Jam and Jelly Making - "G" Rated

We have always enjoyed fruit jam and jelly but in Taiwan found it to be both expensive and tasteless. One plus of living in the Pacific Northwest is the abundance of fruit. We have visited U-Pick berry and peach farms and found an abundant supply of blackberries along the fences surrounding the house. First you must harvest the berries. Blueberries are easy, in fact some of the bushes are so tall you don't even have to stoop over to pick.
Blackberries are another story. They grow in thickets and are covered with thorns and barbs . Long sleeves are a must and not always enough; I usually look like I was in a battle with a wet cat after I have picked blackberries.

After picking and a light wash (no pollution in this area, just dust) the berries are ready for processing. The jam must be placed in sterilized jars to prevent bacterial growth. The jars are washed in the dishwasher and put in the oven to dry and heat so the thermal shock of filling with boiling liquid won't crack them.

Blueberries ready to be made into jam.

Fruit pectin is added to assist in the jelling process. It is a natural product derived from apples.

Fresh lemon juice is added for tartness, to raise the acidity and help preservation, and to preserve the color of the fruit.

The fruit is crushed and brought to a boil, then the pectin is added. After returning to a boil sugar is added, the amount depends on the tartness of the fruit. The mixture is boiled for about 10 minutes.

While the fruit mixture is boiling the jar lids are put into boiling water to sterilize them and to soften the rubber sealing surface so a tight seal will be formed.

Everything is laid out so the filling and sealing can be done quickly.

The boiling fruit mixture is ladled into the jar, the lid placed on top, and a sealing band screwed on as quickly as possible.

The filled jars are placed in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes for further sterilizing.

After removal as the jars cool you will hear a "ping" as the lid flexes and seals the jar under a vacuum. The cooled jars can be kept unrefrigerated up to a year without significnt flavor loss; although we have never had any last that long.

So far we have made peach, apricot, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry jam as well as pear salsa and canned peach halves. Can't wait to see what next season brings.

Chinese Birthday Celebration Customs

We had the privilege this past weekend to be invited to celebrate the first birthday of the daughter of some friends from Taiwan who are living here while the husband is in flight school. For the traditional Chinese, only three birthdays are celebrated until the age of 60, then birthdays are celebrated every ten years.

The first birthday celebration is when the child is 30 days old. You need to know that when a child is born they are considered one year old and another year will be added to their age on Chinese New Year. So, a three-month-old infant could actually be two years old by Chinese calculations. When the baby is 30 days old the parents send gifts to all the family and friends, always including a red dyed egg to announce the arrival of the child. Some of the gifts are returned the child's parents to help to support and raise the child.

The birthday celebration we attended came at the end of the child's first year of life. The parents performed a ritual that they believe will tell them what the future holds for their child. Various objects including coins (wealth), a CD (musician), a ruler (architect), a book (studious) , a calculator (accountant or banker), a pen (author), a camera (journalist/artist), a green onion (intelligent), a head of garlic (shrewd), a thermometer (medical), a scale (judicial), and a golf bag (sports) were placed on the floor; twelve in all.The child was placed on the floor nearby and observed by the parents and the guests gathered around.
Whichever object the child picks up is supposed to represent their future. If the child picks up the coins they will be wealthy, the pen they will be an author, and so on.

Our friends were encouraging their daughter, Dou-dou, to go for the coins - meaning that she would be wealthy and could take care of them in later life. But her first choice was a calculator, indicating a possible career in banking or another occupation where she would be handling large sums of money.

Her second choice was a pen, indicating an aptitude for writing or literature.
And then, what mama was waiting for... THE MONEY.

She was smart enough to immediately hand it over to her mother for managing.

After the money was chosen, anything else was just for fun, like the digital camera which might lead to a career in journalism or the arts and the green onion (tsung) which has the same sound in Chinese as intelligent.


After a shared meal and the ritual, we all gave gifts of clothes, or toys then enjoyed a birthday cake which is a Western custom; although we did sing "Happy Birthday" in Chinese.

When the child is six, they will invite family and friends to their home to eat long noodles and red dyed eggs. The traditional gifts of money in red envelopes are given.

The fourth birthday celebration for Chinese comes at the age of 60, this is the first and probably only time in the persons life that their animal sign and element are together exactly as they were on the day they were born.

The grown children give the celebration for their parents, out of respect, love and appreciation. The celebration begins by the mother or father eating a bowl of long noodles and red dyed eggs for breakfast prepared by their children. Later in the day family and friends are invited to the celebration where they will eat long noodles (representing longevity) and a warm pastry with a sweet mixture that looks like a peach (therefore called a peach) is eaten. Everyone at the celebration must eat both foods, it is considered rude and disrespectful not to. This type of celebration continues every ten years for the rest of the person's life with more family members, being added to the grand celebration each year.

Before the Sausage - What They Don't Show in the Supermarket (Rated PG-13)

Last week I wrote about making sausage and smoking it. Well, we cheated, we bought the pork at a local supermarket. To make REAL sausage you have to start a little closer to the pig's home, like here. A neighbor of our daughter was going to slaughter a pig and we were going to be lucky enough to get all those "inside" things that nobody else wanted. Sandra didn't want to view the actual "slaughter" so she stayed back at the house until the pig was good and dead then she would make her appearance and gather the goodies. The neighbor lives about 1/4 mile from our daughter and keeps the pigs in a pen near their house. This is not the pig that we have been raising but an "extra" pig that was getting too large to keep and eating too much. We trekked through the snow to the pen and began to plan our attack.
The pig greeted us with curiosity, completely innocent of what was coming.

What was coming was a rifle loaded with a copper-jacketed bullet.

One well-aimed shot right between the eyes and the pig dropped without even a squeal.

As we struggled to lift the pig over the edge of the pen, the other pig went about eating as if nothing had happened. A discussion developed about how to get the pig out of the pen (remember none of these are professional pig slayers) - who would get in the pen, who would grab which foot, should we grab it by the ears? Finally they just muscled it over the edge onto the ground.

A short drag to the truck then up onto the tailgate.

Where a strategically placed knife blade would begin the letting of blood necessary to drain the body.

Since we were getting everything nobody else wanted we collected the blood in a clean bucket.

After a short ride we unloaded the pig onto a tarp to drag it to the barn where we could proceed further. Sandra now made her appearance, but because of her twisted ankle (from an earlier fall on ice) she couldn't make the trek up the hill so she remained in the car and received periodic progress reports. We offered to carry her up the hill but she declined; I later learned that she was afraid we would think she was as heavy as the pig!

In case you hadn't noticed, the pig had been wallowing in the mud. So the next step was to use a pressure washer to clean it up. There is a lot of elk and deer hunting done in our area in addition to the slaughtering of pigs, goats, and sheep. The clean-up of the animal is always a problem. Recently a local car wash discovered an unidentifiable "body part" in the machine area while they were cleaning up. No one could explain what it was or how it got there. They called the local sheriff's office who investigated and finally took it to a local hospital for identification. They determined it was a pig's heart. Seems like the hunters and farmers like to load the animal into a pick-up truck then run the truck through the car wash.

After a good hosing off the next task was to hang the pig, estimated at 250 pounds. A rope over the rafters in the barn gave us a good working area.

You might ask where am I; well, I'm on the end of the rope out of sight tying it off to the garage door track after it is lifted sufficiently high off the floor.

OK, take a break while we decide what comes next.

Well, we'll start by cutting around the "exit point" including the tail; that way everything inside will stay together and it can be removed without loosing anything held in the intestines.Next the belly is opened to allow access to all those goodies inside that nobody wanted.

This was a castrated male pig, no one wanted this part.

The more the belly was opened up the more goodies became available.

After removing the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, stomach, small AND large intestines, and a lot of net fat there wasn't anything left inside. Just one more look inside to be sure nothing was missed.

Now for a cup of coffee and a hand wash in the snow while we prepare for the next step.

The carcass needs to cool as quickly as possible. It's colder in the barn than in the refrigerated locker so we decided to leave the carcass hanging in the barn for two days to finish the bleed and let it get fully chilled. To speed up the cooling, we used a water hose to wash out the body cavity and wash down the pig one more time. We took the large intestines outside to flush them and hoped to use them for sausage casings. We determined that this pig had been supplementing his diet with table scraps, including artichokes. After a few attempts at cleaning the intestines we gave up; it was so cold we couldn't feel our fingers and kept perforating them. We buried them along with what washed out of them so they wouldn't attract coyotes that might try to get into the barn and ravage the pig carcass. So it will be store-bought casings for the next batch of sausage.

We did make it home with some goodies. Sandra has already had liver soup and kidney noodles. We delivered the heart to a friend this morning. I'm remaining silent about how much of these things I actually ate.

Now, tomorrow the feet and head arrive; but that's another story.