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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Sunday, September 15, 2002

"LRJ" sent a note during the past week saying she has a Mehu-Maija steam juicer which has been passed down in the family. It is still available under that name, but it costs $30 more than it does as Mehu-Liisa. Lowes had watercress, so the V8 will have all the vegetables. The beet juice was kinda pretty, light pink in color. The tomatoes and leafy vegetables were layered in the Mehu-Liisa, but I used the juice extractor for the carrots, baby beets, and celery. Next time I'll throw the pulp into the steam juicer, but this time the operation was too far along. The juice extractor leaves some color and some flavor in the pulp, which could be put to good use. Good juicing music: "Jeff" at the watering hole loaned me Towne's Van Zandt's Live At The Old Quarter, Houston, Texas, July, 1973. Going from Townes to Steve, The Sopranos are back (in case you haven't heard). Finally, Sundance Channel graciously repeated NY, NY - 6 short films from NYC made at various times between 1944 and 2000. That was "snagged" on VHS tape for watching on a quieter evening this week. 3:29:03 PM    comment []

4 stores and no watercress! It's a nasturtium, I've learned (nasturtium officinale), a member of the Cruciferea family, "A hardy perennial found in abundance near springs and open running watercourses", but not found in any of 4 grocery stores visited this morning. Looks like my homemade V8 may be a V6 (the baby beets, picked up on one of the stops, will technically make it up to 7, but their contribution is going to deliberately marginalized due to a personal aversion to them). The search continues, however...   12:18:05 PM    comment []

The midnight canner was at work last night: 4 pints tomato juice and 10 halfpint jars of plum jelly. The latter is a nearly perfectly-translucent deep ruby colored, thanks to my new "toy". The tomato juice was problematic and took some additional steps. The extract from the steam juicer had a delicious tomato flavor, but had an unattractive pale yellow color. The pulp from the Mirro food press was watery and there wasn't nearly enough to bother making tomato paste. So I mixed them together and had about a gallon of somewhat thin tomato juice which was reduced to 4 pints on the stovetop, using a hand blender to thoroughly incorporate the pulp. Just prior to canning, I added 1/4 cup lemon juice to insure an acidity adequate for boiling water bath canning. 4 pints doesn't look like much, but each jar has the equivalent of 3 pounds of tomatoes (the $10 box from the Farmers' Market had about 25 pounds, I still have half of that left for the V8 duplication attempt today). There was enough juice left over for an 8-ounce glass this morning. I'm drinking it right now - rich tomato flaver, nice color, tiny bits of tomato in there that might offend some - next batch maybe should go through a sieve. 9:49:10 AM    comment []