I don’t know why, but I wanted to make jam.  I say I don’t know why because I’ve never made jam before.  My mother never made jam.  I don’t eat a lot of jam.  Now in London, we did have some delicious jam and scones, and when we came back, we had a couple of afternoon teas at Google where I made scones and we had jam we brought back from London.  I’ve read a couple of blogs where people have been making jams.  We also had a lot of fruit from our CSA and some vendors have been offering some good deals on fruit at the Farmers’ Market.  I guess everything just combined to make the perfect storm for jam making at Casa Napier.

We started by measuring out all our fruit to figure out what kind of jam we were going to make, and how much.  The oven was put into use for storing our berries, due to our serious lack of counter space.  It was off, but a handy place to keep our fruit out of the way.

We used this great recipe/tutorial.  It was well put together and easy to understand.  I highly recommend!  Last weekend we collected all our supplies and this weekend we were ready to jam.

Bill was an invaluable partner in the jam making.  He concentrated on sterilizing the jars and lids, and processing the jars in the boiling water bath.  I focused on the fruit part.  I think it made it a lot easier.  I feel like it would have been a lot for one person to do, especially for a first timer.  And it was fun to have company.  You can see the different pots going, and after that first batch of jam, we started doing two at a time.

It took us a little over four hours, but we ended up with 19 jars of jam.  We did two full batches, one of strawberry and one of triple berry (straw, rasp and black berry) and two half batches of raspberry and blackberry.  From the samples I had while testing the consistency, they seem like they will be very good. I guess we should open up a jar and try some.  For now, I’m just enjoying staring at them on the counter.

Nachos!!! That’s what you were thinking, right?

One of the great things about living in California is that our CSA runs for about 10 months a year. It recently started up, and we received a head of romaine lettuce and a bunch of spinach last week. This week we received a head of romaine lettuce and a bunch of spinach. Let’s also say that we barely ate any of the original greens, which are still fresh. And Bill is out of town for the week. That is a lot of greens for one person (me). CJ loves leafy greens. I could use them as a training treat. Here she is while I prep my lettuce.

Believe it or not, one of my favorite ways to eat greens is to put them on a pile of nachos. The nachos are simple. I use multigrain tostitos (which taste almost exactly like regular tostitos). I make a layer of chips on a dinner plate and top with cheese. You can then add an optional second layer of chips and cheese. I pop those in the microwave for about 90 seconds. They need to be watched so the cheese doesn’t get overcooked. Once the cheese is melted, I top with Trader Joe’s spicy bean dip (fat free and full of flavor!) and lots of salsa (and it looks like this). Then I put on the greens. If we have tomatoes I dice those up and put them on top. And if I have an avocado, and IF I remember, I add avocado. (I have avocado and I forgot.)

This is the easiest version. You can also top it with beans, or taco meat. It’s pretty simple, and you get some grains, calcium and veggies.

Another crazy thing people like to do with leafy greens is make salads. I had one of those today. It was yummy, but the nachos were better.