Making Strawberry Lemon Preserves

Last week, I hosted a canning workshop with my CSA… and it was a great time! We learned how to make strawberry lemon preserves, perfect for this time of year. It was a small turnout – 4 people plus myself and the teacher – but that made for a nice intimate gathering. We all learned a lot, and even after three years of canning, even I learned some important tips (and some in hindsight that seem like no-brainers). Canning 101 techniques are always good to revisit.

aj explaining something
Our teacher, AJ Simone

AJ had already combined the strawberries, lemon, and sugar and let them macerate for a day before the workshop. He mentioned that the CSA strawberries he used made a huge difference in the end product – they were far superior to supermarket strawberries. Of course, the strawberries we got from Hepworth Farms were simply incredible, and were probably the best strawberries I’ve eaten outside of the ones my grandfather used to grow in California.

strawberries and lemons cooking
Strawberries and lemons cooking

This collage shows the strawberry-lemon mixture from the initial draining, to the resulting juice that will boil down to a syrup, to the fruit cooking in the syrup.

The kitchen sure smelled amazing during this whole process.

Strawberry Lemon Preserves Processing Collage
Processing the strawberry lemon preserves

This collage shows the processing of the preserves, from spooning them into the sterilized jars, to screwing on the lids, to processing them in the hot water bath.  I’m fortunate to have a nice big pot for processing – a 16 quart stockpot! It gets used pretty much in the summer only (I bought it years ago on sale).

This is the final product:

the finished product - strawberry lemon preserves
The finished product - strawberry lemon preserves

This was one delicious batch of preserves. And look at that color! I loved the pure strawberry flavor combined with the tang of the lemon – it’s definitely not too sweet. And that’s understandable with the proportions in mind – 3 pounds of strawberries, 2 whole lemons, and only 1 1/2 cups of sugar. One can get away with a relatively low amount of sugar because pectin isn’t being used in this recipe.

This recipe makes about five half pint jars worth of preserves, but sometimes it can come out to 4.5, which is what happened to our batch. We ate the .5 amount, yum. AJ was an excellent teacher and I’m hoping we’ll see more workshops led by him in the future.

To learn how to make the preserves, head on over to AJ’s blog, Handjobs (For the Home), for the full recipe for strawberry lemon preserves. For a few more pictures, as well as full sizes of the images in this post, check out my photoset on Flickr: CSA Workshop – Making Strawberry Lemon Preserves.

Hellgate CSA Week 3

CSA week 3 collage
Our third share of the season

This week’s superstar element in the CSA share was the two quarts of strawberries from Hepworth Farms – they are spectacular. Wonderful strawberry flavor and the texture is fantastic. Firm yet silky. We also got apples in our fruit share, which was a surprise, but shouldn’t have been – Hepworth Farms grows something like 40 different kinds of apples on their land in Milton, NY.

For the vegetable share, we also got:

1 HUGE head of green leaf lettuce (we are overwhelmed with greens)
1 bunch swiss chard
1 larger bag of snap peas
1 bunch of lavender (smells amazing)
1 pint of strawberries

All told, we received 10 cups of strawberries. Just… wow. I love this time of year!

More exciting news – next week I’ll be hosting at my apartment a canning workshop for my CSA, taught by my friend and fellow core group member AJ. He’ll be teaching us how to can strawberry lemon preserves, as well as teaching basic water bath canning best practices. It should be awesome.

Hellgate CSA Week 2

hellgate csa week 2 share
Our second share of the season

This was Hellgate CSA‘s second week and we got another terrific share. Our vegetable share consisted of:

1 bunch of very aromatic savory (I love the smell!)
1 head of lettuce
1 bag of sugar snap peas
1 small bag of asparagus
1 quart of fantastic strawberries

I plan to eat a large salad on Thursday, combining the savory, the lettuce I got from the CSA, and my own lettuces growing out back. That and the arugula have just exploded in the past week:

overgrown lettuces and arugula
Lettuce and arugula have exploded

Asparagus will be delicious with eggs, and the strawberries will likely be gone in a day or two. Too bad, as I have some raw cream in my future that will be in my hands a few days after these berries are gone. Here’s hoping more strawberries come next weekend so that I can enjoy these two treasures together.

So far, so good. Everything has been gorgeous and delicious!

Hellgate CSA’s First Distribution of 2011

csa 2011 first share collage
Our first share of the 2011 season of the Hellgate CSA

I am so happy that our CSA started up again!  Yesterday was our first distribution of the season.  We received:

1 head of green leaf lettuce
1 bunch of absolutely gorgeous scallions
a bag of sunchokes
a bunch of oregano
a quart of strawberries

Everything is organic and local – we get our vegetable shares from Green Thumb Farm out on the south fork of Long Island. Farmer Bill and the rest of the Halsey clan has been providing us with vegetables for many years now – we are starting our seventh season!

I washed and cleaned the strawberries – I expect they’ll be gone by tonight. I had them over my last ramekin of baked custard today and it was a perfect pairing. It satisfied my suspicion that this custard is an awesome base for seasonal fruit.

I am hoping to make a pesto out of the oregano, I have so much of it.  I could run the dehydrator, too, but it’s awfully hot here in NYC right now, and the dehydrator blows hot air out of it. But oregano pesto intrigues me – I expect it would go great with fish, and probably good in soup. The scallions are incredible – mild but not flavorless, and with no harsh edge to them. I will most likely make carmelized green onions if I don’t eat them all in a few days.

As for the sunchokes, I’ll likely make jerusalem artichoke fritters again. I remember liking them very much.

Distribution was a joy last night, too. So many happy people, excited members new and old, and lots of beautiful kids running around (and some in strollers). We had some snacks, and some amazing lemonade made by Fresh Start, our hosts.  My fellow Core members are lovely and I’m so glad to be working actively on this season again with them.

lots of people picking up
Lots of people picking up

Here’s to a great CSA season! The next six months are going to be awesome.

For more photos from our first distribution for the year, you can find them in my CSA 2011 – Week 1 photoset.

CSA Bounty – Week Two

We had another week without radishes, but with plenty of lettuce. Last year we got a head each week for almost the entire season; I wonder if this year will be the same.  I will eat a large salad tonight.  This week we got:

week 2 menu

The strawberries were better this week than last week, I think, which is kind of like saying we got 12 oz of gold this week over last week’s 11.5 oz.  Both weeks have brought us amazing strawberries. We ate them for breakfast this morning with some cantaloupe I cut up last night.

strawberries week 2

This week’s lettuce head was a leaf lettuce in a very unusual color – kind of the color of manzanita wood.

red lettuce

We got cilantro this week!  Also dried black beans.  I’m thinking of making a black bean salad tonight with them both.

cilantro

bagging black beans

I have a share of beans and grains from Cayuga Organics, which grow the best beans I’ve ever had.  Their grains are also amazing.

We also got asparagus – I think we are at the end of the season.

asparagus

Last night I had some of it and it was so good.  Simply pan roasted with some salt.  I ate it with a quesadilla I fried in coconut oil, made with raw pepperjack cheese (also from the CSA), some cilantro and Tortilleria Nixtamal tortillas.  We had stopped in over the weekend and picked some up on our way home from touring the Louis Armstrong House in Corona (fabulous).  They really are the best tortillas around.

In addition to the veg, berries, black beans and grains (farro!), my meat and dairy order came in – my freezer is now full of grass fed/finished beef, organic chicken breasts and turkey sausage, and I’ve got a nice goaty chevre to look forward to tonight, too.

CSA Bounty – Week One

I’d like to show off what I bring home from the CSA each week, so this is the first post in my CSA Bounty Series.  Mostly eye candy, this is going to be my record of the 2010 Hellgate CSA season.

Our vegetables are organic and the fruit is “ecologically grown”, which means it’s not quite organic, so they do their best to use alternate techniques (like integrated pest management) to control pests, weeds, and fungus.  In NY state, it’s pretty much impossible to grow tree fruit truly organic, due to the overly wet summers.

Strawberries!  One of the best parts of the early CSA season.  They were delicious.  Note that past tense, “were”… these strawberries came from our vegetable farmer, so they were organic.

strawberries

Green leaf lettuce, one of my favorites.  I ate some of it tonight and it was lovely.

lettuce

Tarragon, my new favorite herb.  I use it liberally in chicken salad (I’ll share the recipe sometime soon – it’s fantastic).  This was particularly gorgeous tarragon.

tarragon

Leeks – beautiful (and delicious – I’ve already eaten them).

leeks

Bags of jerusalem artichokes.  Not very photogenic, I’ll admit, but I’m grateful that the farm pre-bagged them for us.

IMG_6255

Gorgeous collard greens.  I didn’t choose these (the choice was these greens or the leeks), but glad I got a shot of them.  I expect they were delicious.

collards

That’s it!  I can’t wait to see what we get in week two…