Sunday, February 10, 2013

Little Red Raspberry

Glen had the trench for my raspberries dug by a contractor. I saw the new dirt and compost fill it up. I transported the raspberry seedlings from his house to mine in a wheelbarrow. I watered, I weeded, I waited. The first year’s harvest was minimal; the next year’s harvest was sufficient; last year I was overwhelmed with raspberries – an hour and a half picking every other day – finally a freezer full of fruit. But I felt that my project has got the best of me.

... raspberry jam in the foreground ...
...poppyseed cake in the background...
Now, in my new crusade to use up food stuffs in the pantry and the freezer, I spent last month working with the raspberries again, this time turning them into jam – maybe twenty bottles, until I could see that there aren’t enough people to eat all of that in the winter. We ate muffins for breakfast until I had perfected raspberry muffins and still there were raspberries left. I turned to making raspberry coulis, beginning with an internet search to get the feel of how people are doing this. I tried three recipes, and all of the results came in the same – zingers. Oh, one of the recipes says that the product will keep one week in the fridge. That is a laugh. The product will only keep as long as there is no ice-cream in the freezer. I can’t quite get the proportions between ice cream and raspberry coulis right. I keep adding either more coulis, or more ice-cream – so I keep both on the counter, adding ice-cream, then coulis, then ice-cream ....

... photo simulation of Bonnie's work ...
Bonnie was going to Ellen’s potluck last night, so she made a lemon tart and then decided to decorate the pie-sliced shape with raspberry coulis. Apparently she will have to experiment with make the same decision – how much lemon tart to raspberry coulis.

A problem of difficult fractions to work with -- all over raspberries.

Signed,

Little Red Raspberry

3 comments:

  1. Raspberries or peaches? Hard to pick a favourite. Raspberries it is. I could eat them all day.

    How about raspberries and peaches!

    Hope there is some jam left by the time I get out there in August. I plan to eat waffles with raspberry jam and whipped cream everyday.

    What am I thinking? I will be eating my waffles with fresh rassberries by then.

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  2. Love seeing Rebecca's beautiful pottery being used to balance the poppyseed cake. We all know those cakes need to cool upside-down to keep their height. Hard to find the right item on which you can balance a hot poppyseed cake. Looks like you didn't have any trouble finding something.

    Can't wait to spend some time at the pottery wheel this summer. Eeeep!

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  3. Hi Mary,

    You are right about the poppy seed cake being so high that I couldn't find something to turn it upside down on, without it interfering with the cake that had climbed right up the inner tube of the pan. I can't miss when cooking in B.C. My cakes rise too high, the bread spills over the pans, the entrees taste better. Do you think it is all about cooking at near sea level?

    Good eye to notice that I finally used some of Rebecca's pottery to get that cake to hang upside down, though I wasn't wanting to broadcast that to her. To somewhat absolve myself of guilt, I had gone into town to find a funnel, which is what I often use. But since Zellers closed down in Salmon Arm, there just is no place to shop for underwear, or a variety of funnels, for example.

    What you see behind the jam is the last of the three poppyseed cakes I made. Well, I made one more, but while it was hanging, it fell out of the pan -- but in chunks. Still delicious, but you know how that takes the heart out of a cook -- to have the appearance of the product crumble. I quit and started to use up other things in the pantry instead.

    Arta

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