Wineberries Part II: Trial and Major Error

With my wineberry bushes bowing under the weight of all their beautiful ruby berries, I decided yesterday was The Time to Act.  I picked about a pound and a half of them and set to work on my first jam-making experiment.  I had found a self-professed super simple recipe on Pinterest for berry jam that didn't involve buying any pectin (the author swore fruit has enough natural pectin) so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Started out with equal measures berries and sugar, and a tablespoon of lemon juice.  Stuck it on the stove over low heat until it started to boil, then gave it a stir and turned it up to medium.  

It got very exciting very quickly as the berries started breaking up and things started happening.  Then it got very boring for about a half hour as absolutely nothing changed.  

At this point I had looked up another recipe, since my first 'super simple' recipe had been so simple that it hadn't even told me how long I should cook the stuff before it started to thicken.  Found another recipe which suggested taking it up to 220 degrees (the gelling point of berries, apparently?) and then turning it down. I was rooting through boxes looking for my candy thermometer (a lost cause), when Mum shouted down to me that it was starting to turn jammy.  It did so very quickly!  I'd hardly gotten up the stairs and given it a stir by the time it was pretty much jam consistency.  

We pulled it off the heat, and took a look.  I estimated that it was, at that point, about 95% seeds, so we decided to take another tip from the second recipe and run it through a strainer.  

Easier said than done, but  as we pushed it through with the back of a spoon, it dripped this absolutely beautiful, deep garnet-red jelly into the pan.  

We kept on with that until it was mainly sticky seeds in the seive, and mainly goopy jelly in the pan.  Then I tossed in a spoonful of the seeds just for visual interest (because it's not really jam unless you get seeds stuck in your teeth), and we scraped it into a leftover dish.  Seemed a shame to waste all of those seeds, but we couldn't think of anything to do with them.  (Mum suggested using them as 'fruitilizer' and then ran off in shame under the weight of her own bad pun.)

Since I only made a small amount, and I'm not Laura Ingles Wilder (yet) we didn't mess with sterilizing jars and doing proper canning procedures.  We'll save that for next time.  

Isn't it pretty?  I made some toast, just to show it off.  

It tasted great, though it seemed a little stickier than jam should be.  More like a pie filling.  Maybe that's what you get when you don't use pectin, or maybe I cooked it too long.  Maybe both?  But very yummy!

Went back after dinner to the cooled container, just to see how it was doing.

Epic failure.

Looks like those extra thirty seconds on the stove after it had started gelling made a huge difference.  Instead of jam, I created candy.

Going to buy some pectin at the store and try it out today on my other pound of berries, which I picked last week.  Maybe next time I won't try the super super simple unhelpful recipe!  And I'm open to further advice, as always!

--Lily

The Wineberry: Our Latest Surprise Crop

Have you ever heard of Japanese wineberries?  Me neither, until I discovered them growing like crazy all over my property this afternoon!  About a week or so ago I noticed these brambles growing mixed in with our blackberries that seemed to have some kind of pods.  I asked Mum if she knew what they were, but she thought probably just a weed.  Lo and behold, I walked past today, and the pods had burst open to reveal perfect, beautiful, ruby-red berries!

At a glance they look like raspberries, but bigger, shinier, and brighter, as you can see from the below photo (two of each kind of berry).  Poor raspberries are totally outclassed.  (Luckily they make up for their sad looks by being completely delicious.)

In fact, the similarity isn't just skin deep.  Wineberries are a strain of raspberry that was originally brought over from Asia and has since escaped captivity to run rampant (mostly, apparently, in my yard)!

Once my research had told me what they are and what they're good for (eating), I set out to denude my wineberry bushes of their riches.  I quickly filled my little pitcher, and had to go back to the house for something a bit more substantial.

(Those blackberries, by the way, are dirty liars.  I picked a few because they looked so ripe and juicy, but each one I tasted was sour and bitter, so I ended up throwing the rest into the pond.  Fish do not like blackberries, as it turns out.)  But blackberry disappointment aside, check out the spoils!

I'm completely obsessed with these little beauties.  Look at that shine, that glowing red color.  I'm in love.  

I can't wait to decide what to make them into!  They're a little more tart than a raspberry, the flavor is almost like a blackberry, but not bitter.  Pinterest has yielded recipes for muffins, scones, cobblers, pies, cordial (how very Anne of Green Gables!), and best of all, JAM!  I am dying to make jam out of these, it would be the most gorgeous color.  I'll have to see whether I can pick enough of them in the next few days to make jam a worthwhile possibility!  Wineberry jam on Mum's scones, mmm.  I can see it now.  I'll let you all know how it goes!

--Lily

An Eventful Couple of Weeks

New achievement today: Dad and I closed down the Lowes.  By the time he got back to the register from running for 'one last thing', they were already turning off the lights.  The checkout lady seemed glad to see the back of us!  We do love us some home improvement stores.  I still don't understand how we were there for two hours.  It felt like about twenty minutes.

So it's been a while since I've posted anything, huh!  The moving business was exhausting.  I'd rather renovate than move any day of the week.  Or every day of the week, which is pretty much how long it took us to move all our stuff out of the old house.  Luckily our former landlords are very understanding people.  What with that and with our new internet service taking a week longer than expected to get hooked up, blogging really wasn't in the cards.  Which is not to say that nothing interesting happened!  I'll break it down into a highlights reel for you:

Last week we decided to locate the source of The Smell in my new bedroom.  Using my superior nose power I deduced that it was coming from the closet.

The ceiling of which looked like this:

So I figured it was probably moldy drywall smell.  We pulled off that damaged panel, and the smell definitely worsened.  But a delicate sniff determined that the panel itself wasn't the culprit.  Girded up my loins and smelled the rest of the drywall.  Seemed to be coming mostly from one corner.  I picked up a handy crowbar, and punched on through. (cue The Doors...)  Phew!  What a stench emerged.  Dad heard the banging and came to take over.  He loves demolition.

WARNING: Do not read the following paragraph if you don't want to hear about small dead animals.

Okay I guess I gave the game away there.  Two words for you: mouse graveyard.  He got to work with his shovel (seriously, I am so grateful for The Dad, because I do not think I could have dealt with the awful combo that was The Smell and a load of dead mice) and by the time he was down to the bottom he'd counted twenty.   A week later and we still haven't taken out the rest of the drywall.  The Smell is still there, and I'm afraid it might be like dying mouse pilgrimage site back there or something.

So that was our first adventure.

Lest you think it's all fun and games and Smells and dead animals around here, let me direct you to Exhibit 2, which is Dad trying to stop the master bathroom toilet from running.  It had been running an extra long time after each flush, but finally last Friday when Mum flushed it and it ran for about eight hours solid, we decided the time had come to act.

What you don't see in this artistic photo is how the shut-off valve was so corroded that when Dad went to turn it, the whole thing just broke the heck down and started spewing water all over the floor.  Mass scramble for buckets and sponges and the all-house shut-off valve!  Want to know why that panel in the ceiling of my closet was so damaged?  Well it was actually a good thing we took it down when we did.

Pity I didn't take a video, because it was actually a very picturesque waterfall running across the pipes and right down onto my closet floor.  Ever tried to find a plumber on a Friday night?  It cannot be done.  We finally got one guy to call us back, but his threat of charging double time on weekends (who can blame him, really) scared us right off.  Friendly guy, though, and he turned out to be our hero as he spent a half hour on the phone with Dad, walking him through exactly how to fix the problem.  Just needed a small part from Home Depot.  Which, yes, was closed at the time.  "It's just like camping!" says Dad, as Mum and I brush our teeth with bottled water and remind him sternly that Home Depot opens at 7am on Saturdays.

By 1pm Saturday we had our water back on, which was really several hours longer than we would have liked.  (Though we did get to check out the town library as they're the closest public bathrooms.  It's very nice!)  Know what's truly amazing and wonderful?  Indoor plumbing.  We are really learning to appreciate our modern first world conveniences.

Those were, I think, the really major events here at Chez Homebodies.  Of course we've been busy starting lots of other projects that aren't done yet.

I scraped the gross decals off the bathtub:

... but haven't gotten the strange rust stains off of the enamel yet.

Did a lot more destruction on the hall floor between my bedroom and bathroom:

... but it's a long way from ready to put hardwood on.

When that all seemed too overwhelming, I went my happy place, which is trying out paint samples on my walls.

Green for the bathroom and gray for the bedroom, and white trim all around.

And over the weekend we hired a great big chipper-shredder and started on the outdoor demolition.

We did a lot of yardwork.  A LOT of yardwork.  I'm talking whole trees came down.

But those befores and afters, I believe, are a tale for another day.  For now, time to rest.

Cheerio, friends!

--Lily

A Conversation

Me: I found a little brook we can paddle our feet in!
Mum: Inside or outside?
Me: Mum!  Outside!  
Mum: Oh good!

So, that's a good indication of how our renovation is going, that Mum's first thought upon hearing about a little brook is that it actually might be inside the house.  Cross your fingers no more of that sort of thing popping up and surprising us!

--Lily

Insurmountable (?) Problems

Well we hit a major setback today.  We went in all set to rip up the particle board layer of the living room and hall (which was damp, stained, and smelly, if you recall) and get down to the plywood layer so we'd be ready to install our hardwood.

Trouble is, the particle board did not want to come out, and after about 20 minutes of working with every tool we could think of, we ended up with this:

At that rate it would take us months to get everything up.  So we took a break to eat lunch and do some creative problem solving, and decided to try a new method.  Dad got his circular saw and set it to cut just to the depth of the particle board, without hitting the plywood beneath.  He ran it along the inner edges of two rows of nails, so as to end up with a square of board with no nail in it.  Once he got that section free, it was super easy to pry it up, and possible to get the edge of a chisel underneath the remaining nailed-down section.

It's not efficient, and it's going to take absolutely ages to get squares sawed out all over the floor, but at least it's effective and the sawing is speedy.  We do what we gotta do!

Tomorrow is actual Moving Day, with a truck and everything, so tomorrow night will be our first night sleeping at The House.  That, tragically, means no internet until our modem is delivered, so we may have a brief hiatus here at The Blog, but rest assured we'll be back with more crazy tales just as soon as we can!