Runaway October

Our theme for this month was Alli­ums, cour­tesy of Small Mea­sure. Leeks, Onions, Shal­lots, Gar­lic, Ramps, Rakkyo, Scal­lions, Chives, etc. My first thought was ‘What the heck can I can that will actu­ally get eaten?’ I remem­bered try­ing an onion jelly a few years back, warmed and poured over melted Brie cheese, which was deli­cious. I had thought at the time that it would be yummy over pork­chops. So, I set­tled on an old standby — Jam.

I found the recipe on Michelle’s blog, Big Black Dog, and fol­lowed it to a “T”, no adap­ta­tions. Well, I did add one kitchen helper, since he was very sad that Big Brud­der got to go to Grandma’s house with­out him today.

Ignore the Oreo schmutz on his face. He’s hav­ing a rough day.

Zesty Red Onion Jelly*

Gen­er­ously shared by Michelle of Big Black Dog.

Makes 3 half-pint jars

Ingre­di­ents:

• 1 cup diced red onion
• 2 tsp lemon zest
• 3/4 cup white vinegar
• 3 cups gran­u­lated sugar
• 1 pouch (85 ml [3 fl oz]) liq­uid pectin

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Cut red onion into 1/8 inch slices; cut slices into 1/4 inch dice.
2. Mea­sure 1 cup into a large, deep stain­less steel saucepan.
3. Zest lemon and mea­sure 2 tsp into saucepan.
4. Stir in vine­gar and sugar.
5. Over high heat, bring mix­ture to a full, roil­ing boil. Stir­ring con­stantly, boil hard 1 minute. Remove from heat.
6. Imme­di­ately stir in one pouch Liq­uid Pectin, mix­ing well.
7. Pour jelly into a hot jar, divid­ing solids equally among jars and fill­ing each jar to within 1/4 inch of top rim (head space). Wipe jar rims. Cen­ter lids on jars & screw on bands till fingertight.
8. Process in Hot Water Bath for 10 minutes.
9. Cool for about 30 min­utes, then, when lids are con­cave but jelly is still hot, care­fully invert & twist jars to dis­trib­ute solids through­out jelly. (Do not let them remain upside down for long peri­ods. It is said that doing so can cause food par­ti­cles to creep into the threads and cause spoilage.) Repeat as needed dur­ing the cooling/setting time, until solids are nicely suspended.

* I think this is con­sid­ered a jam because the onions have not been strained out, but I could be wrong!

It was a sim­ple quick recipe, the longest part was the 10 minute Hot Water Bath.

The color is gor­geous. I used Michelle’s trick of heat­ing the onion skins in the required vine­gar to get the dye out of them. Onions are rare at Farmer’s Mar­kets here and I had no clue how old the ones I bought were, but I’d imag­ine the color from fresh onions would be more vibrant.

She also spec­i­fied that short inver­sion times or twist­ing were nec­es­sary to dis­trib­ute the solids, but mine seemed to have no trou­bles at all. I just made sure to lis­ten for the “schick” of the lids seal­ing (onions have low ph so good can­ning prac­tices are vital) and called it done!

Lessons learned:

• Don’t try to smell onions cook­ing in vine­gar. Burns the sinuses. LOL
• I’ve had a few peo­ple frown when I invert my jars while they cool. It was just what I’ve been told and have seen done. Appar­ently this is a no-no because food par­ti­cles can work their way into the threads and pos­si­bly cause spoilage. Thank­fully I’ve never had issues before, but now I know.

What did you make for the Can Jam? Or what have you canned lately?

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Yep, you heard right. My plain jane kitchen has had a facelift.

Here she is before, look­ing pretty… neutral.

And after! A cou­ple wash­ings with TSP, a cou­ple coats of Valspar Jaunty Green, and doesn’t she look so pretty? To the left of the fridge is where the chalk­board wall will be. I’m excited to get that done. But first I need to fill in the knock­down wall tex­ture and slap on some thick coats of primer before even THINKING about start­ing that endeavor.

Rowan’s being coy.

I didn’t paint the wall with the win­dow and sink in it because it’s one con­tin­u­ous wall the goes into the boys class­room. I don’t think I could han­dle THAT much bright green.

Oh hey! Why yes, yes I am wear­ing only under­wear, a hoodie and Ketchup.

If you look closely at  the first after pic­ture there is a very small space above the upper cab­i­nets that’s use­less still unpainted. I think I’ve decided it needs to be painted too, even though the only thing small enough to fit up there are the cats.

So there ya have it. My other color thoughts for this room were an aqua (but that seems to be my first thought for every room) or a smoky pur­ple. What would you have done?

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Please don’t for­get to vote for me daily, if you would be so kind. Thank you!