Blackberry Jam and Bread

Preserving

It's blackberry season hereabouts. I found these cute jars that just wanted to be filled with blackberry jam. I have a loaf of bread in the oven. I'll open the first jar this afternoon and check it out. Someone has to sacrifice herself for the good of the pantry.

Pickled Green Beans

The July issue of Sunset magazine has a great feature on canning. Pictures of sparkling jars of preserved food always get to me. My friend Alice had a surfeit of green beans and she alerted me to their recipe for Pickled Green Beans with Dill, Tarragon, Garlic and Peppercorns. She also gifted me with about 3 pounds of beans. I modified their recipe slightly to make these.

I also liked this recipe at Downstairs Recipes.

I used Three Monks vinegar and more salt than the Sunset recipe. I made some of the jars with these jalapenos from our garden, omitting the tarragon in those jars.


It is all experimental. The bigger jars are 1-1/2 pt. which is a nice size for long beans. I processed the jars at 180-185 degrees for 30 minutes (rather than 5 minutes at boiling) because the Sunset recipe promised a crunchy bean. Of course I will have to wait about a month to check out my bean stash. Makes me think I should plant a crop of beans of my own

First Potato

Picked our first potato. We planted them late. Found some old ones in the pantry and figured they were ready for composting so, why not?

The weather has turned hot--it got up to 94 degrees today. I watered the things in pots but there remain lots of things to do in the garden. Best to wait until it cools off again.

Pool closed early this AM because of you-know-what...

Things bike; Things Italia

And now the driveway is done...

Perhaps boring but quite exciting for us.

It took more than two weeks to complete. I was able to avoid most of the noise and the dust because I was in OHIO.


It is a wonderful, smooth ride up the hill.

Definitely worth it!

Emily Richardson at EBHQ

This is a WIP from cloth I painted in a workshop with Emily Richardson. She was the speaker for our June meeting at my guild, East Bay Heritage Quilters . The picture looks a little wonky. I got a new camera that I am trying to figure out. This is one of the first pictures. More soon if I ever figure it out.

I was first attracted to the layers of color in Richardson's work. I experience an exquisite ethereality in many of her pieces. We saw her work, Until the Day, last week in Athens, Ohio at Quilt National. It was so exciting that she was scheduled to speak and teach this week for our guild. Doing the EBHQ workshop afforded the opportunity for close inspection of her work. I was enchanted by the lines she creates both in her applique technique and her quilting line.

My friend Chris at Reap As You Sew posted some great pictures of cloth she made during a class. She also briefly describes the materials we used.