Like I said the other day, we canned some mushrooms over the summer. In all honestly, I didn’t think that they’d be so great, so I only put up two half-pints. Nice person that I am, I gave one of them to my sister for Christmas.
I totally regret that.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my sister, but these mushrooms are awesome. I think they’d be delicious over pasta, just pasta and mushrooms and a little olive oil or butter. They’re so good that I might make more when mushrooms go on sale again, just so that we can have a steady supply.
Just like every other time you’ve canned things, (or read about me canning them,) you have to start by sterilizing your jars. You can do this in one of two ways: boiling them for a while (ten minutes, probably, but I always get distracted and leave them in there for half an hour) or by putting them in a cold oven, turning the oven to 300, and then letting the jars hang out for fifteen minutes or so after the oven’s come to temperature. The lids and rings of the jars need to be sterilized, too. Drop them in a small pot of boiling water, let them boil ten minutes, and then leave them in the water until you need them.
After you’ve filled the jars, they’ll need to be processed. This sounds scary but is actually really easy, plus other people find it very impressive. All you will need for this is an enormous pot with something to keep the jars off the floor of the pot. I use a pasta pot, the kind with the holey insert. Fill this pot most of the way with water and bring it to a boil as you prep the mushrooms.
For about eight half-pints, you’ll need the following:
7 pounds small mushrooms (I used button–I want to use some baby portabellas next time, too.)
1/2 c lemon juice
2 cups olive oil
2 1/2 cups white vinegar
1 Tbsp oregano
1 Tbsp pickling salt
1/2 cup chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, cut into quarters
30 peppercorns (all black, or a mix of colors)
Wash the mushrooms, removing and discarding the stems. Put the caps into a pot with the lemon juice and add water to cover. Bring to a boil and simmer five minutes. Drain the mushrooms.
Mix together the oil, vinegar, oregano, onions, and salt in a saucepan. Heat to boiling. Place a quarter of a garlic clove and a few peppercorns into each half-pint jar. Pack the mushrooms into the jar, then fill the jars with the oil-and-vinegar solution, leaving about a half inch of headspace. Put on the lids and tighten the rings.
Now for the processing. You’re going to very carefully put the jars into the put of boiling water from earlier. My pot can only handle four jars at a time–you can’t stack them, and you need the water to be over their tops. (This may mean that you have to process them in batches, and that you’ll have to add more water with each batch if you’re canning a whole bunch of jars.) Once the water in the pot returns to a boil, you’re going to boil the jars for about twenty minutes. After that, remove them from the pot using either tongs or a silicone potholder.
Let the jars cool on the counter. You’ll hear them sealing as the night goes on–Ping! Ping! Sometimes they’re really loud, other times they’re barely noticeable. Don’t worry too much about it.
When morning rolls around, check your jars to make sure that they’ve sealed. The little button in the middle of the lid should have popped down–if it goes down when you press on it, the jar didn’t seal properly. No big deal–just means that you have to eat them now instead of in a few months.
In unrelated news, I finished a hat tonight! Finishing knitting projects is always exciting for me. This one is for the daughter of the woman who does our daycare–I was given the yarn and asked to make a hat. Three hours later, here it is. I may make another one in a color that is not orange and write out the pattern.
Photos for this one are somewhat less than awesome, as they were taken in my bedroom late at night, but the hat leaves me tomorrow, so we’ll have to make do.
Back over the summer, I went on a canning binge. I canned salsas and jams, pickled cauliflower and onions, and also did a few jars of roasted peppers. I’d never done them before, so I was sort of worried–I love roasted peppers, and we go through jar upon jar of them, but there are a lot of brands I don’t like. What if these were gross? I made them anyhow, though, and since they were special roasted peppers, they got put in the pantry and ignored for six months.
We finally had reason to break into the stash, though. And by “reason”, I mean that I’d run out and didn’t want to go to the store. So we opened the first jar and had some with our supper that night, and they were amazing. Later that week, we went over to the house of some friends, and we took with us some of our peppers. There was an wonderful spread for supper that night–salami, mozzarella, olives, and artichoke hearts from the store, roasted peppers and marinated mushrooms from our summer canning, and dilly beans, pickled onions, and spicy green tomatoes from theirs.
We’re down to about two jars of peppers, and I’m wishing that I’d made more–these are far, far better than the kind you can buy. Even the brine is delicious–I was drizzling it onto my bread the other night.
This recipe makes about eight pints. I suggest doubling it, frankly. Next summer I’m going to wait until the farmer’s market is closing for the day, then I’ll pick up as many peppers as I can carry and head home to roast and can them.
Just like every other time you’ve canned things, (or read about me canning them,) you have to start by sterilizing your jars. You can do this in one of two ways: boiling them for a while (ten minutes, probably, but I always get distracted and leave them in there for half an hour) or by putting them in a cold oven, turning the oven to 300, and then letting the jars hang out for fifteen minutes or so after the oven’s come to temperature. The lids and rings of the jars need to be sterilized, too. Drop them in a small pot of boiling water, let them boil ten minutes, and then leave them in the water until you need them.
After you’ve filled the jars, they’ll need to be processed. This sounds scary but is actually really easy, plus other people find it very impressive. All you will need for this is an enormous pot with something to keep the jars off the floor of the pot. I use a pasta pot, the kind with the holey insert. Fill this pot most of the way with water and bring it to a boil as you roast the peppers.
Here’s what you need:
4 pounds peppers, any color and any heat. I used red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, plus two poblanos that I had in the fridge.
1 c lemon juice
2 c white vinegar
1 Tbsp fresh oregano
1 c olive oil
1/2 c chopped onions
garlic, 1/2 clove per jar, peeled and cut in half
salt
First we have to roast the peppers. If you have an outdoor grill, you can just throw them on that, turning occasionally, until their skins are black and charred. If you don’t have an outdoor grill, you can do them in the broiler by cutting them in half, removing the seeds and pith, and placing them cut side down on a baking tray. Either put them under the broiler or into a very hot (450F) oven, watching them carefully, until the skins are blackened.
Once your skins are blackened and your kitchen is moderately smokey, either put the peppers into a paper bag or put a damp towel over them and let them cool. The paper bag and towel make them easier to peel. Once they’re cool enough to handle, seed them if you didn’t before, then strip the blistered skin off of them–it should peel off in strips. It’s okay if you can’t quite get every scrap of skin. Don’t rinse the peppers if you can possibly avoid it.
Cut the peppers into strips, or smush down the halves until they’re flat. Set them aside.
Mix all other ingredients save for the garlic and salt in a saucepan and heat them to boiling. As that comes to a boil, put one half clove of garlic and 1/4 tsp salt (for half-pints; 1/2 tsp for pints) into the jars, then pack the jars full of peppers. Make sure that the oil and vinegar mixture is well blended, then pour it over the peppers, leaving 1/2″ headspace. Put on the lids and tighten the rings.
Hard part’s over!
Now for the processing. Remember the big pot of boiling water from earlier? You’re going to very carefully put the jars in. My pot can only handle four jars at a time–you can’t stack them, and you need the water to be over their tops. (This may mean that you have to add more water with each batch if you’re canning a whole bunch of jars.) Once the water comes back to a boil, set the timer for twenty minutes. (Same length for half-pints and pints. It’s okay if you go a little over–I often get distracted and things process an extra five minutes or so.) When the timer dings, pull the jars out of the water bath using either tongs or a silicone oven mitt.
Let the jars cool on the counter. You’ll hear them sealing as the night goes on–Ping! Ping! Sometimes they’re really loud, other times they’re barely noticeable. Don’t worry too much about it.
When morning rolls around, check your jars to make sure that they’ve sealed. The little button in the middle of the lid should have popped down–if it goes down when you press on it, the jar didn’t seal properly. This isn’t a huge deal, and the peppers are perfectly fine to eat, but they won’t be shelf-stable. Which means that darn, you’ll have to eat them right away.
I’ll say it again: these are delicious. Far, far better than any pre-made roasted peppers you can buy, and probably cheaper as well. Next summer I’ll put up twice as many, if not more, and probably do several jars of hot peppers as well–and I won’t wait six months to start eating them.
There’s a meme going around on Facebook. I got the following email several times yesterday.
Some fun is going on…. just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls no men …. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status… Haha
I won’t lie—it pissed me off. I fired off a fast response, but struggled to keep it within Facebook’s 420 character limit.
1st, I don’t wear bras. 2nd, I don’t see how posting the color of your bra is in any way promoting cancer awareness. 3rd, the message sent is indicative of larger issues w/the way society treats breast cancer—people who get it are “girls”— immature women—who have to save their boobies for men, who are adult males. It’s… creepy, misogynistic, & infantilizing. Let’s try fighting breast cancer without objectifying women.
I’ve touched on this before, but what the hell—it says humorless feminist shrew up there for a reason.
Here’s the thing about the Facebook meme: it has nothing—zip, zero, zilch—to do with breast cancer. At the very most, it’s going to eventually make people think about breasts, though so far, it seems that people think it’s about underpants. But let’s face it: the end result is pretty much “Think about me in my underwear!”
Yup. Cancer hates underwear.
Oh, wait. Cancer doesn’t give a fuck. Cancer doesn’t care if you’re wearing a super-cute pink-and-black polka-dot bra with matching boy-cut shorts or if you’re wearing boxers and a singlet. Cancer doesn’t care if you’re wearing a “Save the TaTas” shirt, or if you have a bumper sticker with one of the many desperate attempts to avoid using the word breasts. Cancer doesn’t care if you’re cute and perky and swathed in pink, the magical color of cancer-repellent.
Of course it’s pink. We’re talking about girls! Girls get breast cancer, and girls love pink. My general experience is that women—that is, grown-up girls—do not really get all that upset if their sneakers, Kitchen-Aids, hand sanitizer, and pizza boxes (yes, a local place actually got pink boxes to support breast cancer) are not pink and sparkly. That’s generally reserved for children, not grown women. The exception is, of course, if you have cancer.
Pinkwashing helps make cancer feel safer, more normative. You’re not fighting a disease, you’re joining a sisterhood. Moreover, it makes “breast cancer activism” the easiest form of armchair activism. Are you wearing a pink teeshirt? You’re fighting breast cancer! Did you buy the special pink ribbon macaroni and cheese at the supermarket? You’re totally fighting breast cancer. You bought a pizza, and it came in a pink box? You are the most awesome activist ever.
And don’t get me wrong—I’d like to make having cancer as safe and non-lethal as possible. But painting it all pink and calling it activism isn’t fixing anything.
There are some awesome commercials promoting breast cancer awareness, though! Like this one:
Because men love boobs! Then, just for fun, the ad will ignore the fact that some men—fat men, trans men, men with gynecomastia—have breasts, too. It’ll also ignore that men—regardless of the size of their chest—can and do get breast cancer. Finally, we’ll remind you yet again that men know more about how to take care of a woman’s body than any woman could, and women have a responsibility to take care of their breasts, because men want to look at them.
Or, as pointed out on Shakesville, there’s this ad:
It’s definitely not about objectification at all! Only it is, and it’s shitty. It’s even shittier because this is allegedly about helping women, but the advertisements are dehumanizing and objectifying. Women! Pay attention to your breasts, because they’re the only part of you that we care about.
I’m not sure what this sort of “awareness” is meant to achieve. The only thing that I’m taking away from the ads above is that hey, men really like breasts, so women should make sure that their breasts are healthy, perky, and available to the male gaze at all times. Oh, and maybe if you could also wear a wet white teeshirt, that’d be great.
What the ribbons and tee-shirts and pizza boxes miss is that really, we’re not trying to save boobies or gazongas. We’re trying to save lives. Because cancer kills people. I’ve got breast cancer in my family, and I’ll tell you right here and now, I don’t give a shit if my aunt, sister, friend, co-worker doesn’t have breasts anymore. I care a whole fucking lot if she dies.
I keep thinking that I’m going to write up the pattern for Maura’s mittens, or for some of the fingerless gloves that I’m churning out, but it’s been one of those weeks. Maura’s been sick, I’m on new medication that’s sort of kicking my ass, and Nick’s job situation is changing, not for the better. Merry Christmas to us.
As soon as we’re healthy, I’ll be posting patterns and recipes, but in the meantime, it’s back to radio silence.
Two nights ago, Maura very mournfully informed me that she couldn’t keep her hands warm at recess. Why, you ask? Obviously because I hadn’t knitted her any mittens. It definitely has nothing at all to do with the fact that she’s already lost one of the gloves from the pair I bought her last week.
Still, when she looks all sad and asks me to make her things, I almost always oblige, so this evening I sat down to make some simple mittens. As you can see above, Basil decided to help me. Funnily enough, the cats–all eight of them–are almost totally uninterested in my knitting. Basil, though, wants to lay on the yarn, and wants to just put the yarn in his mouth, and wants to put his paws over the yarn that I’m pulling out of the skein… He’s more like a cat than the cats are!
An hour or so after that picture, I had a mitten. Okay, more than an hour or so, because I was making a fair isle snowflake, then realized halfway through that the variegated yarn had a section almost identical to the oatmeal yarn I was using, and the snowflake looked horrible. So I ripped it all out and started over. But had I not done that, it would’ve been an hour or so.
I finished the second one last night, and today she wore them to school. She’s reported back that they kept her quite warm, and I’m pleased that they seem to fit reasonably well. (Reasonably well is about all I can ever expect with her, even when I’m making it myself. She can’t hold still, so I end up sneaking into her room while she’s sleeping to slip mittens and hats and socks on, trying to see if they’ll fit.)
I tend to knit almost exclusively with DK weight and lighter, and I have to say that I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying worsted weight lately. There’s something to be said for finishing a project in a single evening. Next up, I think I’m going to whip out a few pairs of fingerless gloves as Christmas presents. This is definitely the year of the handmade Christmas around here–sort of enjoyable in its own right.
Over the weekend, friends of ours had a make-stuff party. A few weeks ago we got the invite: Come over to our house and make stuff! It would not be exaggerating to say that stuff-making is one of my favorite activities, so, obviously, we were totally pumped.
I think I did more crafting this weekend than I usually get done in two weeks. I took over a ton of stuff, figuring I’d work on whatever seemed the most fun. Once we were there and settled, I pulled out some felt and thread, thinking that I’d embroider some ornaments.
Turns out that I hate embroidery. I used to be okay at it, but I kind of suck at making all the stithes and stuff line up. After fussing with it for about an hour, I gave up. I just don’t care that much about embroidering.
After the failed embroidery, I moved on to my waterfall socks! They’re getting there, slowly but surely. So far, they’re about halfway up my foot, and I love them. I’m finding them a weirdly slow knit, but they’re so pretty that I don’t mind.
Though, with that said, I’m having some knitting conflict lately. Part of it is that I feel I should be giving people knitted things for Christmas, and part of it is just that I have such great yarn right now that I want to knit constantly! (Mostly for myself, though. I’m not doing so great on the other-people front.)
I have this, which was a gift from a friend. I’m still learning how to work with variegated yarns, so I’m not sure what I want to do with this, but I love the colors, and the yarn itself is unbelievably smooshy and soft. It didn’t come with a label, so I don’t know what it is, but it feels amazing. If you have suggestions for how to best display the colors, please let me know–I want it to be awesome.
This is Poems sock yarn by Wisdom Yarns. Last winter, I had great success with the Poems worsted–Maura got a hat, my mother-in-law got a shawl. I’ve wanted to try their sock yarn for a while, and when my local yarn store had a 25% off sale the day after Thanksgiving, I couldn’t resist buying this. It’s not anything like the sort of yarns I generally pick for myself, but I can’t wait to see how it knits up.
Last on the yarn front, we have this, which a friend recently sent me. It’s from the fleece of another friend’s alpaca, and it’s super, super sort. It’s off-white, maybe fingerling weight, 100% aplaca, about 270 yards. I’m thinking maybe fingerless gloves in pretty ribbing. Alpaca has so little memory that I don’t want to do anything too complicated, but it seems like gloves should be okay.
I did some spinning this weekend, too, which was nice. I usually use my wheel, but didn’t feel like taking the whole wheel to someone else’s house, so drop spindling it was. I’ve seen some very attractive, easy-looking DIY spindle tutorials lately, and am thinking that I might make a few in different weights. The current project is of roving that I dyed–and, as you can tell in the lower left of the picture, roving that the cats “helped” me dry. It’s a little beat up, but still enjoyable to spin.
The yarn will probably be fingerling/dk weight when it’s done, and maybe then I’ll turn it into something cosy for Maura. Right after I finish all those socks I was talking about.
Over the weekend, Nick, Maura and I piled into the car and headed up to Cleveland to go to the Bazaar Bizarre.
Well, all right–Nick and I went, and Maura went and hung out with my mother and two of my aunts, who were (conveniently) also in the area that day. We caravanned up with our friends Kelli and Noel, and then spent a few hours wandering around the bazaar. I was impressed at how much traffic they had–and apparently, this is the smaller of the two Cleveland-area bazaars this year.
We’re sort of thinking that we might get a booth next year. I have this gocco press that I should be getting more–or, you know, any–use out of, and sometimes having a very obvious goal motivates me in a way that no intangible objective can. Also, surprisingly to me, there was no one there selling yarn or roving. I realize that it’s not a craft supply fair, but it seems to me like it’d be the perfect venue for that sort of thing–you’re surrounded by people who are clearly interested in craft; surely some of them craft themselves. Since I have multiple pounds of quite nice roving that’s just waiting for someone to dye it, I might try to do something with that, too. Stay tuned for more exciting developments regarding things that I may or may not do at a future date!
Yeah, quality content here today.
I’d actually planned on writing something (or, okay, posting a bunch of pictures) about Cleveland’s tree-lighting, which we went to after the bazaar, but instead I’ve found myself sick–again–and not feeling up to even the effort of pushing my “resize for blog” action over and over. So instead, I’ll direct you to people from whom we bought awesome stuff over the weekend.
First and foremost, Get Felt Up is totally awesome. Here’s the thing: secretly, I don’t really like felt. I don’t like felting things I knit, I don’t really like working with felt, and I don’t usually like the look of things made with felt, because it reminds me of third-grade crafts with paste in pots and sticky fingers and messy children and gross. So when I tell you that I dropped $20 on a wallet from this guy, what I’m actually saying is that this is awesome. I bought a wallet, and then we liked it so much that Nick went back and got himself a wallet before we left. That’s how awesome it is: two wallets of awesome. Mine looks a lot like this, only the greens are more muted. I love it.
Nick, because he loves me, bought me a scarf from Garbella–green with silver screen-printed cogs on it. It’s fantastic, and I love it. It’s pleasingly long, eight feet instead of the more common but much more annoying six, and it looks fabulous. That said, if you’re interested in one of her shirts, they looked to me like they ran a lot more than a little small. A men’s large will usually fit me okay, but having looked at the shirts in person, I don’t think that an XL would’ve fit me–it would’ve needed to be more like XXL. Don’t get me wrong, the shirts looked great, but unless you’re a beanpole, you might want to ask for measurements.
We bought a couple of notepads from Candra Squire. I wish that I’d thought this purchase through a bit better first, as I really don’t like the construction of the pads–it’s difficult to tear sheets off without shredding the pad, but it’s equally difficult to flip them up or over. A bit of padding compound would have gone a long way on these. Her cards, however, were hilariously awesome. I love bitchy greeting cards.
Finally, I bought a dyed silk scarf and a copy of AlterNation from KnitGrrl. She also had very pretty felt scarves, but I couldn’t get past how ungodly hot they’d be. If you’re always cold, though, that’d be the way to go.
Anyhow, all of those people are lovely people to whom you should consider giving money.
I’m hoping that tomorrow I’ll have some time to sit down and resize the photos from Public Square. I thought the lights were less impressive this year than they’ve been previously, but seeing the Terminal Tower and Old Stone Church all lit up is always pretty amazing.
On Not Thinking Pink
There’s a meme going around on Facebook. I got the following email several times yesterday.
I won’t lie—it pissed me off. I fired off a fast response, but struggled to keep it within Facebook’s 420 character limit.
I’ve touched on this before, but what the hell—it says humorless feminist shrew up there for a reason.
Here’s the thing about the Facebook meme: it has nothing—zip, zero, zilch—to do with breast cancer. At the very most, it’s going to eventually make people think about breasts, though so far, it seems that people think it’s about underpants. But let’s face it: the end result is pretty much “Think about me in my underwear!”
Yup. Cancer hates underwear.
Oh, wait. Cancer doesn’t give a fuck. Cancer doesn’t care if you’re wearing a super-cute pink-and-black polka-dot bra with matching boy-cut shorts or if you’re wearing boxers and a singlet. Cancer doesn’t care if you’re wearing a “Save the TaTas” shirt, or if you have a bumper sticker with one of the many desperate attempts to avoid using the word breasts. Cancer doesn’t care if you’re cute and perky and swathed in pink, the magical color of cancer-repellent.
Of course it’s pink. We’re talking about girls! Girls get breast cancer, and girls love pink. My general experience is that women—that is, grown-up girls—do not really get all that upset if their sneakers, Kitchen-Aids, hand sanitizer, and pizza boxes (yes, a local place actually got pink boxes to support breast cancer) are not pink and sparkly. That’s generally reserved for children, not grown women. The exception is, of course, if you have cancer.
Pinkwashing helps make cancer feel safer, more normative. You’re not fighting a disease, you’re joining a sisterhood. Moreover, it makes “breast cancer activism” the easiest form of armchair activism. Are you wearing a pink teeshirt? You’re fighting breast cancer! Did you buy the special pink ribbon macaroni and cheese at the supermarket? You’re totally fighting breast cancer. You bought a pizza, and it came in a pink box? You are the most awesome activist ever.
And don’t get me wrong—I’d like to make having cancer as safe and non-lethal as possible. But painting it all pink and calling it activism isn’t fixing anything.
There are some awesome commercials promoting breast cancer awareness, though! Like this one:
Because men love boobs! Then, just for fun, the ad will ignore the fact that some men—fat men, trans men, men with gynecomastia—have breasts, too. It’ll also ignore that men—regardless of the size of their chest—can and do get breast cancer. Finally, we’ll remind you yet again that men know more about how to take care of a woman’s body than any woman could, and women have a responsibility to take care of their breasts, because men want to look at them.
Or, as pointed out on Shakesville, there’s this ad:
It’s definitely not about objectification at all! Only it is, and it’s shitty. It’s even shittier because this is allegedly about helping women, but the advertisements are dehumanizing and objectifying. Women! Pay attention to your breasts, because they’re the only part of you that we care about.
I’m not sure what this sort of “awareness” is meant to achieve. The only thing that I’m taking away from the ads above is that hey, men really like breasts, so women should make sure that their breasts are healthy, perky, and available to the male gaze at all times. Oh, and maybe if you could also wear a wet white teeshirt, that’d be great.
What the ribbons and tee-shirts and pizza boxes miss is that really, we’re not trying to save boobies or gazongas. We’re trying to save lives. Because cancer kills people. I’ve got breast cancer in my family, and I’ll tell you right here and now, I don’t give a shit if my aunt, sister, friend, co-worker doesn’t have breasts anymore. I care a whole fucking lot if she dies.