How to make hot chilli pepper jelly (and preserving info)

This is the best thing I ever made from my garden produce.

So simple to make, but the finest.  You simply blender hot chillis, capsicums (peppers in North American) and vinegar.  I found the recipe here at this great publication about chilli peppers and capsicums, "Peppers: Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy"    (Content reviewed and revised by LINDA J. HARRIS, Food Safety and Applied Microbiology, Specialist, Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California, Davis.)  Their recipes were adapted from “So Easy to Preserve,” 2nd Edition, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Georgia.

This is because I couldn't just try a recipe blindly.  I was learning to live off the land, and preserve my garden produce - possibly for a long time, so I had to learn how to do it safely (and yummily!).

My favourite recipes in this publication was the "Pepper Jelly" (p.11), followed by "Hot Chilli Salsa" (p.8).  But one of the reasons it tasted so amazing was the produce - fresh from my own garden, and using a variety of amazing heirloom and interesting tomatoes ranging from jam tomatoes, various coloured tomatoes, to different shapes of varieties.

Here is the recipe for Hot Chilli Pepper Jelly (sometimes called Red Pepper Jelly) but omitting a few drops of food colouring as I like completely natural foods.  For the info I needed on preserving in general, go to the full scientific paper on preserving peppers, here.  It is so easy!  Just blender, and bottle.  An amazing food with cheese, or on meats.

Hot Chilli Pepper Jelly

Makes 5 half-pint (250-ml) jars.

4 or 5 jalapeño or other hot peppers cored and chopped

4 medium green or red bell peppers cored and chopped

1 cup white vinegar (5%) or 250 ml

5 cups sugar or 1.25 L

1 pouch liquid pectin

1. Put half the peppers and half the vinegar into a blender; cover and process until

peppers are liquefied. Repeat with remaining peppers and vinegar. 

2. Combine the pepper and vinegar mixture with the sugar in a large saucepan and

boil slowly for 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

3. Add liquid pectin and boil hard for 1 minute. 

4. Skim foam off the top of the jelly and pour jelly immediately into canning jars, leaving 1⁄4 inch (0.5 cm) of headspace.

5. Wipe jar rims with a clean, damp cloth and secure lids and ring bands.

6. Process the jars of jelly in a boiling water bath as prescribed in Table 7.

Table 7. Recommended Processing Time for Pepper Jelly in a Water Bath Canner

Processing Time at Various Altitudes

For jar size of half-pint or pint: 

Altitude 0–1,000 ft  is 5 min processing time

Altitude 1,001–6,000 ft is 10 min processing time

Altitude above 6,000 ft is 15 min processing time

Pumpkin whorl

 

  Pumpkin whorl,

 

...with room to unfurl.

 

 Marigolds glow,

 

helping seedlings to grow.

 

 

 A playhouse is built

where the weta goes.

Plum juice for jam, and drinks, and doors.

Neighbourhood kids gather together,

life is better when we care for each other.

Magic elasmosaurus (learned from the library),

beautiful Troy.

A life lived closer to the land is a life full of joy.

Space to Grow - my chilli plants' life lesson

One great thing about gardening - which is essentially nurturing the land - is that you get some great lessons on how nature works. Of course, this applies to human lives as well. You just feel these lessons about life so closely when you are out there gardening (or interacting in nature in any way, e.g. camping, hiking, working with wood).

This year Shane bought some chilli plant seedlings at what turned out to be the perfect time of year. However, he insisted on planting them right next to each other on one of our thin balcony planters which run along the edge of our raised gardens. Despite his protests, I moved two of the plants to the large raised bed above, with generous space all around them. The other three I spaced out further from each other and left them where he had wanted them.

The two with the spacious environment and heaps of fertile soil above became huge bushes, generously producing buckets upon buckets of large, shiny green delicious chillies. The other three in the cramped space fought against each other and eventually produced a few mid-sized chillies at the end of the season.

What did I learn from this? It's not just the genetics of the plant, it's the environment that allows the plant to really develop. This is something that gardening teaches all the time - as it's the soil and conditions around a plant that really allow it to thrive. That's just like children, I think. The genes are important, but one they've got them, what really makes the difference is the environment they are provided in which they can thrive.

I also know this as I was provided with an environment when I was growing up where I did really well - not due to being stronger by nature - I could feel, but by being nurtured and allowed space to grow, play, discover, make things, a place with some wildness to explore...we were able to develop fully.

I am so relieved that now the my kids are in the neighbourhood we live in now (we used to live in a cramped city suburb) that they will have space they need to grow.

Hot Plum/Chilli Chutney and Mint/Chilli relish - Taste as you go

hot plum/chilli chutneyShane's the flavour maestro. I am just the chemist.

Shane slowly stewed on the stove plums, sugar, hot chillies from the garden, garlic, and a few other things. Cinnamon? The sauce was awesome. Hot chillies and deep red plum jam - we had it with cheese and crackers, with meat - it was really fun.

I followed this "Cottage Smallholder" recipe for the most part (recipe reproduced on this post, below) - but added a 1/2 teaspoon of cloves on inspiration. I don't love it actually. What I learned from Shane here, with sauces and spicing - is that you have to taste it as you add the spices and chillies. Don't taste it at the end of the recipe like I did! By then I thought I had already added far too much spice, which was sucky.

Later.... March 11. It turns out Shane did love this chutney in the end - it just needed to age a bit. I had followed the recipe - and added the half teaspoon of ground cloves on inspiration. So intuition can be good too. So...

GREAT RECIPE + paying attention and tasting throughout = best results


mint/chilli relish
Shane also blended mint (which grows prolifically) with chillies and some vinegar to make a wicked relish.




cottage smallholder's hot spiced plum chutney
from http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/hot-spiced-plum-chutney-recipe-6959
I had a yearning for a new plum chutney. Something fruity, spicy and hot. A chutney that could accompany roast pork, lamb or duck and be good with cheese sandwiches. A chutney that would inspire me to find infinite ways to use it.

We have a plum tree in our garden. It has large dark skinned plums. This year the harvest is enormous and during the recent high winds plums rained down on the driveway. Damaged windfall plums are perfect for making jam or chutney. I made a batch of our plum and tamarind chutney and then came up with this recipe. The lemon brings out the flavour of the plums and helps it to set.

It’s got a good chilli kick that comes a few seconds after the fruit bursts on your tongue. Wonderful and surprising. You can play with the amount of freah chilli used. Add them incrementally, letting the chutney absorb their flavour (about five minutes). I added the chopped dried chillies towards the end, a little at a time so as to get exactly the chilli sparkle that I wanted.

The chutney may look a bit sloppy when it’s ready to pot into jars. If you are unsure whether it has set enough, let a teaspoon get completely cold in the fridge – it thickens as it cools (about half an hour). If it is the right consistency for you, heat it the rest up very slowly and gently before pouring into warm sterilised jars with plastic lined lids.

If it’s too sloppy for your taste just bring it back to simmering point and continue string and testing every half an hour. Chutney is very forgiving – you can play with it a bit without ruining it. We always put a few jars away for vintage chutney – two year old chutney is to die for. Leave this chutney for at least a month to let the flavours to develop and mature. 

INGREDIENTS 

1.45 kilos approx of sweet plums500 ml of white wine vinegar (don’t use malt or white vinegar)
4 chunky cloves of garlic sliced fine
175g of dried apricots chopped
600g of white granulated sugar
1 lemon cut lengthwise into 8 slices and sliced very fine (ours weighed 100g)
1 large pinch of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon of coriander powder
7 red birds eye chillis sliced fine, include the seeds
1 tsp of salt1 tsp of allspice powder
1 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp of balsamic vinegar 
5 juniper berries 
10 black peppercorns
1 tsp of dried chillies, chopped fine with seeds 



METHOD 

The night before you want to make the chutney, put the plums in a large heavy bottomed saucepan/preserving pan and add the vinegar. Bring to the boil, cover and leave to cool until the next day.

Remove the stones from the softened plums. Return the plums and vinegar to the saucepan. Add all the ingredients apart from the sugar and the dried chillies.

Bring slowly to simmering point and add the sugar. Stir constantly until you are certain that the sugar has dissolved.

Bring the chutney back to a good simmer and, after an hour or so, add the dried chillis to taste. Stir every few minutes to stop the bottom burning (this is a labour of love after all).

Eventually depending on the strength of your simmer, the chutney will start to thicken (more like very thick soup than chutney) – mine took 3 hours, stirring every 10-15 minutes or so. Test for thickness by putting a spoonful in the fridge for half an hour and take the saucepan off the stove during the test.

When you have a consistency that you like, very gently reheat the chutney and when it reaches simmering point pour into warm sterilised jars and seal with plastic lined metal lids. Leave for a month to mellow.

Plum Wine

We have been forging a new path - where we have not gone before!

Making wine!

Who knows if it will work - but we've been doing it more or less alright so far. I researched both the old ways and the new (Aunt Daisy's Preserving in an old book, and the internet), and have come up with my own simplified start to making wine.

But a really great find is a post by Althea on lifestyleblock.co.nz. Althea calls himself a "lazy winemaker". Although I don't entirely agree - he is at least a very natural and great winemaking person. Lazy winemaker's method here.

It appears that in the old days they didn't add yeast, and they certainly didn't add "Campden tablets ". But the little bubbler (see photo) that we added to the top of our fermenter container was very cheap ($6.50 NZ) and easy to install (cut hole in bucket).

The winemaking process involves a few stages, "musting" (about a week), then "fermenting" (time varies, but another while), then storing it for awhile in bottles (months). We've learned that stirring during musting is to prevent mould from forming on top of the crushed plums and water. And installing a tap on our fermenting container would have been easy before we added the strained plum juice! Next year we'll be better...the hardest part is starting.

Here is my thought - modern life is so elaborate that it makes you not want to take anything on. Learning is growing from something small. When I read Aunt Daisy's "Wine Making Hints" and Recipes, they are so basic, and you realize that people were just doing it with what they had - which is far more inspiring of action.

Aunt Daisy's PLUM WINE

Allow 8 to 12 lb. [3.6 – 5.5 kg] very ripe plums to each gallon of water, and 3 1/2 lb. to 4 lb. [1.6 -1.8 kg] sugar, according to sweetness of plums. Use an earthenware or wooden vessel, not tin or any metal. [Nowadays we can use plastic containers.] Do not let the wine get chilled during the fermentation, but keep it in a fairly warm room, and do not move the vessel about. Put plums into vessel, mash well, cover with hot water, and leave 6 to 8 days or while fermentation is active, stirring frequently every day. Then strain the juice through a muslin bag, measure it, add sugar as above. Let this stand to work as long as it will. Skim every day, keeping some juice to add after skimming so as to keep the same quantity. It may work for a month or two. When it has quite ceased working, bung tightly, or bottle and cork well. Should be ready in 3 months, but the longer it is left to mature the better. Wine matures best in a wooden keg. Keep the keg covered with a light cloth during fermentation period as it attracts a lot of insects.

Feel free to use a Campden tablet though! And make the best of both worlds.



February 6 2013 update:

We did eventually produce drinkable wine.  It was alright - it was relaxing to drink - but the stuff we made on our first go was not as good as storebought wine.  We didn't really understand what we were doing - but having tried, we had at least taken the mystique out of it.  Now this year, we are ready to go!  I am brewing wine (strawberry/plum wine this year) for which I carefully and cleanly followed a recipe, and also researched methods on Youtube (and got advice from a cool lady who used to make wine all the time who works at the local library).  The "musting" bin was a food quality ex-jam bucket with a tight lid this year, so more clean than a nasty huge old bucket - and a smaller and more controllable amount until I really know what I am doing.  I utilized "pectolase" a few days after I had mixed the cut up fruit and sugar, then added yeast.  It has really frothed up and smells amazing.  We have also bought a beautiful glass demijohn, so the brewing process will be more sterile (less skanky).

It's just that the first time you start, there are a myriad of methods, and you don't really know which to use (or why).  I know that our process will be clean, sterile, and there is no reason why the wine won't turn out great!  Although our wine was a little more like moonshine last year - with random alcohol level - it was still the most fun and rewarding thing that we did with our plums!  Going down and tasting it, or having a free glass of wine - even though it was imperfect - was really fun.

Rabbit Stew and a Penny or Two: A Gypsy Family's Hard Times and Happy Times on the Road in the 1950s by Maggie Smith-Bendell (Review)

(Originally published in England as Our Forgotten Years.)

After watching My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (reality TV show documenting the current descendents of gypsies and their culture), I really wanted to know about the original gypsy culture I had always heard about. I always loved the idea of living in a caravan in a nomadic life, around a fire at night. I yearned for this, especially I think growing up in the modern Canadian city of Calgary. Although I was lucky enough to go on camping trips, and even driving holidays with my family where we slept and drove in our large van - I know there was something in my blood that yearned for what was out there in the world beyond my own settlement.

This book is awesome. Maggie grew up living the old "gypsy" life (but they called themselves Travellers - only house dwellers called them Gypsies), travelling in a horse-drawn caravan with her family.

Note: There are 3 groups Maggie identifies - her own was the Travellers of Romanic origin, Irish Travellers, and New Age Travellers (people who no longer want to be house-bound). Her family picked hops and peas for farms with other Travellers during those seasons. It wasn't an idyllic life, it was a rough life with lots of hard work - but they got to live in nature, and although they were often given a hard time by the house dwellers and police they were free to roam as they wished. They had different ways of making a living depending on the season, others were making pegs or selling flowers. They carried their Romany culture with them. They were often unjustly discriminated against - although knowledgeable about many things, most could not read or write so their story has not been heard until now.

Here is the description from the back of Rabbit Stew and a Penny or Two, and I really can't improve on it:

Born in a Somerset pea-field in 1941, the second of eight children in a Romani family, Maggie Smith-Bendell has lived through the years of greatest change in the travelling community's long history. As a child, Maggie road and slept in a horse-drawn wagon, picked hops and flowers, and sat beside her father's campfire on ancient verges, poor but free to roam. As the twentieth century progressed, common land was fenced off and the traditional Gypsy ways disappeared. Eventually Maggie married a house-dweller and tried to settle for bricks and mortar, but she never lost the restless spirit, the deep love of the land and the gift for storytelling that were her Romani inheritance.

Maggies story is one of hardship and prejudice, but also, unforgettably, it recalls the glories of the travelling life in the absolute safety of a loyal and loving family.

I like this photo of Maggie best for how it shows her character in her features. At married age - the two biggest boys are hers - sitting with her sister Holly and her two young children.Maggie is currently a tireless advocate for Romany Gypsy families, helping them get planning permission to live in their own way on private sites. Before this, they owned their own land but were unable to stay on it due to planning permission - or they lived on poor, unhealthy government sites built over landfills, or cemeteries (unthinkable to the deeply spiritually connected Travellers). There is now a network of people devoted to their cause, slowly improving slowly to reflect the needs of those who live in houses that move, as well as those that don't.


Maggie in one of the traditional caravans she keeps on her property in Somerset. Photo: David Mansell (http://www.guardian.co.uk/

I feel that Traveller people - similar the situation of native North American peoples - have something essential to pass on to us that we now desperately need; something they have retained that we have lost. Are our lives better now in a world where machines do the work of people? We - as in our parents, grandparents and great great grandparents - have exchanged our lives outside with the birds and animals and trees (and hedges and mist) in the natural world for a life of greater ease. We were fleeing the hardship and roughness of living on the land - a life I will never fully know the reality of, it's true. But at the same time, what have we lost? I can only imagine - but Maggie knows.

And why were gypsies socially stigmatized? Was it because they still wanted to live on the land, when the rest of society was leaving it?

Rabbit Stew and a Penny or Two is available as a paperback, but also an e-book (Kindle), and even as an audio book. It's published by Hachette Littlehampton (littlebrown.co.uk).

"Like the old song says: if I can help somebody with a word or a song, then my living will not be in vain." -Maggie Smith-Bendell


Gypsy Videos

Real footage of Travellers in the 1930s:



A kushti video made by some young Travellers(kushti means good):



An old Traveller song:

This is my garden.

Hello, imaginary friends! This is my potential garden space. I have been feeling the gardening vibe ever since learning how to worm farm. That sense of the richness in the soil... And experimenting in the land at our first rental place, which was by a forest. But now, after having a shared yard, where I couldn't dig anything up randomly, I have been giving a "ready, set, garden" home, with raised plant beds in the back, and a storage cupboard for storing later jars of preserves. No, I don't have any idea of what I am doing, but I did grow up in a veggie gardening family (albeit on the other side of the Earth, in Canada). But my instincts are pretty strong. I spent a day clearing the place out, and this is what my garden looks like.

The area to the right by the compost bin is just not really soil yet. I am going to have to hack it up with a pick, and introduce alot of biological matter (dead stuff).

The other night, I did buy alot of seedlings and plant the beds which were ready. In the approaching dark, with my little girl already planting the carrots randomly in a circle around her, there was no time to read up on which plants should neighbour which plants. I just had to follow my senses, and will learn from my mistakes for next time. But the moon was full, and I think that it was a great planting time. Rain began to fall, my husband thought I was crazy to still be out in the dark and mud. And so it begins...

Watch this land

We have done it. We've moved out of the city, to a place which is nearer to nature, more inaccessible but worth it when you get there. This place still has native skinks running around (small lizards) from under leaves or decaying matter whenever it is disturbed (they are considered rare, but their numbers been depleted here). The house we bought has raised garden beds in the back, and a great storage cupboard for storing food preserves. It has fruit trees as well. And room for an actual compost heap. I do have to travel further to work, but it will be on mass public transport. My children will not grow up stunted. Watch this space. (Or shall I say "land".)

Waiting in agony

Still dying to garden! Feel the instinct strongly. When I thought our house had an offer I ran around planting strawberries into pots, later to transfer to my new garden. It seems land is pretty essential for a garden. Still waiting...

By the way, the tomatoes from that last "gardening log" post didn't do too well. I still have so much to learn! I have Xanthe White's organic gardening book ready though.

Finding a home on land

Ok, so my husband and I are looking for a home with an actual yard (called a "garden" here in NZ). There is that classic irony of course of needing to work more in the city to purchase the land to "return to nature". But there is also the problem that's been happening over the last few hundred years, and at a critical point now-- of overdevelopment! Just as you buy a place with some wild land near it, it quickly also gets swept up and developed.

So, should I become active politically to plead for city zoning laws to change? How do I make a home on land???

The area where we would love to live is currently near a huge forest, and estuary. The forested area is zoned for development, and we all know, it won't be long. There is also a huge bridge in the plans which will cut through the estuary, through the neighbourhood. This is the most "wild" place we could find that we could afford to live.

Even in the real story of Laura Wilder, in her books "The little house on the prairie", the family made a home just beyond the wave of settlement. But now, we are carving up every metre.

The people of the future will reintroduce greenery where they can, and strike a balance. I am going to move there, and fight for all the wildness that I can.

A Farm Through Time

I have wanted to blog about A farm through time for some time, illustrated by Eric Thomas, written by Angela Wilkes. I finally found this treasure again and scanned it in.

All the images are small "details", as I can't show the wide pages of the book here.

800
The book is meant to be about farming and how it has changed over time, but it has a very strong gleam of meaning about sustainable living. The book shows the same spot over the centuries, so you can see at a moment what took ages to experience. Some things are clearer at that speed as well. The first stage is "Clearing the land", 800 (England). We clear away forest to grow crops, and the forest provides building materials, fuel and many other things. We grow food on a farm surrounded by woodland. People rent land from a lord, who owns everything.

1000
In the next stage, "Two hundred years later, the country looks much the same, but there are fewer trees." You can see stands of trees everywhere, and cleared areas. The lord cuts down trees at will to use. It's really interesting how they make their clothes from flax (linen) and sheep's wool and cook on a fire in the house. Lots of skilled work to do and everyone is working together.


"The farmer's wife spins the wool into coarse thread on a spindle, then weaves the thread into fabric on a big loom. The woollen fabric will make warm clothes and blankets. The girl is winding flax onto a distaff, ready to spin into fine linen thread. Underclothes are often made of linen as it is less scratchy than wool.

"Inside the house, a fire burns brightly on the stone hearth. The farmer's wife bakes flat loaves of bread for the family on the hot hearthstones. Meat and thick, filling soups are boiled in the pot hanging over the fire."



1200
A few hundred years later, the men repair hawthorn hedges that line the fields, they've been there for hundreds of years but need to be reworked and repaired.

"The men are warm despite the bitter cold. Their homespun tunics and leggings are made from coarsely woven wool, held together with leather thongs. They wear stout leather boots and felt hats to keep their heads warm, and around their waists they carry leather flasks of ale for refreshment."

1300A new house is being built by the farmer, but unfortunately, "In the countryside beyond, most of the woodland has been cut down, but a few mature trees still grow in the hedgerows." So, what was once woodland remains in the cracks and grooves of the land.

Just that. A little gleam, the farmer becomes quite prosperous, the pages follow with illustrations of dairy farming, making cheese (in a press) and so on. Later with a soul-less flutter there is the tractor sitting there on the lonely farm and no more people. No community drinking ale and fixing the hedgerows!

Well, this is the way of life that our current way life is based upon. Just notice the trees.

Huge worms found in our little piece of earth!

Worms are cool.

That's what I was thinking yesterday, feeling ill after working on the computer, rushing around the house or out, eating, resting, doing chores but still feeling weak. I finally had to get out and do something earthy.

I was going to walk to the dairy to get some cell phone time, rush, rush, acquire, acquire, but got tripped up by a weed on the way. My neighbour-- we share this house, three units of a building, she was really good and pulled the weeds out of a part of our garden, a wedge shaped part on the side of our driveway. I saw a weed she had missed. Then, my fingers in the dirt trying to get it out, I had to go get a stick or something to get the roots out. When I got the root out and had a metal tool in my hand which was useful, I noticed that none of the roots of the weeds had been pulled out. I could feel that the roots needed to be pulled. The earth drew me in, and after a bit, I was pulled in by the earth, and pulling out roots, churning up the dirt, and freeing it from this horrible plastic layer some misguided soul had put in years ago. I was lifting and pulling up a root-twined layer of earth like a carpet, as the plastic had made a barrier, roots in the ground white below-- somehow got most of it out, and then churned it all up, free to breathe. AND I found these ginormous earthworms, 10 inches long and very fat, that lived large enough to churn through that soil. My little children had come home from school, and right into the house to the TV. But for once I wasn't needing that sickly babysitter, and I forced them to come out with me, little children, similar to the white starved roots that I found under my plastic layer. COME! I yelled. COME LOOK! Dubious, they eventually came, and they loved it. Soon Troy was holding 5 huge earthworms. Luke was too scared, he kept saying

"look, a worm"

"a worm"...with with the voice of the young child whose mouth is new to making those sounds. He was frightened to touch them, once calling them "-nake baby" (he can't say s's). But fascinated to watch them as I kept finding them and throwing them over to him to see.

It was great. I felt really well after that.

Worm trying to crawl back into the soil, a good symbol for us!