The Canning Eagle

I tried canning this weekend! My friend Rachael and I had been planning it for awhile. She'd grown up canning with her mom and grandmother; I'd wanted to do it for years but had been too intimidated to try on my own.

It turns out it isn't hard at all! (Although I did joke that we should make cute little gift tags for our jars that list the symptoms of botulism.) I made an Indian curry simmer sauce (it's just the base for most of the curries I make: onions, garlic, ginger, a bunch of whole spices, and tomatoes), and Rachael made a berry/peach jam.

The most difficult part was that I'd bought 25 pounds of tomatoes at the farmers' market, and that's a lot of tomatoes to wrangle.  But I took them down, because I'm the Canning Eagle (my new canning nickname. what, you don't have a canning nickname?).

OK, here's how we canned: We cooked our foods while simultaneously sterilizing our jars and lids by washing them in the dishwasher. Then we filled the jars with our sauce or jam (I used a canning funnel to make it easier), sealed them up, and dropped them in boiling water for ten minutes. We used a special pair of tongs made to grab jars, but you could use regular tongs.  Anyway, after they were pulled out of the water, they cooled, and as they cooled, they sealed! You can actually here a popping sound when they seal sometimes. To test them, you just push on the top, and if the lid doesn't snap back, it's sealed! (If it does snap back, just put it in the fridge and eat it semi-soon, instead of keeping it in the cupboard.)

In summary:

1. Sterilize (in the dishwasher or in boiling water for ten minutes)
2. Fill, wipe the sides, seal
3. Drop in boiling water for ten or so minutes (time depends on the recipe), remove

I made 16 pint jars of sauce!  And then, tonight, I made 6 pint jars of applesauce!  I am truly the Canning Eagle.

Photos!

So many onions!

Delicious jam!

We can can!

The finished product!

Spinach and Tofu Curry

Tonight I made a vegan version of saag paneer, a spinach and cheese curry.  The recipe was my own invention, based on having eaten (non-vegan) saag paneer at Indian restaurants and having looked at a few recipes online and in books.  My version may not have been authentic Indian, but it was SUPER tasty.

Because it was so yummy and not too difficult, I decided to share:

• Make some rice.  You'll do something with it later...
• Press a block of extra-firm tofu, then cut it into cubes.
• Heat some peanut oil in a frying pan.  Put the tofu cubes in, and resist the urge to flip them till they've really browned on one side.  It'll take awhile, so proceed with the rest of the recipe, checking on the tofu every now and then.
• In a different pan, saute chopped onions in peanut oil.  
• Once the onions are pretty soft, add minced garlic and chili pepper and cumin seeds
• About a minute later, add some Indian spices.  I used coriander, turmeric, garam masala and a little cayenne pepper but you can use whatever you have around.
• Slowly add a can of light coconut milk.  Stir it in, let it get hot
• Add spinach! Mix it in, let it wilt.
• Once the spinach is wilted, transfer everything to a blender and blend it all up! It will be a beautiful/terrifying green color (depending on your perspective)
• Probably your tofu is done being fried.  Put the spinach blend back into its pan, and add the tofu.  Mix it all around, make sure it's thoroughly heated.  And you're done!
• What about that rice?  Using the pan you'd had the tofu in (I hate having extra dishes to do), heat some more oil and toss some raw peanuts in. 
• Once they're roasty, add cumin seeds and mustard seeds (cover the pan with a lid till the mustard seeds are done popping)
• Stir in turmeric (not too much, less than a teaspoon) and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice.  
• Now turn off the heat, and slowly mix in your cooked rice (make sure it's not too sticky-together - you want individual grains).  Make sure it's thoroughly mixed, so your rice takes on the yellow color of the turmeric.  If you have some fresh cilantro, get that chopped up and sprinkled on top.  (I was out of it tonight, unfortunately.)
• Tada!  You just made lemon rice to go with your saag paneer!

Here's a photo of our leftovers.  It would've looked prettier on a plate, but that didn't occur to me until I'd already spooned it into the tupperware, and I've already established how I feel about extra dishes being used.  Anyway, here it is:

Again, I cannot stress enough how tasty I found this meal.  My boyfriend and I just went crazy over its yumminess.

P.S. I realize I didn't remember to include very many (if any) measurements.  Don't sweat it.  When in doubt, use a teaspoon or two for the spices (except the cayenne pepper).  Use a nice big bag of spinach. Don't worry over it too much.  It's hard to make these things taste bad together.  They're just too intrinsically tasty.

Shantaram

So I just finished the book Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It was over 900 pages, which was awesome - per page, I was definitely getting my money's worth.

Overall, pretty compelling stuff. The main character was a heroin addict and armed robber who escaped prison in Australia to journey to Bombay. The book begins with the start of his time in Bombay, and covers his various adventures there as he opens a clinic in the slums and eventually gets involved with organized crime. Some of his similes and metaphors ("a silence so profound that the breeze against my ears was like a child's sleepy whisper" for example) made me grit my teeth, but the story and characters were enthralling. The main character's goodness of heart and devotion to helping others, despite the terrible things he'd done, were touching and inspiring.

Though it's a novel, it's pretty much based on the author's life. He actually did escape from prison and all that. This makes it more incredible. Would I like it just as much if some dude in the suburbs who'd never been to India had written it? No. But that dude probably wouldn't have written this book.

Should you read it? Yes, probably. I especially liked reading it while eating Indian food, for a more immersive sensory experience.