is right, floating bruschetta sauce. It was a bit of a disappointment. I was, however grateful that we broke a small jar rather than one of the pints. We removed the jars and then fished out the broken jar.



Upon closer inspection, it seems like the jar was mismanufactured. The markings on the bottom of the jar do not seem to match up to other markings. They look off center. Here is the jar after the accident:



We chalked it up to the canning gods wanting a sacrifice for all of our good results. I am happy with that idea. A sacrificial jar of bruschetta sauce. Annie and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on her winter garden and then some knitting. It was a wonderful day of girl time. I really enjoyed myself. Today I am off for some household errands and then some sewing on Christmas presents. I also got some of the supplies I ordered for another gift yesterday. It all seems to be coming together for a better start to the holiday crafting season. I hope I can keep up the momentum and finish ahead of the mailing deadlines this year with ease!

This week is the official Canning Across America canning party week. While my family has been canning for as long as I can remember, it seems like it is becoming something interesting to others again, and I could not be happier. This week is filled with canning events and parties as well as classes. We are even having a session in Jack London Square in Oakland this weekend. Today,though I am having a private canning party with Annie again. We are tackling tomatoes as well as a yellow cherry tomato and ginger jelly. I am moving into new territory with the jelly part, seeing as the only jelly we ever made in my family was grape and the occasional wild black berry jelly. Here is my strawberry from this weekend. I love the deep color this batch seemed to take on. I also made it with out pectin, and I am enjoying the sloshiness I see in the jar versus the commercial pectin ones.



I also listed some more destash yesterday. They are jumprings, and while it is hard to make certain supplies look artful, I think I did an okay job.





Well I gotta run to catch my train. More canning pics tomorrow.

I have been so busy this late summer that I wonder when it is all going to slow down. I suppose it will not really happen until winter, and that brings its own time full of things to do. Last week was very busy with the rebuilding of the tent at 826 Valencia. I spent quite a while on Tuesday and Wednesday over there working on the massive project. More on that tomorrow with a detailed posting with pictures.

Thursday was spent teaching a friend all about canning. I am by no means an expert canner, and call on my mother and sister as well as another good friend for guidance often. They are all able to send me in the right directions. I BARTed out to where she could more easily get to me, and we headed out into the country for some farm stand goodness. I was happy to be out of the city for a day and enjoy seeing nothing around me but wind farms, brown grass, and fruit trees. There was even some corn fields to make me feel like I was back in Illinois. We found good peaches at one stand, and at another there was some of the famous Brentwood sweet corn that Annie assured me would be just as good as my missed peaches and cream variety from Illinois. She was right, it is just as good. At the stand where I got the corn, he also had these wonderful green variety of figs that are pretty common around this part of California. They have a sweet but smoky flavor, and I though they would be great for some jam. The farm owner, after realizing that I was making jam with them, brought us out a flat of figs that were too over ripe for selling at the stand but would be perfect for our cooking. Best of all, when I went to pay for the corn and figs, he gave us the 5 pounds of figs for free! I gave him a few dollars for them as I just could not take them with out giving something to him for the favor. I look forward to getting more corn from him soon!

Annie, being the food person that she is, wanted to learn to make jam not using the commercial pectin that we bought. I had not done that before and was willing to learn with a partner in cooking crime! We washed the figs off and blanched them for 10 minutes in boiling water to remove the natural wax and soften up the skins, which were already pretty soft.



From there, we opened up a bottle of wine and began destemming and rough chopping them up.



Then it was into the pot, adding a thermometer this time, and lots and lots of stirring. We learned the spoon test and also the cold saucer test for the jam. I found the spoon test to be very hard to learn, but the cold saucer really worked well. Before you start your jam, you place a couple of saucer in the freezer. Once your jam gets around 220 degrees Fahrenheit, you take a spoon of jelly and place it on one of the frozen plates and place that back in the freezer for three minutes. After that time, you run your finger through the middle of the jam puddle to look for correct jam texture for you. It was also nice because you got a preview of the finished product. Once the jam is at a proper jell for you, I like mine so that the two sides of the puddle do not come back together, you stop the cooking and start the canning. We ended up with five very full pints out of the free fruit.



We then moved on to cocktails and peach jam! We took less pictures of that one, but here I am stirring the pot of jam:



It was so fun! I also received some wonderful flowers this week from Dan. While I am not as great at arranging flowers as my mom, here was my attempt:



My flower arranging teacher in college said that when someone gets flowers for another person, they get them for anyone they pass by because seeing another person bringing flowers to someone brightens up the viewers day as well. I hope this brightens your day!

My posting is late today due in part to my need to use the light when I have it for pictures. I took several pictures for new hairflowers that I hope to list this week in the Etsy store. I am also going to list up more destash clasps and things that are great for jewelry makers out there. Today I am hopefully going to finish processing the rest of the bushel of apples in the new toy - a food dehydrator! It is fun and I love it. I am also going to get the house straightened around and cleaned a bit more. There is also fabric for Christmas presents to be tossed in the wash. Yes you read that right.... Christmas presents are going to be started waaaaaayyyy ahead this year so there will be less hair pulling and gnashing of teeth come December 20th. I want to make mailing deadlines before prices are through the nose again. Tomorrow I will have the tent wrap up finished with the pictures!

We ended up embarking on the trip to the apple fair in Sebastopol, California this weekend. It was in interesting drive up to the fair, and it took way longer than any time estimates said it would due to the heavy traffic, two hours one way! We were rewarded, though, with a fair right out of the midwest. It took the edge off missing our steam show and threshing bee that I have gone to most years since I was a child. This fair had some of the same things, the early gas engine displays and church groups selling delectable foods, animal shearing, but it also had the added benefit of selling, by the bushel, my new apple obsession: the gravenstein apple.

There was a train that pulled kids in homemade barrel cars:



And a maze made out of hay bails, which we could not go into because of my allergies to hay:



I even got to see a mohair sheep get shorn:



The biggest hit, besides Grandma's apple fritter stand, was the all you can drink yard of lemonade.





Dan and I loved this. After you bought your glass, you could drink as much lemonade as you wanted. The stand had two spigots coming out of it so it was serve yourself. The vendors would even fill up your glasses with more ice if you asked. It was a nice thing to be able to stay hydrated all day.

Once we came home, I started into applesauce making. We sorted the apples out into sauce and butter apples versus pie and eating apples. There were few apples with problems, and even those problems were small and only skin deep.



Dan would peel the apples while I cored and cut them up. We don't have a food mill, so we had to do this all the hard way, plus Dan likes chunky applesauce so a food mill is kind of out anyway. We put the apples in a pot with a little water and surprisingly little sugar due to how sweet they are naturally and let them all cook down.



I put the first two quarts full of this plain sauce into jars, and then I added some really nice cinnamon from Penzey's Spices into the pot to make two pints of cinnamon apple sauce. This way we can have plain or cinnamon when we want. We tend to eat more plain than cinnamon sauces, so it worked out nicely.



I hope that they work out. My mom said she always had a hard time keeping her applesauce jars sealed. I hope that these seals stick and that it does not go bad. We will have to see what time will bring. I will be monitoring them for the next week or so to see what develops, or hopefully does not develop!

Today I need to run to the fabric shops to gather some supplies for tomorrow's tent rebuild at 826 Valencia. I am also hoping to get some apple butter cooking away. First, though I need to call my sister, the apple butter queen, to get some recipe and technique advice. Hopefully I can get a hold of her soon! I also would like to get some more hand sewing done on those belts, so I can quit dragging my feet and get them listed. There is also some belt accessory experimentation that I need to do either today or tomorrow as well. So much to do in the late summer harvest season. Hopefully I can keep up the momentum and get a lot done this week!

I am up early today and feeling like I have already accomplished a ton even though that really is not the case. I used to be an early riser, a very early riser. When I was a teacher, I was up at 5 am each day to get to my job that was quite the hike from the house, but once we moved to California, I took on Dan's working hours. That means staying up late, 2 am ish, and then sleeping in till 8 or 9 if I am lucky. This has resulted in me feeling like I never get anything accomplished. Today, however, I got up with the rest of the civilized world at 7 am sharp. I had to meet the plumber who was replacing a broken fixture in our apartment, so being up and ready for the day was a must. There is just something though about being up and doing my computer work earlier that makes me feel like I have more of my day ahead of me. I just can't explain it.

Yesterday I dropped off the curtains at 826 Valencia, and while I took the camera to take a picture of the finished products, the hanging hardware was not in place yet. When I go back next week for tent reconstruction I will make sure to take plenty of pictures for the blog. I also got the apricot jam done. This is my best of the jams so far. I used a little less sugar than the recipe called for since the fruit is so ripe, and the texture of the jam is much better. It is not quite as stiff as the other things I have made.



I also used the half pint jars that I saved for this and apple butter. I have to say that while the pints will be good for applesauce, they seem just too big for jam. Perhaps when I have a bigger family they will see better, but the little jars are still my favorite.

The patio garden has been getting some visitors as of late:



We always get song birds and sparrows sitting on the railing, but lately two pairs of doves have come to visit. Sometimes they sit on the rail and do their preening; other times they come down on the deck and walk amongst the plants. It is always fun to watch the birds out the window when I need a sewing break.

Today in the shop, I am going to finish off correcting mistakes to the bottom ruffle of my personal skirt. Once that is finished, I am picking up one of the two belts that I started. I am leaning toward the upcycled one since that is closer to being finished. As soon as I need a break from that, I am going to write up some personal thank you notes that are long over due as well as a letter to my Grandmother that is also very tardy. I hope to make it to the Gravestien Apple Festival this weekend. It sounds like a mini Sycamore Steam Show Threshing Bee from Illinois, which I missed very much this year, but with an emphasis on apples instead of just steam. If that happens, I am going to see if I can buy a scant bushel of these apples for some apple butter and sauce. I have to say that the crisps made out of these was phenomenal. I meant to take a picture of them, but, well, they were immediately eaten. They are a really sweet but strong apple flavored fruit! Usually you get apple or sweet, but this is truly the best of both worlds. The canning will continue until I run out of jars and produce, or Dan calls a halt! :)

I am feeling inspired to sew, and since I have more of my day than usual ahead of me from my early morning, I hope it is truly productive.

I have always been very sensitive to mold, and while it is usually a good thing, there are times when it is not so great. Mainly this has to do with my foodie side of things. I cannot eat things like blue cheeses, and while I would love to go into Cowgirl Creamery in the Ferry Building I cannot even get close to their stand. The mold rind and strong blue cheeses knock me out just passing by. When we were shopping for a house back in Illinois, our Realtor even joked that I should rent myself out to home buyers as I could detect both mold and mildew upon walking into a space. I instantly get stuffy and cough like a tuberculosis patient. So, you would think that I would listen to this reaction instantly, but when it started on Sunday at the Farmer's market, I ignored it. I just figured that I was still not over the Chaos Wars cold I caught. Well when I started to get things ready for making the strawberry jam yesterday, I learned why I was having such a stuffy nose and cough. The first layer of strawberries was really soft, and the bottom layers were completely molded through. I guess it will have to wait until I hit another stand on Sunday to buy another half flat. It was a sad state of things.

Today I have the curtains to sew for the 826 Tutoring Room I went to several stores looking for the correct shad of red in a fuzzy fabric, but the usual Pirate Store crimson was no where to be found. Right when I was about to give up, I found some neat looking crimson fabric by the door of a shop. I bought all that they had, and while it is enough to cover the space, I am not sure it will be full enough for a long term solution. We will have to see what Maria and the crew thinks about them when I bring them in this afternoon. After I do that, I am going to get the canning back in action and get the apricot jam processed. I also want to pick up my socks that I am learning to knit when I head into the city on BART. If there is enough time after all this, a crisp is in order with those great apples for tonight's dessert, and I would also like to pick up one of the belts I am working on again. I guess I should get to it and get some of this done. I feel inspiration coming on!

This week is officially the hottest week this summer, so it is only fitting that it is also canning week. I remember some of the hot days of summer as a kid watching my mother over the stove working on her jelly and canned fruit. I decided this year to start my own jelly and canning, only I was hoping for some bay area cool comfort while I did this rather hot task. Needless to say, I got greeted this weekend with the summer we have been missing all year. The temperatures are no where near the 90+ degrees my mother had to contend with, but the mid to high eighties seems warm to me now that I, and I hate to admit it, have become very much accustomed to the nice temperate nature of Oakland. The above is my first attempt at peach jelly. It went well, and I ended up with three full pints of jelly. The store was out of half pints, so I had to move up in jar size for this batch of jelly. I also put up some peaches in syrup, but those are not quite as pretty, so no pictures of those. I did not pack the jars enough, so they look rather odd with pieces of peaches floating at the top and a lot of syrup at the bottom. Next year, this will be better. I also learned that trying to get the skins off white peaches seems to be harder than yellow peaches, so I will also only work with yellow freestones next year.



These are the next to go into jars. Strawberry jam is on tonight's canning list after I get a set of curtains sewn up for the 826 Valencia tutoring room. I need to get them done before their awards ceremony tomorrow night. I hope to get the fabric picked up this afternoon and get to sewing them up soon after.



On Tuesday morning, I plan to make some apricot jam next. This should round out all the jam I am making for some time, unless I can get my hands on some concord grapes for grape jelly for Dan. I would also love to make some grape juice as well, but I would have to find a good source of grapes. There is the possibility that I would be able to get some from my friend Annie if that is what the grapes in her yard turn out to be.

Speaking of which, I am so happy to have her back in my circle of friends. She was one of my good friends in Illinois and has recently moved into the area. We spent Friday running around the city looking at shops and eating good food. It was fabulous!



I also got my hands on some gravenstein apples at the market this weekend. They are supposed to be some of the best baking apples in the world and are rather hard to find. The trees require very specific soil conditions and growing specifications, so they are not easily grown. They also have a very short season and are grown only in Sebastpool and Sonoma counties in California it seems. I will let you all know if they are worth the trip here to get them. I am going to make a crisp with them, and if they are great, I may make up some sauce with another batch and can that. They do smell fantastic on their own just sitting in the bowl, almost like lilies.

Well I should get off for some fabric shopping and curtain sewing.