Misty Moisty Mornings and Watermelon Pickles

One misty, moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather,
I chanced to meet an old man, clothed all in leather.

I said, “How do you do? How do you do?” and “How do you do again?”

These are the words that play over and over in my head whenever we have a beautiful foggy morning like we have the last two days. They are snippets of a song from my childhood, and I’m not even sure if I’ve remembered them correctly, but somehow they fit.

Misty moisty.

Everything shrouded in soft, eerie mystery. Looking familiar, yet somehow not. Hiding another layer that we can’t normally see. My garden looks softer, the bright colours muted and earthy. My yard looks like it’s mine, but maybe not. Maybe it’s a different yard, a different world.

I see it with new eyes.

I love this kind of weather. It makes me excited in my bones. Fall is coming. My favourite season of the year. After the languor of summer, my senses sharpen and come alive in the Fall. It has always been associated with new beginnings for me: school starting, my birthday at the end of August, bringing in the harvest, canning with my mom, the anticipation of Thanksgiving, Halloween and Christmas, traipsing after my dad in the brilliant fall forests as he hunted. And inhaling the deep, rich smells of the autumn air. And crisp cold apples to crunch into, right off the tree.

My garden has that look now – rich, ripe and calling me to dig out the last treasures. Like the tall heads of dill. Sentinals waving their floppy plumes – little wind-inverted umbrella skeletons.

I have the dill, but no pickles.

No matter -  I found peppers.

On the weekend, while browsing the Italian market, I was romanced by the many bins of  sweet peppers, all kinds, shapes and colours. Reds, yellows, oranges. Greens and dark purples. Long and pointy ones, little fat round ones, odd shaped ones lobed and folded like a bulldog's jowels. I felt like a child in a toy store. I had to have those bright, colourful new things to play with. My Auntie Lily’s amazing watermelon pickles popped into my mind, making my mouth water ferociously. I hadn’t made them in years and I suddenly wanted them.

Badly. Right now.

So I loaded up on peppers. Drove home and snipped off the dill heads in the garden. And started canning. (As if I haven’t canned enough this year.) Filled my kitchen with the heady aroma of boiling pickle brine – another intoxicating smell that means Fall to me.

And when I woke up this morning and viewed the misty, moisty morning outside and the rows of watermelon pickles lined up on the counter inside, I sighed. Sipped my steaming tea and smiled.

Fall is here.

      

Like all the women in my family, my Auntie Lily is an amazing cook, and this is her recipe, handwritten into my recipe collection when I was newly married. The amounts are somewhat general, like those of all priceless family recipes. Use one watermelon to a few pounds of peppers. It’ll make several quarts. How’s that for precise?

Auntie Lily’s Watermelon Pickles

Watermelon

Sweet peppers

Dill sprigs

Garlic

Pickling salt

Water

Vinegar

Sugar

Prepare the watermelon:  cut the melon in half, place cut-side down on  a cutting board and with a sharp knife, slice away the peel, including all the white parts. Cut the watermelon into rough chunks, about 3 to 4 inches long (10 to 12 cm) and 1 inch wide (2 to 3 cm).

Trusty assistant hubby doing watermelon duty

Prepare the peppers: wash them, core them, and cut into lengthwise wedges, several inches wide. Trim off the bent-over lips at the top and bottom of each wedge to make them flat and easier to slip into the jars. (Use the trimmings in a vegetable sauté for supper.)

Into each sterilized quart jar, put one blossom-head of dill (or sprig of the herb, if you can’t get blossoms) and 1 peeled clove of garlic.

Fill the jars with watermelon chunks and peppers – in a ratio of about ¾ watermelon to ¼ peppers. Wedge them in as tightly as you can without squashing the watermelon pieces into mush.

Sprinkle 1 tsp. pickling salt into each jar.

Prepare a brine with the ratio of 3 cups water to 1 cup vinegar to ½ cup sugar. (This amount fills about 4 quarts.) Bring to a boil, then pour over the jars while still hot, to within ½ inch (1.5 cm) of the top. Seal according to canning instructions and process for 15 minutes in a boiling water bath. Don't overprocess - start timing as soon as the first boiling bubbles appear. 

Enjoy all winter long and think of autumn.

And misty moisty mornings.

Saskatoons, Saskatoons, Every Which Way

I have been living, breathing, eating saskatoons every which way since I've come back. I think it has been another form of therapy. Picking, cleaning and preserving 133 jars of those unique Northern berries kept my mind and hands so busy I could fall thankfully into bed each night and dream of sweet, purple-hued berries hovering just out of my grasp.

Trying to explain their flavour to anyone who's never tasted them is difficult and elusive. They're sweet, dense, rich, seedy, slightly blueberryish, more almondish, a bit apple-y, dusky and deep. Oh, I don't know . . . you'll just have to try them yourself, if you can get your hands on them.
 

 We used to pick them in the wild as children - pails and pails full of them. Always with an accompanying thrill of slight danger as mom pointed out the seedy piles of saskatoon-tinted bear poop or the large, flattened-grass, nesty areas where a berry-feasting bear had stopped to take a nap. Saskatoon berrying has always been joined in my memory with summer heat, sticky juice-stained fingers, and the grand silence of the prairie sky.

Nothing says summer more.

Now I have my own bushes and don't have to fight the bears for the tasty berries anymore (just my husband and children! And dog - Pippa loves them, too.)

This year I played around with different ways to preserve that purple summer in jars - juice, jelly, syrup, canning them with lemon, preserving them with peaches, and variations of a chutney (which recipe I'm still working on, maybe it'll be perfected next saskatoon season).

From left to right: sask-peach preserve, canned saskatoons, sask-rhubarb juice, sask-raspberry juice, saskatoon chutney, saskatoon syrup, saskatoon jelly

 Saskatoons aren't very acidic, so I find they work best with some added punch from a tangy flavour-booster. Wow, then they shine! I combined them with rhubarb or raspberries and made them into juice with my steam juicer. Refreshing, and with that deep purple colour, I figure they've got to be high in antioxidants. Bonus.




 Saskatoon-Peach Preserve

If you can't get saskatoons, this might work with blueberries, though I imagine it would be a bit more liquidy since blueberries are much more juicy than saskatoons, so you may need to cook it a bit longer to reduce the juices to the right consistency. The orange flower water lends a subtle, complex flavour that I love, however if you can't find any, this preserve is delicious without it, too. Orange flower water and rose water are available at ethnic markets.

5 pounds (2.25 kg) saskatoon berries, picked over, rinsed and drained
12 peaches (about 5 pounds or 2.25 kg)
juice of 2 lemons
1 cup (250ml) honey
2 tsp orange flower water (or rose water - they both taste great, just subtly different)

Dip the peaches in boiling water for 1 to 2 minutes, until the skins loosen. Put into a bowl of cold water to cool, then slip them out of their skins. Cut them into wedges, then slice each wedge into about 4 pieces.

Place the saskatoons, diced peaches and lemon juice into a large heavy-bottomed stock pot. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, then turn down the heat to low and add the honey. Simmer the fruit mixture, stirring often, about 15 to 30 minutes, until the desired thickness is reached. You want it to be saucy, not jammy, and the berries still relatively whole, although the peach chunks should be nicely softened and starting to break apart.

 Ladle the hot mixture into hot, sterilized jars and seal with hot sterilized lids. (You may process them in a boiling water bath for added insurance against spoilage.) Leave jars on counter to cool.
Alternatively, you can let the mixture cool and ladle it into containers, then freeze it for future use.

Delicious served chilled as a fruit dessert, or over ice-cream, yogurt, pancakes, cheesecake, rice pudding . . . use your imagination.




                



Canned Saskatoons

For years, growing up, I ate canned saskatoons as a fruit dessert, but I always found the flavour a little bland. This year I experimented with adding lemon, and ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom! The missing link! They now have zing, and my kids can't get enough of them. (It is important to use organic lemons here, as you are using them peel and all, and you don't want to preserve all those toxic chemicals right into the jars.)

saskatoons, picked over, rinsed and drained
organic lemons, sliced
honey
water

Make a simple syrup with the ratio of 1 cup honey to 4 cups water. Bring to a boil and keep hot, You will need about 1 to 1-1/2 cups syrup for each quart of berries. (Save any leftover syrup in the fridge and use it to sweeten summer drinks.)

Into each sterilized quart jar put 2 slices of lemon - lay 1 slice on the bottom of the jar and cover with a handful of saskatoons, then tilt the jar slightly and lay another slice against the side of the jar and fill it to within 3/4 inch of the top with berries, making sure the lemon stays against the outside of the jar. But don't overstress about this - it just looks prettier if you can see the lemon slice from the outside of the jar. If using pints, you only need 1 slice of lemon per jar - put it against the outside of the jar.

Pour over the hot honey syrup to within 1/2 inch of the top of the jars. Close the jars and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes (15 minutes for pints).

(Don't tell anyone the lemon slice is the best part, or you'll have to fight them for it!)