When something, no matter how seemingly insignificant, turns out just right it lifts us up and makes our day.

Monday night my friend came over to make to make apple jelly. I had picked up some tart green apples at the Farmer's Market on Saturday. Sunday night I cut them up and boiled them with some water and let the juice drain off overnight. I read in several books to expect 1 cup of juice from 1 pound of apples. We started out with a little over 3 pounds of apples and ended up with about 11 cups of juice. I was certain the juice was too watery. I wanted to add just enough water to cover the apples, but of course the apples floated to the top (duh!) so I ended up with more water in the pot than I had intended.

We cooked some of the juice down some more and had 9 cups when we started making the jelly. We divided it into two batches and decided to make one batch plain and one batch scented with lemon verbena. We used three cups of sugar and one lemon per batch. Each batch yielded four jars of the most delightful jelly, with a perfect set and just sweet enough to bring out the fresh slightly tart apple flavor without overpowering it.

And the lemon verbena is so wonderful and subtle. I think the flavor of the verbena has changed over the summer. When I tried it earlier in the season (I used it for tea and for flavoring ice cream) it a somewhat coarser, more herbal flavor. Now its aroma is very light and heady. Some of that may be due to boiling it with sugar in jelly, but I noticed a difference even when I used it in tea.

I am so amazed that the jellies turned out so beautiful. It was easy and everything was just right. The hard part is reproducing the experience. It is impossible because there are so many unpredictable variables involved: how ripe are the apples and how much pectin do they have? How acid are they? How tart? How easily do they release their juice? And my lemon verbena will never be precisely the same.

With all of these variables, recipes can only be guidelines. I try not to use commercial pectin anymore, not only because I like a challenge and because, on a lucky day, the end result is superior, but because, paradoxically, using a jelling agent gives you less control over the process. You have to rely more on the recipe more and less on your instincts.

Instructions for Apple Jelly (with Optional Herbal Flavor)

Quarter or chop apples coarsely. Do not peel or core but cut off any brown spots. Put in large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes or until apples are soft and the skins come off. Pour apples through a fine sieve to collect juice. Let juice drain freely, do not push down pulp. Moisten four layers of cheesecloth or jelly bag. Fill remaining pulp in cheesecloth or jelly bag and find a way so that the bag can be suspended bag over a bowl and the juices can drain. For example, you can hang the bag from a cabinet handle and put the bowl under it. (There are also commercial stands for jelly bags you can buy.) Let juice drain overnight.

The juice you last drained will be thicker and has more pectin. If you have enough juice for several batches, make sure you mix all the juice together before to dividing it into different batches.

(The pulp that remains in the bag can be pushed through a food mill or strainer and used as applesauce. You may want to add some apple juice to it, or sweeten or season it, e.g. with cinnamon.)

Get canning equipment and jars ready. Put several small plates into freezer.

Measure the juice into a large heavy saucepan. Preferably, don't work with more than 6 cups of juice in one batch. Add a two-third (2/3) cup of sugar for each 1 cup of juice. Add strained juice of one lemon. If you want to flavor the jelly, tie about 3-5 large sprigs of herb (e.g lemon verbena, lemon balm, mint, lavender, rosemary etc.) into a bundle with kitchen twine. If using dried herbs tie ca. 2 tablespoons in a piece of cheesecloth or cotton tea bag. Add to the juice.

Bring juice to a boil over high heat. Stir and watch it closely. It should boil vigorously. When it gets thicker (it may take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes) pour a small spoonful on one of the plates from the freezer and put it back into the freezer for a minute or two. Stop cooking when jelly on the test plate is only slightly runnier than you would like it (It will continue cooking in the pot a bit as it cools off). It should wobble a bit when you shake the plat and when you pull a finger through it it should not run together anymore.

Discard herbs if there are any. If there is a lot of foam you may want to skim it off and save it for immediate use. Pour jelly into hot jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Adjust lids and process in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes.

Let jars cool off for at least twelve hours. The jelly should be jiggly but not totally firm. If it seems too soft give it some more time. It may take up to two weeks to completely set. Putting it in the refrigerator may help. If a batch is really too soft you can either use it as sauce on pancakes, ice cream etc. Or you can cook it again to a firmer consistency. It is better to err on the soft side though, because there is not much you can do if it is too hard.

Please familiarize yourself with basic canning procedures and food-safety guidelines.  10:29:06 AM    

Fortuitously, the theme for this month's Is My Blog Burning Event was cupcakes. And cupcakes were definitely on my agenda. The recent Birthday around here not only involved baking a cake but also various other goodies to be shared with little friends who were not at the actual party.

By Monday we were all a bit sugared-out and not much in the mood for buttery frosting or anything too complicated and involved. After some UN-style negotiations we settled on Marble Cupcakes.

These were my first Marble Cakes in cups. I used my basic White Cake batter, jazzed up with some orange zest and juice. For a more grown-up version, I would add to the batter some finely chopped candied orange peel and decoratively sprinkle some over the finished cupcakes.

They were very tasty and looked pretty cute, in an understated sort of way. We decided not to do any fancy frosting or glaze and instead let confectioner's sugar snow on them. Perfect! (The only negative feedback I received was that there weren't enough cupcakes for all of the teachers ...)

Recipe

2 sticks butter, softened
1 cup sugar
5 large eggs (or 1 cup if using smaller eggs)
zest and strained juice of 1 organic orange
4 cups flour
pinch of salt
5 tsp. baking powder
1/2 to 1 cup milk
6 Tbsp. cocoa

Yield: ca. 18 medium cupcakes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pans with liners.

Measure flour, salt, and baking powder into a bowl and stir with wire whisk.
Measure cocoa into a small bowl, add half the orange zest and stir with wire whisk.

In a large bowl cream butter with an electric mixer on high speed, add sugar and half the orange zest, mix until white and fluffy. Add eggs, one by one, until fully incorporated.

With mixer on medium to slow speed, add some of the flour mixture, half the orange juice and some milk, alternating between flour and milk until all the flour is incorporated. Add enough milk to end up with a batter that will drop from a tilted spoon by itself.

Set two thirds of the batter aside. With mixer on medium to slow speed, add cocoa with orange zest, the remaining orange juice and enough milk to achieve the required consistency.

Spoon white batter into muffin pans, a little more than half full. Spoon the dark batter over the filled pans. Carefully hold muffin liner with one hand and, using the narrow handle of a teaspoon or something similar, draw a circle through each cupcake, ending in an upward motion and bringing some of the white batter up to the top. If the surface is very uneven, you may smooth it out a bit.

Bake for ca. 20 minutes. At the end of the baking process watch like a hawk. Take the cupcakes out as soon as a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool, take out of pans and dust with confectioner's sugar when completely cooled off. Enjoy!

  2:42:36 PM    

It all started with some leftover Galette dough a couple of days ago, and now we are not even stopping by the bakery anymore on the way home from school, "because Mommy makes these yummy apple turnovers." Four out of the past five days we had Apple Turnovers. I just can't make enough of them! We had them for breakfast, dessert, snack, and in lunch boxes. Can there be too much of good thing? I wonder when my family will finally get tired of them.

We may have reached a turning point tonight. Speaking for myself, I am not quite as enthusiastic about Apple Turnovers as I was three days ago. And tonight's batch didn't come out as nice as the previous ones. I had just made the dough and it wasn't quite cold enough yet. I let the girls "help" and they put in too much filling and didn't press the edges together tight enough so there was a bit of oozing. But most crucially, I forgot to sprinkle the sugar on before they went into the oven. I remembered about two thirds through the baking, and tried my best, but couldn't distribute the sugar evenly.

I talked to my father-in-law tonight and he got very excited when he heard about Apple Turnovers. He asked if I fried them. He said that Apple Turnovers are usually deep-fried. I said, no way, I just bake them in the oven. He asked me where I found the recipe. I said nowhere, I just make the dough I always make and use some of my canned apples for filling. He said, I need to send him the recipe. He said that several times. I think I heard him salivate.

I looked up "Turnovers" in the Joy of Cooking and learnt that they are usually baked. If they are fried, they are called "Fried Pies." I also learnt that they are usually made from a circle rather than a square. I'll stick with the square because I can do that freehand, sort of.

Apple Turnovers

The dough is your basic Galette dough. I have seen pretty much the same recipe in various cookbooks, a.o. Deborah Madison, Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone and Alice Waters, Chez Panisse: Fruit. It has become a standard of mine. I use it for both sweet and savory fillings and always make a double batch to keep some in the freezer. As for the name, "Galette" simply is a generic term for any flat round pie, tart, or cake, usually on the rustic side.

For a filling, I used the apple slices I had canned last summer mixed with some of the apple topping that had not turned out the way I had expected (too sweet and I did not like the consistency). But when I added some of the topping to the filling, my spouse, the resident food critic, told me filling was just right. It was a good thing I could open those jars because there is no way I would have cooked up a new batch of filling every day.
To make a small batch of filling, peel and core some apples, cut in slices, and cook with some apple juice or cider, grated lemon zest, cinnamon and a bit of nutmeg, some raisins and/or dried cherries. Add sugar to taste. Simmer until apples are tender but not mushy. Let cool.

2 cups flour (I use half whole-wheat pastry flour)
salt
1-2 Tbsp. sugar
1.5 sticks of cold butter (=12 Tbsp)
ca. 1/2 cup ice water

Mix flour salt and sugar in bowl. Add one third of the butter, cutting it first with a knife, then with a dough cutter until it has the consistency of rough cornmeal. Add the rest of the butter and cut first with a knife, then with the dough cutter until the pieces of butter are about pea-size. Sprinkle some of the water over the flour mixture and mix it in with your hands. Work quickly and gently and rather than kneading, let the mixture fall through your fingers until it starts forming larger lumps and comes together. Use as much water as you need and don't forget to work in the flour that tends to gather at the bottom of the bowl. When the dough holds together, shape it into a ball. It will still be raggedy at this point and you may see little lumps of butter and patches of flour. Don't worry about that.
Divide the dough into two balls and press them into small disks. Wrap in wax paper and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.

Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface, ca. 1/8 inch thick and cut into squares (size depends on how large you want the Turnovers to be). Imagine a diagonal line through the square and spoon some filling just below the diagonal, take care not to overfill. Fold one half of the square over the filling, overlapping with the rest of the square and forming a triangle. Press down the edges and fold them up slightly (as if you would make a hem). Press down firmly, first with your fingers, then with a fork.

Put Turnovers on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. With a pastry brush, dab with some water and quickly sprinkle with Turbinado sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes until golden brown. Let cool and eat before they are gone.

(If you have dough leftover you can form little sticks, brush with some eggyolk mixed with a bit of water and sprinkle with some seeds (poppy, sesame etc.). Or you can roll it out and make butter cookies.
If there is extra filling left, have it with pancakes, oatmeal, ice cream or... enjoy it by itself!  11:41:52 PM    

After studying lots of recipes, comparing, trying out and comparing again, I think I have arrived at something of a basic recipe, or at least a process I feel comfortable with. My main inspiration has been June Taylor although I have yet to taste any of her creations. I found a couple of her recipes on the Internet, and while I was never able to exactly follow any of them (due to differences in ingredients and quantities) her procedures for making marmalade (and her philosophy in general) make a lot of sense to me.

In order to arrive at a concoction that jells in the right way (not too runny not too solid), won't spoil, tastes yummy and looks pretty, you need fruit, sugar, acid, water and pectin, heat and time. Your fruit already has some sugar, acid, water, and pectin and therefore, how much of these ingredients you need to add depends on the fruit you start out with. Basically, a real artisan marmalade maker would tailor the recipe to every particular batch of fruit.

The two most important things I learnt during my recent adventures at Marmalade pot:

1) If you don't want your Marmalade to be bitter, keep out the white stuff (the pith, or albedo) because that's where most of the bitterness is.

2) The overall "character" of your marmalade is very much determined by how much rind you add, and how you cut it. If you cut very fine stripes (about 1/8 of an inch), they will pretty much disappear during the cooking, while imparting flavor and aroma (the rind is where the essential oils are). If you want the rinds to add more character, leave them about half an inch wide. Personally, I don't like a lot of big pieces of rind and I found that cutting them into relatively small pieces (squares or triangles) makes for a very pretty effect. Also possible: cut some rind very fine but leave some bits larger. Creative combinations are also possible, e.g. floating bits of Tangelo peel in Grapefruit-Tangelo Marmalade or Lemon squares in Orange Marmalade.

Basic Process for Citrus Marmalade

Wash your fruit. Select the prettiest pieces and peel them with a vegetable peeler. Cut the rind in stripes or pieces. Stop when you have about 1 cup (or more or less, depending on how much rind you like in your marmalade).

Cut all the pith (and peel) away from the fruit and then cut the segments away from the membranes. Work over a bowl to catch the juice. This step is kind of messy and bit hard to describe but you will get the hang of it. Squeeze the juice out of the messy lump of membranes you're left with and collect all the membranes and seeds in another bowl. Stop when you have about 5 cups of segments (and juice).

Put the rinds and the fruit in a large pot. Add the juice of 2-4 lemons (depending on how acid your fruit is). Add water, two cups should be ok.

Put the mess of membranes and seeds in a jelly bag if you have one, or put it in at least 4 layers of cheesecloth and tie it with twine. Put this package in the pot as well. Bring to a boil and cook for 20-30 minutes until the peels are tender. While this is cooking get your canning stuff and jars and lids ready and put a small plate in the freezer (for the jell-test).

Turn off heat. Put the package in a bowl and wait until it is cool enough to handle. The membranes are rich in pectin and you want to get as much of the pectin as possible to make the marmalade jell. To that end, squeeze and twist this package over the bowl until you think you can't coax any more of that thick white pectin-rich oooze out of it. This is a bit laborious and every drop counts. If you are using cheesecloth be careful that it doesn't burst or break. Stir the pectin back into the pot.

Now it's time to add the sugar. Measure the fruit mixture. Traditional recipes would say add one cup of sugar per cup of fruit mixture. I have had good success with 2/3 cup of sugar per cup of fruit mixture. Add the sugar to the pot and stir to dissolve.

Turn on the heat and watch closely, stirring frequently. Don't leave your post once it has started boiling. Let it come to a "full rolling boil." It will be all bubbly and foamy and a bit scary. Keep stirring. It will take at least 20 minutes until the marmalade is done, and may even take 45 minutes or more. You will know your are almost there when a candy thermometer reads close to 220 degrees, the mixture gets thicker, changes color and the bits of fruit and rind have become shiny and sort of transparent.

Drop some marmalade on the plate from the freezer. Wait a bit and trace a line with your finger through it, if it doesn't flow back together and doesn't run when you tilt the plate it should be done. (I overcooked the first jams I made because I was so worried they wouldn't jell. I prefer a softer set and if you end up with marmalade that is too runny you can always cook it again but it is harder to doctor up overcooked jam. It will continue to set as it cools; it can take up to two weeks after processing to fully set.)

Take pot from heat. Quickly fill hot jars, seal and process for 10 minutes). Take jars out of canner and let cool for a couple of hours. Check to see if vacuum has formed, label and store.  9:51:22 AM    

I can always dream, can't I? Or I could go to the supermarket and get some over-priced suspiciously gigantic greenish-tinged things in a plastic box. Or I could dig in my freezer and pull out a bag of the organic strawberries we picked last summer. We picked a lot and I made jams and sauce to pour over ice-cream and when there were still some left I froze them because I could not imagine that we could ever use up all that jam, but guess what. Here I am in February rummaging around in my pantry. All the jam is gone.

Last summer I made several kinds of strawberry jam: full sugar with pectin, half-sugar, no sugar, and preserves. The no-sugar was a mistake, the full-sugar unnecessarily sweet, the half-sugar had just the right sweetness, and the preserves never set but were great poured over pancakes. Actually, the preserves had the best flavor owing to the lemon I had added.

In terms of technique I learned that it really helps to skim off as much of the foam as possible. The jam just looks better and you can have the foam on toast for breakfast the next day. And I learned to solve the "floating fruit problem" by stirring the jam after it is done until it starts to gel just a bit. And if there still is "floatage" after it comes out of the canner you can turn it upside down, roll it around and do other fun stuff to it, but only after you heard the "ping," inicating the jars have sealed.

Here I am in February making
Reduced Sugar Strawberry Jam with Lemon

When making jam from frozen fruit you have all the fun and none of the mess. I have come to appreciate just the right amount of sugar. Something happens when you add sugar. The fruit is transformed. The color deepens and shines. And there is the magic pectin jell that is so hard to come by without teh help of sugar. The no-sugar jam I made last summer was lacking not only in flavor but it also had a very dull color. I love honey and while the raspberry pear jam I made with honey had a good jell and tasted wonderfully, its color was not as vivid as I would have liked. For now, I think half sugar is the way to go, but I look forward to tinkering more with pectins (added or not) and sweeteners.

Reduced Sugar Strawberry Jam with Lemon

2 qts. strawberries
1 organic lemon
1 cup apple cider or juice
3 cups sugar
1 package no-sugar needed pectin

Get canning equipment and jars ready.

Mash strawberries and measure 5 cups.
Wash lemon, trim ends. Cut into chunks and remove seeds. In a food processor, grind lemon very finely. Put lemon in a cup measure and fill with apple juice, measuring to one cup.

Pour strawberries and lemon-juice mixture into large saucepan. Sprinkle pectin over fruit and stir in carefully to avoid lumps.

Bring pot to a full boil, stirring constantly. Add sugar and continue stirring. When mixture has come to a full rolling boil, keep stirring and let it boil for one minute exactly.

Remove from heat. Keep stirring until jam starts to thicken, ca. 5 minutes. Fill into hot jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Adjust lids and process in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes.

Yield: ca. 6 half-pints.

Please familiarize yourself with basic canning procedures and food-safety guidelines.  11:06:53 AM    

I don't have much work right now. I should get the house in shape, but I am not making much progress. I do a little something every day, in addition to the usual chores, I go to bed earlier and read instead of working into the wee hours. The truth is, whenever I'd rather cook or bake instead of chasing after dust bunnies.

In the spirit of adventure, I wanted to try out The Vegetarian Haiku in Four Dishes from the NY Times of January 12. I am fascinated and intrigued by Japanese cooking, and Japanese aesthetics in general, although I will readily admit that my acquaintance with Japanese culture is superficial and haphazard. My idea of Japanese cooking is entirely derived from meals I had in Japanese restaurants in the US, from a few fortuitous meals Japanese friends prepared for me, and from the perusal of books on Japanese cookery, aimed at Westerners.

In the article Mark Bittman ("The Minimalist') describes his visit with a Japanese chef, Yumiko Kano, who owns a very small vegetarian restaurant in Tokyo. She grew up on a farm in the countryside and her parents supply her restaurant with vegetables. Her emphasis on fresh, home-grown ingredients and her unpretentious straight-forward preparations appealed to me, and so did the fact that she whipped up the menu "in just over an hour." I decided to give it a try.

The ingredient list was not overly long and exotic and the preparations were simple. It would have helped though, if I had carefully read through all of the four recipes beforehand and drawn up a consolidated game plan. I could have saved myself some time if I had chopped all of the shitake mushrooms I needed for the various dished at once instead of separately, and likewise I could have kept on hand a large pot of kombu broth, or a supply of ginger juice instead of doing the same step over again.

I started out with the Sesame-Soy Custard. Unfortunately it would not come out of the mold or set up properly. Instead of the beautiful and elegant jiggly white cubes that had caught my eye in the paper I ended up with something the color and consistency of grout that hasn't dried yet. It was a shame because it tasted delicious. I suspect the ingredients were somehow off, or maybe there was some kind of "trick" to it that you need to learn by watching someone.

The Kabocha Squash Soup was amazingly easy and very good. Although it seems an unlikely description, it was both hearty and delicate at the same time. The Green Beans With Walnut-Miso Sauce Mark Bittman had praised so highly did not seem all that spectacular. They were good, but considering we like green beans in any incarnation the fancy dressing did not seem to add all that much.

The greatest success was the Burdock and Mushroom Sushi, a bowl of sushi rice mixed with sauteed burdock root, carrots and mushrooms. The vinegary, slightly sweet rice blended beautifully with the heartiness of the mushrooms and the vegetables gave it some nice crunch. We all loved that and the girls were clamouring for the left-overs to go in their lunchboxes. It would also go nicely with some fish or egg. The only thing I would change next time is chop the vegetables more finely. The instructions said "julienned or finely chopped" and I julienned (not so finely) because this was the last dish I was getting ready when "just over an hour" had long passed and I was surrounded by hungry people. With finer chopped vegetables the flavors would even meld better.

As I was cooking I remembered I the trouble I had had with recipes from the NYT before. It seems to me they don't test them very well. The amount of liquid suggested to cook the rice was way too much, but I was able to adjust that. For the green bean dish I ended up with twice as much dressing as I needed. I can find other uses for the dressing, but it still seems like an oversight. I can usually tell by looking at a recipe whether or not it will work for me, but with Japanese cooking I am in unfamiliar territory and have to rely much more on the instructions.

All in all, it was fun. Except for the custard, everything turned out great. The sushi rice may well become a favorite and we will probably make the kabocha soup again very soon. But more than anything, I want to thumb through some Japanese cookbooks now, marvel at beautiful pictures, and pick out more dishes to try. I will do it on a leisurely Sunday afternoon though, not on a weekday school night.  2:14:40 PM    

I went to the Union Square Green Market on Saturday in search of more beets for pickling. Pickled beets are such a convenient side to have on hand and add a splash of color to any dreary winter day. I like to use very small beets, not larger than a ping-pong ball, and can them whole. They look so pretty!

Saturday night I got all my canning paraphernalia out. As always, I had a hard time estimating how many jars I would need. The small whole beets would go into quart jars, and the larger ones would be sliced and go into pints. To be served as a side, a quart jar of whole small pickles is just the perfect quantity for us, a family of four. And the same is true for a pint of sliced beets, since the slices are packed in tighter.

I had made pickled beets a couple of times before, and one thing I learned was not to overcook them. After cleaning them, I put them in a large pot, covered them with water, and took care to cook them just long enough for the peels to slip off, but while they still had a bit off resistance in the center. They will soften some more during processing in the jars, and anyway, we prefer them firmer rather than mushy.

The easiest way to get off the peels-and the least messy-is to work under running cold water. When the small ones were ready, I plunged them in a bowl of ice water and started peeling them in the sink. The larger ones took a bit longer.

(Beets peeled and waiting to go into jars)

While the beets were cooking, I got the syrup ready. I madee a double batch, following the recipe I had used before, from Keeping the Harvest by Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead (Storey Publishing, 2002). I used less sugar though, and changed the spices, using cumin and mint. While getting the syrup ready, it occurred to me that I had forgotten to put the big canning kettle on so that the boiling water bath would be ready once the jars were filled. But since I was using a huge pot for boiling the beets and a large one for making the syrup, there was no room on the stove for the canner anyway. In the end, it worked out perfectly: When I had the last batch of beets in the sink, I moved the syrup pot and put the canner on the back burner. By the time all the beets were prepared and arranged in jars with syrup over them, the water was boiling.

I ended up with 2 quarts, 3 pints and 2 half-pints.

(Pickled beets cooling after processing)

Now we have to be patient and wait at least two weeks before opening a jar. They taste better once the vinegar and all the flavors have settled in.

Pickled Beets with Cumin and Mint

Adapted from Keeping the Harvest by Nancy Chioffi and Gretchen Mead (Storey Publishing, 2002)

About 5 lbs. of beets

1 cup sugar

1.5 tsp. pickling salt

4 cups cider vinegar (or half cider vinegar, half white vinegar)

2 cups water

1 tbs. dried mint

1 tbs. whole cumin seeds

Get canning equipment and jars ready.

Clean beets, put in pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook until skins slip off, ca. 20 minutes depending on size.

While beets are cooking, toast cumin seeds in a small skillet until fragrant. Mix with the other syrup ingredients in a pot and bring to a boil, keep at a simmer until ready to pour over beets.

When beets are ready, transfer them to a bowl with cold water and slip off skins. Trim off roots, and the bits of peel that wouldn't come off etc. Leave small beets whole and slice or quarter larger ones.

Arrange beets in hot jars, leaving half inch head-space. Fill with syrup to half inch head-space. remove air bubbles.

Adjust lids and process in a boiling water bath canner for 30 minutes.

Yield: ca. 3 quarts or 6 pints.

Please familiarize yourself with basic canning procedures and food-safety guidelines. Adjust processing times for elevations over 1000 feet.  12:23:48 PM