Thank you Mr. Craib

I can't deny that running a small preserve business has it's challenges at times and there are moments when I wonder if all of the hard work is really worth it. And then, people like Chris Craib send me an email out of the blue and it puts a little spring in my step and makes me happy to head back into the commercial kitchen. It quite simply makes all of the hard work worth every single moment. So thank you Chris for passing along this little email. You brought a smile to my face.

The Mason Jar

It gladdens this preservers heart to see that in June's Canadian House and Home, the little ol'mason jar made the news-ideas-hot topics-trends page. I don't feel so alone when I know that others find the shape of the mason jar beautiful in it's simplicity.

Aigre-Doux

You want to get my attention you just need to use words like; caramelize, reduce and red wine. Instantly my eyes dilate and my ears twitch with anticipation. So a month ago when I was doing some online research and I stumbled upon this cookbook called "The Preservation Kitchen" I knew I was hooked the instant I read the word Aigre-Doux.  These recipes had all of those words and MORE! There were even jam recipes where you 'smoke' the apples before you make the jam. 'Smoked' is another word that can grab my attention in case you were wondering why I put it in quotations. I needed to know more. I am not ashamed to admit that I had never heard this term before, so I did a little research. The definition I came across was this: The French term for the combined flavors of sour (aigre ) and sweet (doux ). An aigre-doux  sauce might contain both vinegar and sugar.

Paul Virant describes Aigre-Doux in the cookbook as preserves for cheese snobs and wine geeks. Now I can't go so far as to describe myself with either of those terms. I fall into the category of a cheese lover and perhaps I aspire to be a wine geek. But it was close enough for me. I loved the idea that an aigre-doux could be turned into a vinaigrette, a pan sauce, a condiment or a glaze. As someone who always makes her own salad dressing, flavours her own vinegars and loves a good glaze, Aigre-Doux felt like a challenge I had to face.

I happened to mention that it was a book that I wanted on twitter or perhaps even here on my blog. Well last week, my amazing cousin Nadine sent it to me as a belated birthday present. For the first 2 nights after it arrived, when I would get home from work I would curl up with it, sitting on my couch or a chair and flip through it reading all the delicious titles of recipes. I knew that it wouldn't be long before I would have to attempt one of the recipes and there was one in particular that stood out - Mandarin Aigre Doux.

Now I can't share the recipe online, but there is one of Paul's Blueberry Aigre-Doux recipes here if you love the idea of it as much as me and want to try making it on your own.

What I can tell you is that there are juicy mandarins; peeled and sliced, with an entire bottle of red wine, some red wine vinegar, sugar, salt and black peppercorns combined in these 500ml jars and they look almost too good to be true. He suggests using it as a glaze for roasted duck, or whisking the pureed contents with a knob of butter and drizzling over scallops (helloooo!) and I intend to do as he tells me.

The recipe made 4 - 500ml jars and my friend Barbara Best is going to be a recipient of one of these jars cause she is having me over for dinner next Friday! Lucky her, eh?

Pickled Green Beans

So I don't mean to brag...but I am gonna :). I make some mean pickled green beans. To me, they have the perfect balance; not too spicy and not overly vinegary. The mustard seeds, cayenne and dill all play really nicely off one another. These babies are PERFECT in a Caesar.

But I am always interested in new ways of preserving things. So when Reesor Farms gave me the challenge of doing some dilly green beans when they placed another order, I jumped at the chance. The past month I have concentrated on filling up my inventory for the farmer's market and the show, that it had been a while since I actually got to go into my OWN kitchen and try a new recipe.

I started off with a gigantic bag of the freshest green beans I could get my hands on. I love when you snap the ends off and you can hear the crunch. These would be perfect for the task at hand.

Then I consulted an old dill pickle recipe my mom passed down to me and pulled the combination of different vinegars from it together. White wine vinegar, distilled vinegar and distilled water. The distilled water helps keep the vegetables nice and crisp and stops them from changing colour as much as regular tap water.

They wanted dill...so I used a combination of dill seed and fresh dill. Pickles are just not pickles in my opinion without a nice fat clove of garlic, so I peeled one and added it to each jar.  Then I boiled the vinegars, added some pickling salt, filled the jars as full as humanly possible with the green beans and added them all together in the jar.

After their allotted time in the hot water bath, I pulled them out and now they rest on my kitchen cupbpard upstairs. I will probably wait at least a couple of weeks for the flavours to develop and then James and I will sit down, crack open a jar and see how they turned out. If they are good, I will share the recipe. If they are less than good, I will share my sorrow. Just looking at the jars, they look pretty fine, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.

The real test will happen even after they get the thumbs up by us, will they get the thumbs up from Reesors Farm. Stay tuned.

The Made By Hand Show

So this weekend I was one of the many vendors (I think there were over 160) at The Made By Hand Show. It was my first time at an event like this so it was filled with a lot of great learning and discoveries. With over 1700 people passing through the doors it was a pretty busy day and I was kept hopping from the moment the doors opened at 11am until they closed at 5pm.

I want to say a great big thank you to Doris at Publisher Production Solutions who printed my banner. Not only did she do a fabulous job on printing it, she turned it around quickly and even dropped by the booth to introduce herself and ended up buying some jam :). She was a real pleasure to work with and if you were doing a show like this and needed a banner, brochures or business cards printed I would highly recommend her.

I kow you can't really see it in the photo, but the gorgeous necklace I am wearing I bought from Nancy Lismer of Adornments jewellery who was also at the show. Her booth looked fabulous and if you have never seen her stuff, you should really check her out.

My taster sized jars were a huge success, so I will be rolling those out into as many of the different jams and jellies as I can in the coming months, so stay tuned for that.

The one question I have for anyone out there reading this who might have some experience in this department is around sampling. When my booth got busy and there were times when I have over a dozen people trying samples, asking questions, etc., it got hard to replenish the samples fast enough even with the help of my amazing mother in law and wonderful husband. Does anyone have a great way that they do sampling that they wouldn't mind sharing with me? I would be forever grateful.