Hello, My Fellow Springdellians! Jess here, wrapping up another week with another Sunday Dinner here on the Springdell Show and Tell. Glen and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary (and 20th year together) by taking a trip into the city to Clio for a dinner featuring some delicious locally sourced food from a “hyper-seasonal” menu. I returned home inspired to make beets, cauliflower and broccoli taste as scrumptious as in the many courses that we enjoyed. Meanwhile, the Bucks went on a weekend adventure that included some thrilling games of bingo (have we mentioned that we all discovered bingo on our last vacation together?) The kids all had a fun weekend hanging out with their respective grandparents and as always, it’s always nice to commune with our good friends over some good food before the hustle and bustle kicks back in tomorrow. Life is good.
Back to the food! Today was an out-and-about kind of day, so I relied on the slow cooker for the main meal. I had a Springdell Eye Round Roast from this weekend’s Meat Subscription pickup, and coarsely chopped up some Springdell onion, potatoes, and carrots from the root cellar. Into the pot it went as-is, and it was joined by 2 bricks (cups) of homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup that I made earlier in the season. Four hours in the slow cooker and voila!
Next I wanted to add a little color to the meal. I cut some well-scrubbed watermelon radishes lengthwise and sprinkled them with some olive oil and kosher salt on a rimmed cookie sheet.
A roast at 400 degrees until fork tender (these took about 25 minutes with a flip halfway through) and we were ready to go!
These were great but in retrospect, I might have peeled these as the outer skin was a bit tough and fibrous compared to the tender and succulent pink center. When pickling these radishes though, the consistency of the outer skin is just fine!
Tonight’s dessert comes from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and incorporates the cranberries and apples that were in this week’s pickup. Here is the list of ingredients:
- ¾ cup raisins or dried cranberries, finely chopped
- 6 cups of chopped cored peeled granny smith or other tart apples
- 1 cup grated zest and juice of one lemon
- 1 cup of unsweetened apple juice
- 1 package of regular powdered fruit pectin (1.75 oz)
- 9 cups of granulated sugar. (I use 7 as I find 9 to be too sugary for my taste)
- 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon of ground nutmeg
- See below.
I started by peeling a bag of the apples and slicing them into random sized chunks, trying to get large ones as the smaller ones tend to break down more when cooking.
I brought the lemon zest, lemon and apple juice to a boil in my stainless steel saucepan. After a gentle boil for about 10 minutes I removed it from the heat and whisked in the pectin and cranberry. Once the pectin was dissolved, I turned the flame back on to high heat.
At this point, you need to be stirring constantly. It makes it easier if you have your sugar pre-measured so that you can dump it in all at once while still stirring the mixture, like so…
Quickly and magically, that granulated goodness turns to liquid as you continue to stir.
Return this mixture to a “full rolling boil” for one minute, again, stirring constantly. As the mixture comes off of the heat, there may be some foam forming on top, which can be scooped out. Next, in goes the cinnamon and nutmeg.
At this point, you are ready to can if you so choose. (Ball’s recipe calls for 1/4 inch headspace and 10 minute canner processing). We ate about a jar’s worth with freshly whipped cream at dinner, and the rest of the jars just finished processing as I type this and are now cooling in the pantry. The house smells great, bellies are full and I’m off to bed. Thanks for reading and until tomorrow, sweet and savory dreams!