Wasting time on the internet reading Top 10 lists is such a delightful tradition right before Jan 1. I want to enable anyone else who enjoys it as much as I do, by writing yet another top 10 list. You know you love ’em. Don’t go be productive, sit here on the computer, for just another few minutes.
1. How To Preserve 100+ lbs. of Tomatoes With Almost No Work
This is probably my favorite post too, detailing the massive amounts of tomato preservation that happens at the farm every summer. Sometimes I come home from the farmers market with more tomatoes than I actually took, which is completely ridiculous. At the end of the market, when vendors have unsold tomatoes, if I hear mutters of “ah, feed ’em to the chickens,” I try to get in on the action before the hens. End of summer, heavily discounted tomatoes are where it’s at.
This is such a weird jelly. It’s good and all, but… This post made it to the front page of reddit, which hurt my brain, since there are so many other preserves I’ve made that I would recommend more than this one. It’s a novelty jelly. It’s definitely really tasty in certain situations, like on grilled lamb, or with toasted pumpernickel bread with cream cheese. This is what happens if you, um, partake on St. Patrick’s Day and are a huge canning nerd, and then you decide to start making jelly out of random stuff in the kitchen.
So here’s the deal: I’m working on a new version, with tart cherries, some dried spices and bay leaves. Please, I beg you, wait for the updated recipe before you make this. It’ll be worth it, I promise.
This jam is killer, and this post has step-by-step instructions for beginners. Vanilla bean and ripe, juicy peaches is a pretty perfect combination.
I spent days and days and days canning in the commercial kitchen I use (that’s the door, in the picture below) for the National Heirloom Expo this September. The chocolate plum jam was a creation for that event, which you can make at home if you didn’t get to go. It’s another winner, absolutely delicious.
What’s not to love about grape jam? It’s heavenly…
So… I was all excited about how popular this post was, sitting in my living room going “gosh it’s so great that people are so interested in foraging these days”… and then I realized, after reading the search terms a little more closely:
There’s a strain of marijuana named “pineapple” and when I wrote “pineapple weed tea” a lot of people thought that I meant I was making tea out of marijuana and got really excited about my blog.
Am I naive? Yes. Is this post about getting high off your tea? Sadly, no. Is it still delicious tea? Yes.
7. My Grandma Molly’s Recipe for Pickled Watermelon Rind
Pickled watermelon was all kinds of trendy this year, and I saw recipes popping up all over the place. Well, this is the exact recipe that my grandma from North Carolina was making, decades ago. It’s a tedious recipe, true, but keep a jar in the fridge during the summer, and you’ll be rewarded with the most deliciously sweet, cold, crunchy pickle you’ve ever had. People sometimes ask me what this pickle is for, exactly, and let me just say: Fried Chicken. A big southern dinner is never complete without a little glass dish of pickles out on the table.
This is my personal favorite jam, the one that I put on my toast. Pears have such a bold, juicy flavor- I can’t get enough.
One of the most exotic fruits you’ll ever see, chopped up in little pieces, cooked in sugar and turned into sweet little bites, perfect for putting in bread, cookies and fruitcake.
10. Kimchi
‘cuz kimchi is totally a thing now, like cupcakes and making jam…
This is a small batch recipe that ferments in the fridge, adapted from The Hungry Tigress, who adapted it from Tart and Sweet, which is a fantastic cookbook that I just got for Christmas! Funny how it works like that… (Thanks, my sweet little sister, you rock).
And that’s the top 10…
Thanks for reading this year, and here’s to another epic year of jamming pickling fermenting baking roasting braising gardening and all that stuff that we all love! Happy New Year!
