March Project: Charoses-inspired jam

I was all set to make Meyer lemon marmalade when this post over at Food in Jars piqued my interest. What's charoses? It's Passover right now? Why haven't I heard this word before? It sounded tasty, the pretty "cha" pronounced like "challah."

My co-worker and friend Beth confirmed that charoses is a staple of the traditional Seder meal, a savory sweet dish composed of walnuts, chopped apples, cinnamon, wine and honey. It's meant to remind the faithful of the mortar between the bricks that the Jews had to lay while they were enslaved in Egypt.

I followed the recipe at Food in Jars pretty much exactly, and was quite pleased with the outcome: a chunky mix of fruits and nuts, not very sweet but not un-sweet either. Good if you're not much for really sweet stuff in the mornings, si? It was a little hard to spread on a piece of toast, but I think it's a pretty decent morning mouthful. I gave a jar to Beth and await her verdict with matzo crackers next week. As for me, I think it's a success!

What do mandarins and fish fries have in common?

Absolutely nothing.

Aside from being a touch time-consuming to peel all those little oranges, canning clementines was a neat little project. Inspired by Marisa's recipe over here at Food in Jars, I bought a five-pound box of clems at HyVee and set to work with Tracy Bonham and Laura Veirs to accompany me. I adjusted the simple syrup to one cup of sugar to six cups of water and that was plenty sweet-- next time I'll try paring it down even further to 3/4 cup, like Marisa did. All things considered, I was quite pleased with the result.

Five beautiful jars crammed full of mandarins! I gave one to my mother-in-law for her birthday and she must have liked them, because I got the jar back only a few weeks later. I gave another to Jason and Rebecca and they promptly invented a slew of cocktails in which to drop the little slices.

Verdict? SUCCESS. Whatever shall I make for March?

On Friday, I FINALLY got to attend one of my most favorite series of events of the year, the Holy Name Fish Fry. (That is a Facebook page and may not show.) This amazingness puts you through the ringer with a long-ass line and this year's trademark cold-ass weather matched only by the coldness of the beer, but the end result of a happy, heady buzz and crisp-hot, juicy fish are soooo worth it.

We go again this Friday!

I have more blog material but little time and have to hit the books....or book....and later tonight it will be a Sookie Stackhouse book. BUT FIRST THE OTHER BOOK. QUIT TEMPTING ME, SOOKIE!

January's project: Strawberry Balsamic Jam

I made this with a combination of recipes-- the Canning 101 recipes from Pioneer Woman, because they are for a simple strawberry jam...

I <3 Pioneer Woman

...and, the no-pectin strawberry balsamic jam from Savory Sweet Life:

Alice is cool too.

I was intrigued by the balsamic addition presented by Alice, but really wanted to make a jam I could give away if I wanted. Also, I'd made the plain strawberry jam from PW for Christmas gifts already.

The verdict?

It tasted just like the regular strawberry jam. I didn't have them side by side or anything, but it sure tasted like regular strawberry to me. And the color wasn't as pretty as when I made the plain. I wonder if it had to do with subbing in two tablespoons of balsamic for two of lemon juice, since the juice can help brighten the color? The world may never know. In any case, I have some tasty jam for toast in the morning, and that's a win.

A very nice surprise

Last night we were afforded a rare opportunity--to spend a little time with an elusive cousin of mine, Kathryn, my aunt Angie's daughter. I hadn't seen her in at least five or six years, and Melissa hadn't seen her in nearly twenty! Kate is visiting Omaha to meet her boyfriend Steve's family and will stay until the 2nd, so hopefully we'll get to meet up again. As for last night, she and Steve came over and we all visited for a couple of hours.
















In other news, we have finally finished painting the cabinets! Who knew this would take so dang long for us? Unfortunately, we STILL haven't been able to agree on a color to paint the doorjambs and windowsills. What goes with cottage grey/green and coffee brown? Eric's new kick is a very light mint green, borrowed from an idea I'm going to use in the main-floor bathroom (next project). It's going to look fabulous in the bathroom, but I seriously doubt it'll look good in the kitchen! Any suggestions?? We have kind of a brick/ochre red paint, as well as a light almond-colored paint. Both purchased for other projects and thrown aside at the last minute in favor of a different color. Creative people change their minds alot....right?

So here are new kitchen pictures. If you have an idea of a paint color to complement this scheme, PLEASE let me know so we can finally have this done and move on to countertops and the floor!



Don't mind the refrigerator hodge podge, please. :)

We love DIY!

Eh, kinda. We've been toiling in spurts over this kitchen for so long, I've forgotten what it feels like to really cook something that requires more than a pot, cabbage, sausage and stock. There's been drywall dust everywhere and it gets into everything, and when I've gotten it cleaned up, it magically reappears! But I'm ahead here...

So, Eric stripped the awful polka-dot-and-spiral wallpaper we've lived with for over a year, and scraped off the remaining residue. We had an uneven area patched and re-plastered, and primed everything so we'd be ready when we finally chose colors and painted. Mind, we hadn't agreed even ONCE on colors! We have a new stainless dishwasher and will be acquiring a new black fridge and stainless/black range in the coming year. Why? We think black fridges and ranges look cool, that's why. And our current stuff is O-L-D old.

Up there's Eric knocking out the wall above our cabinets. Hence the dust! We're putting in opaque sliding doors on tracks there, for storage. Our kitchen is pretty small so that will be handy. I enjoyed Mike's ancient shop vac! Look at that thing, it's like 25 years old and it spits dust up out of the vents on top. Looks like an easy Christmas present to me! (Shh, Sue) I might leave the insides of that one cabinet painted red, just for kicks.

Here's what the inside of that wall looks like,
complete with vintage Pepsi can. The cord goes
to our doorbell. Below are an admittedly cruddy
yet effective shim, and the crumbling ceiling inside the wall space. I'm actually excited about the ceiling part--I think we'll cover that up with those pretty aluminum (or are they tin?) patterned ceiling panes (? I know nothing) that you see in lots of restaurants around Omaha. That'll be pretty slick! Too bad you'll only see them as the sliding doors open and shut. Unless I can talk someone into putting them elsewhere too...




On Saturday morning-ish, we went to Lowe's to choose paint. No, we hadn't agreed on colors yet. What's going to look good with stainless AND black AND doesn't remotely resemble the palette the previous owners had? That pretty well eliminated any fall colors--no reds, oranges or pretty orangey-yellows. I liked grey but Eric didn't. He liked some yellow rock color but I didn't. We couldn't agree on a green or blue, didn't want white or cream. He wasn't game for my all-out vibrant-Frida-colors Mexi-theme (I already have free reign over the main bathroom). And we thought brown would clash. The only thing on which we could agree was a sand-textured paint I'd seen in a friend's house, because it would disguise the old-house irregularities in the walls. After squabbling quietly in the aisle and somehow making each other crack up in the meantime, we began to piece together a color scheme that may or may not work. Here is the main color, a dark grey-green (compromise!):



We're pretty pleased! It looks like a professional stucco wall and it's a nice color. I think the first picture looks like suede. Yay! The texture in the second pic is a little easier to see. And here's most of what I can get for the kitchen:

We spent tonight touching up thin spots and correcting mistakes, and trying to squeeze in some studying (me) and gym time (Eric), so we haven't done the doorjambs or windowsills yet. You'll have to wait and see what those colors are. :) I'll probably spend tomorrow night doing that while Eric finishes up the cabinets.


After this...countertops and floor!