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In celebration of the ABL/CWG2012 DNC Road Trip, from faithful commentor Marvel:
May the harvest be upon you! It sure is harvest-y here in the Pacific Northwest!
We make a lovely liquor out of these tart, blue plums.
I like how the liquid (which starts out looking like sea critters submerged in weak coffee) turns a beautiful ruby color.
Plum Cordial-In-Waiting — Ingredients (in descending order) damson plums, vodka, sugar, brandy, water, whole cloves, whole allspice, star anise. Store in a cool dark spot for 3-4 months. Decant into festive vessels. Drink up.
[These snapshots are from last year (9/5/11) …we’ll be trudging out with ladder & pails and starting the process all over again tomorrow — sending these 2011 photos ‘cuz I’m up to my ears canning beans (etc.) today and it promises to get plenty non-stop busy hereabouts.]
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As the official harvest season kicks off, what’s happening in your gardens this week?
Elizabelle
Marvel! Your photos and plum cordial are splendid.
Could you do a pictorial on how you prepare the plum cordial?
Have a friend who made brandied apricots out of dried apricots, demerara sugar, and the cheapest scotch you can find. Then you store it a few months, and turn it several times while you’re waiting.
Spectacular. Have to get her recipe and make some of that soonest.
Might be just enough time to make some for Christmas/holiday gifts.
I will share the recipe, when I get it. Although I think it’s pretty much:
layer of dried apricots
sprinkle generously with demerara sugar
throw in some cheap scotch
layer with apricots/sugar/scotch to top of largish glass jar with tight fitting lid
top all with scotch
put in a dark cabinet and turn it upside down every few weeks while waiting for it to age. Think you need about 3-4 months minimum for it to meld; maybe more.
Cheers!
JPL
Yeah! Plum cordial just in time for the holidays. Thanks Marvel for the pictures.
Do John, ABL and Heather start their road trip today or tomorrow?
TheMightyTrowel
Mr. Trowel and I have made sloe gin and brandy the last few years – similar process, pick sloes (which are wild plums, the fruit of the blackthorn in case you were curious), rinse them, put in the freezer over night, divide into various vessels, add about 1 part sugar to 2 parts sloe by weight, dump brandy or gin (cheap but not turpentine) over the top, seal and store in a cool dry place, turn occasionally. After 6-12 weeks decant.
The liquor you can drink or store. the berries can be frozen. My favourite use for them is to pit them, chop them roughly, dump them into chocolate ganache, chill the whole thing and then roll them into truffles for christmas.
Now that I’m in Oz where there are no blackthorn, I will have to find a new boozey fruit treat. the brandied apricots might be just the thing.
Kane
Plum Cordial sounds so good right now. Pour a few of those plums over vanilla ice cream – yum.
BillinGlendaleCA
Back in the olden days when we had a house and a yard, we had an ugly ass plum tree in the back of the yard. It, however produced the best plums. My wife made what she calls plum wine. She cleans out a few large kimchee jars(she’s Korean), any large jar(over a gallon) will do. Fills them with plums, adds a bit of sugar, and fills the jars with vodka. You can’t use really cheep vodka, she uses Stoli. Put it in a cool dark place for 6 months, filter and enjoy. It is quite good, though I no longer can consume, the wife and her daughter had the last batch from the old plum tree a few weeks ago. The kid wants a bottle of her own. So she made a batch this year from store bought plums, so we’ll see in about 6 months how it turns out.
It’s basically the same as Marvel’s above, sans spices. Oh and use good vodka or don’t bother.
OGLiberal
On the harvest topic. Had more tomatoes this year than I could handle. Unskinned, de-seeded, chopped a bunch and froze them. Now want to make a sauce but most of the recipes I find call for XX tomatoes. Looking for an “X cups of chopped tomatoes” measure in a recipe. Anybody got one? BTW, I’m looking to make a straight up spaghetti sauce, not a marinara.
JPL
@OGLiberal: My sauce is seldom the same because I tend to experiment. Saute onion and garlic add tomatoes with several chopped basil leaves. Simmer for about an hour. Sometimes I saute onions, garlic, peppers, carrots and celery and will add additional herbs. If your sauce is to acidic, add a 1/2 tsp of sugar.
geg6
John did up some pears from our tree with sugar and a good vodka. Can’t wait for the holidays when it will be fully ready. We also canned some more of our bumper crop of Romas. Half with Hungarian peppers and half with basil. We ate some wax beans he canned a year ago and they were still awesome, crisp and fresh tasting. Oh, and John made a cake with pears last evening. Just chopped them up, put them in the bottom of a bundt pan and made yellow cake and poured that on top. After it cooled, he flipped the pan onto a cake dish. Looked absolutely beautiful and tasted even better.
I love having a garden.
Bago
Hay Zeus, the patron saint of straw men!
I’m finally getting around to the latest episode of Real Time, and if I hear the phrase “The fact of the matter is” one more time, I’m going to need another laptop, as the current one will be caked with plaster, leaves, raccoon guts and engine oil after it is thrown so hard it becomes lodged in the engine block of a bus three counties away.
The fury of a thousand suns is an inadequate expression. The bellicosity of a billion Betelgeuses is more appropriate.
WereBear
@Bago: Ron Christie is in the top rank of Republican Annoyance, and it’s a crowded field.
I think it is because he responds like a robotic salesperson; there’s no passion there!
OGLiberal
@JPL: Thanks. I also have an abundance of basil in the garden so I’ve got that part of the recipe covered.
jeffreyw
Smoking some ribs this morning.
Truman
After picking my pepper plants clean in the advance of Isaac (wasn’t sure how they would fare in the storm), I just made a bunch of raspberry habanero hot sauce (raspberries, habaneros, vinegar, salt, brown sugar, garlic, lemon juice, and orange juice) and a batch of my world famous Hungarian wax pepper mango hot sauce (peppers, mangoes, vinegar, salt, garlic, brown sugar, ginger, lemon juice, and orange juice). Going to process the remaining peppers (a mix of Cayennes, jalepenos, Tabasco, and a few bells) today for some concoction to be determined….yum!!!! Oh yeah….not garden related, but I’m going to bottle the Russian Imperial Stout that has been aging since last October tonight!!!
Bago
Laptop launched. 0.0001 seconds: atmospheric friction has reduced the laptop into a jet of plasma.
0.0002 seconds: The atmosphere is aflame as as the jet of plasma expands the air with the force of a nuclear bomb. The raccoon doesn’t stand a chance.
1 second: The erupting air begins to shatter buildings in the path of the shockwave.
16 seconds: The plasma jet that was my laptop, wall, raccoon, hits a bus three counties away.
17 seconds: The driver takes off his hat, places his palm against his forehead, and says “Not again.”
For reference
youtube.com/watch?v=F6ioLh7boMc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
the Conster
Lyin’ Ryan ran back his sub-3 hour marathon claim. He “misstated” his time. What a fucking douchenozzle. I think the narrative on him is settling in.
WereBear
@the Conster: One thing that puzzled me is that his wife is an attractive woman with lots of money.
Why on earth would she settle for such fellow?
The only explanation is that she recognizes her own kind.
Brachiator
Speaking of drink recipes, White House Beer
Now, Obama is just toying with Mittens. It’s not about, who would you like to have a beer with, it’s about “whose beer do you want to drink?”
Labor Day Ready: White House Releases Beer Recipe Thanks To Direct Democracy
techcrunch.com/2012/09/01/labor-day-ready-white-house-releases-beer-recipe-thanks-to-we-the-people/
To paraphrase a line from “Apocalypse, Now,”
Kilgore: Charlie don’t drink!
Schlemizel
I picked up a half a bushel of black walnuts off the ground. I am going to clean them today. Its a messy job that stains everything it touches and I have never done it before so it should be ‘entertaining’.
The nuts need a couple of weeks to cure before we will try to crack them open – which also is quite a chore from what I hear. I’ll update you if we end up with anything usable after all this.
JPL
@Schlemizel: haha.. Good luck.. my son tried to crack them and he wasn’t successful.
smintheus
The figs are finally starting to ripen, and a few days in the fridge is already getting clogged with them. They’re so sweet and fattening…and so huge this year…that we can only eat about four per day. May have to turn the extras into wine again this fall.
Schlemizel
@the Conster:
06-Jul-1966
Although Mao was in his early 70s, party propagandists claimed that the Chairman had swum nearly 15 km in 65 min. that day–a world-record pace, if true.
June 1994
Playing his first round of golf on a regulation, PGA-style, 18-hole course, Kim Jong Il scored 11 holes-in-one while he carded a stunning 38 UNDER par.
What is it with brain damaged dictator types, are their egos so fragile? Do they really think the rest of the world is that stupid?
Schlemizel
@JPL: I was being very careful as I collected & still have fingers on my left hand that are stained an odd shade of green/brown.
BTW I stored the basket inside my metal-screen fire pit and the squirrels are most unhappy that they can’t get at them. They have wasted quite a bit of time this morning trying to find a way in.
pseudonymous in nc
This has been an off-year for next-door’s black walnut tree — which, to be honest, is a relief, because the walnuts stain everything once the squirrels get to them. But last year, I harvested them early and dunked them in a big jar of Everclear to make nocino. It’s still resting in the pantry, but I’ll probably filter and bottle it this month and see if it’s palatable.
smintheus
@the Conster: Ryan was lying about more than his best marathon time. He brought the topic of marathons (plural) up, he bragged about how fast he was when he was younger, and he implied repeatedly that he’d run multiple marathons. Later conceded that he’d run only the one.
Unlike Ryan, I actually was fast in my youth; if you’re truly fast then you have school track records or at least really impressive times to point to. Ryan needed one, so he fabricated it.
Amir Khalid
@Schlemizel:
With these dictator types, I suspect that it’s more like “You know what I can do to you. Deny that if you dare, mofos.”
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: Can’t have a cult of personality scoring OVER par…
cathyx
@smintheus: I truly think these guys don’t realize or they forget that any info can now be looked up. Before the internet, someone could say such things but no one could really verify it without a lot of hassle. But now it’s easy. And since they used to get away with the lies, they’re now in the habit of just saying whatever they want. He was probably surprised at Runner’s World finding out what his actual time was.
smintheus
@Schlemizel: You can save yourself a lot of trouble husking black walnuts if you just put them in a bunch, or a rut, on the ground and drive your car tire over them. The nut is so hard that it’s not cracked, but the husk is squashed open. You need a special nut cracker to break open black walnuts…one with at least an 18 inch long handle.
Amir Khalid
@WereBear:
True. Mind you, Paul Ryan doesn’t have dictator-for-life-power over regular Americans, so my theory is kind of at a loss to explain him …
smintheus
@cathyx: I wonder if Ryan’s the kind of liar who manages to convince himself of his own lies?
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: I do believe he has ambitions in that area. He does have the ill-fitting Soviet suit style already going on…
arguingwithsignposts
@Amir Khalid:
I think your theory doesn’t need the dictator-for-life part. Some people just bullshit their way through life. Many of them end up as politicians, or CEOs.
Schlemizel
@smintheus: Wifes grand father used to do it all the time. He had a piece of railroad track that had a divot to hold the nut while he hit it with a hammer.
I opened two that had already shed the ‘fruit’ yesterday. I used two bricks. It was not as hard as I expected but extracting the nut from the shell was a PItA.
cathyx
@WereBear: No, the ill-fitting suits is just another lie. He thinks he’s a bigger size than he really is. He can say that he’s a 36 instead of a 32.
jnfr
I’m harvesting a dozen poblano peppers this morning and making chili rellenos tonight. Gives Mr. J a chance to use his little butane chili roaster. Please pray for us that the house is still standing when it’s done.
Tomatoes are starting to ripen in quantity, and we’re getting steady harvests of really tasty eggplants. So, yeah, harvest season!
satby
@OGLiberal:My tomatoes have been a mixed blessing this year, the erratic rainfall combined with heirlooms means a lot of split fruit. But I discovered online my new favorite way to use up all of them in an easy but tasty tomato sauce. Spead some olive oil in a glass baking dish, cut up and toss in the tomatoes (we I do seeds and all
smintheus
@Schlemizel: We bought a heavy duty nut cracker from a nursery catalog, Miller I think. Works very well.
WereBear
@cathyx: What a freakin’ freak. No wonder he is such a Wingnut Star.
Wingers love to be lied to.
cathyx
@WereBear: The lies make their beliefs possible.
smintheus
@WereBear: Saw a photo of Ryan and Romney on stage waving, and at first glance they both appeared to be wearing overcoats, their suit jackets were so badly fitting. You’d think with all the money they’re spending on the convention they’d hire a tailor to have at least one jacket that didn’t look like a pup tent.
pseudonymous in nc
@smintheus:
It turns out — who’d have thought it? — that people who spend their spare time training and running 26 mile races are a bit prickly about people who claim times that they haven’t run. When you’re running that far for that long, you remember your best time, and you especially remember if you break three hours. It’s not quite as bad as claiming to be a former Navy SEAL or having received a stack of war medals, but it’s in that mental space. You don’t just “misremember” that stuff.
There was a bit of a spat about whether Runner’s World was being partisan in reporting this, but it was pointed out that they’d done a very nice little profile of Sarah Palin, who, incidentally, has a faster marathon time than Ryan.
WereBear
Holy pasta fazzoli. These jerks really think they are entitled to their own facts. Hurry up, Mars Program; We need a planet to send them to.
satby
Fy@satby: FYWP and DROID. Ok, to continue, put everything you want in your sauce in the baking dish, roast at 425° until the juice is gone, stirring once or twice, then puree adding in water or tomato juice until it’s the consistancy you like. Great tasting and easy-peasy.
smintheus
@pseudonymous in nc: Yep. It’s about the long, dull hours of training you invest to get that result, which then has some meaning for you.
35 years later I still remember my fastest official and unofficial times from high school track, even though I never much cared about the sport and only ran one year as a favor to the coach.
gelfling545
So they should not have reported that what he said is untrue because they didn’t have something to report that the Dems said also being untrue so stating the fact becomes partisan? Oh god. that gives me a headache. We live in very strange times.
Yutsano
@geg6: You can always make something classic and French with those. This also has the advantage of being dastardly easy!
muddy
To get the husks off black walnuts, we used to put them in black trash bags in the sun, the outside rots off quickly, then hose them off, no staining. I used a milk crate to hold them while hosing so they don’t get blasted and escape.
Elizabelle
Now I feel cheesy about advising you use cheap scotch to make the “brandied” apricots.
But it’s what we used. The least expensive large bottle of scotch on sale at the neighborhood Rite-Aid.
So we’re not talking Thunderbird or Night Train equivalent. Maybe it’s what you’d get as a rail drink in a middling bar; maybe not ….
Anyhoo, the apricots were scrumptious. And not safe for driving.
Munira
I’ve been making lots of tomato sauce and baba ghanoush – also summer squash pesto (squash cooked until soft in skillet with garlic, leeks and sage, then when cool put through blender with walnuts or pecans (or both) and parmesan). good way to use the offspring the monster squash plant that grew spontaneously beside the compost bin.
Marvel
Elizabelle,
Here’s the How To:
4 C medium/good quality vodka
1 1/2 C medium/good quality brandy
1 C water
4 C sugar
6 cardamom pods (whole)
12 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks (broken)
1 vanilla bean (whole)
2/3 gallon Damson plums (deeply scored)
Combine ingredients and gently stir; store 2-3 months in a cool dark place. Gently agitate every week or so. When straining & filtering mixture, don’t crush the plums — that releases oodles of pectin which will make the cordial cloudy.
Cheers!