Food in war and peace, fruitflies always

 This came out in 1985

A local friend sent me this image, the cover of a book she has in her collection, a gift from an English friend, very old at the time, who clearly remembered all this wartime rationing and cooking.  I love that the title is a pun on Vera Lynn (The Forces' Sweetheart)'s hit song in wartime, to keep morale up:  We'll Meet Again!  M sent it after reading yesterday's post.  Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5C4meGkNyc

Vera Lynn lived till June 2020. Aged 103.Think what she saw in her long lifetime. Some people are reviving her song to help get us through the pandemic. Think what she saw in her long lifetime.

The recipes in the book involve dried egg, margarine, cooking fat, and various other substitutes for actual food.  And there's a note explaining that austerity and rationing persisted for years after the end of hostilities.  Interesting historical and social notes there.

Fast forward to today's world of luxury, and jam!  Woman can not manage with memories alone.  She needs jam.  Today it's Misfits peaches and plums and lime chunks.  I'm trying the lime instead of lemon as a source of pectin. And I macerated the fruit since last evening in sugar and the lime pieces, to see if that did anything interesting.

Then added the rest of the sugar, not as much as usual, didn't have a lot of sugar in the house, but we'll see how it works anyway.  Sometimes additional boiling can take the place of a full complement of sugar.  In the background, the jars and lids bubbling away sterilizing.

No pictures of the unboildownable stage, since it's way too hazardous to be coping with boiling jam and a camera at the same time

And here's the result.  I guessed pretty well, since it exactly filled the three recycled glass containers I'd boiled. I won't know till it's completely cooled how well it gelled, but it did the two drops off the side of the spoon test fine, and the wrinkling on the cold saucer test, too. I'll know for tomorrow's breakfast.  And if it didn't gel well, I'll give it a different name, Sauce aux peches et whatever plums is in French.

Cook's note:  as well as humans liking organic produce, fruit flies are crazy about it.  I have never had so many buzzing into my face, getting all over, before I got Misfits produce.  Which probably proves that the produce has not seen insecticides.  So I wielded the giant spray bottle I had filled to take care of some critters that were eating into the house from the outside, and succeeded in wiping them out. Just a mixture of lemon juice and vinegar.  I had also added borax when the baseboard infestation was worse, but then washed the spraybottle and after that just used the benign mix.

Just as well, since I  had to spray the apples and pears on the counter, then wrap them in clean cloths, and when I got tired of  firing at these teeny little guys, I looked up ideas for a home fruit fly trap.  And found that an open jar containing a cup of apple cider vinegar with a dash of dish liquid worked just fine.

It's standing next to the fruit and there's population of tiny corpses in it, must refresh it now, and the fruit is left alone.  No more critters in my teeth. It's odd that even when their Auntie Edie is clearly seen at the bottom of the jar, more fruitflies climb in anyway.  You'd think they'd avoid the same fate.  But then we have humans, supposedly of a higher order of intelligence, claiming that they don't need to wear masks, so I guess we have no room to criticize the fruitflies.

Then after all this strenuous activity, it was time to display the makings of lunch.  Remember the pickling I did a while back?  Carrots and beets?  they came out a treat.  And they daily grace my lunch wraps or sandwiches, whatever I'm doing.  The colors scream at each other, so they're separated on the plate.

This is the Misfits Beet and Carrot pickle extravaganza, with the American Cheese on nice sliced deli ham, on wholewheat bread with a little spread of mayo.  It's really a Lurid Lunch combo.

Nice day, and this evening will be about noting Biden's now well over 300 in the Electoral College vote count, took Georgia and Arizona definitely, and I'm spinning and emailing and generally loafing this evening.

I sent a donation to the Georgia organization that's funding the runoff voter registration  and get out the vote push, and signed on with MoveOn to get the lady holding up the funding of the transition to get with it and release the funds.  We already have Republicans pushing to extend the daily intelligence  briefings to Biden. And Homeland Security has made an official statement that the election was perfectly clean, won fair and square, and no evidence of  any tampering or fraud. A couple of dozen DOJ AGs have written to urge Barr, the USAG, to drop the attempt to investigate the election, on the grounds that no evidence of any kind has been found to support his suspicions.

So we hope things are lurching in the right direction.

Best laid plans, mice, women, pickles and so on

The big plan for today was for my cleaners to make a triumphant return, out since March, woo-hoo. Then last night sad email, car broke down, in shop hoping to get it back for maybe tomorrow, will reschedule.

I was to absent myself as usual, always get out of their way, by going to do my library drive-by, I mean curbside pickup,then maybe take a walk.

So I did the pickup, then the new plan was to read.

Already into Eleanor Oliphant, Kindle goes by percentage not page, and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell. And here come these additions. So I would do a reading buffet, flitting hither and yon like a literate butterfly.

Then I looked at my email and the alert about my next Bite Club Cookbook Book Club, try saying that fast, was in my inbox.

There were still borrows to go on my Hoopla account for the month. So here's what ended up happening.

carrots waiting to be peeled, as well as bread waiting to be baked and dishes to wash. The carrots won.

Pickles! Haven't made them in ages. And I had everything available. Thyme, garlic, salt, hot pepper flakes, coriander seeds, vinegars.  Made a little jar. Cold brine. 

This involved toasting coriander seeds.

As you know, if you've toasted seeds or nuts, there's a nano second between just right and stow this for a lark. But I never looked away, and it was okay.

Then bethought me of the farm asparagus spears in the freezer. Enough brine left to boil and use as a hot brine pickle.

White wine and white vinegar, sugar, water.

So that happened as well.

The bread is not baked ( though I see a nice flatbread recipe there), and the sink is still full of soapy water and dishes. But I have my Thanksgiving pickles.