I'm back safe and sound from Philadelphia (or, to be more precise, the inner-ring Western suburbs). It was a good trip, productive and busy. The family was fine in my absence and, although the house was a wreck, my husband did manage to accomplish some long put-off tasks.


It's Q&A time again here at Hot Water Bath. Over the past three or so months, I received scores of e-mails asking all kinds of questions covering everything from my favorite recipes for pot roast to the manner in which we are raising our children to the books in the "I'm Reading" section to the left. Some of them had themes that I found repeating and it is these that I will attempt to answer here today.


Q: What is the processing time for tomatoes?


A: The USDA just recently increased the hot water processing time (that is, the time starting from when the bath begins to boil again after jars are added to the already boiling water) from about 20 minutes to an hour and a half. The change is due largely to the fact that many modern tomato varieties have been bred to be much lower in acid than their more heirloom counterparts and, as such, aren't safe for short processing times. This has been fairly controversial in the canning community (is there really such a thing?) because many people feel that adding lemon juice or vinegar along with salt - which you typically do with tomatoes anyway - raises the acidity enough to keep the shorter time sufficient. For my part, I think this is a use-your-best-judgment situation.


Q: Can you recommend a good canning book?


A: I've yet to come across a really good multi-purpose canning book. The good people at Alltrista publish something called The Blue Book which is a nice place to start. I've always felt that the book lacks a bit in imagination, but there's no doubt that it remains the classic. Barbara Ciletti put out a book in 2000 called Creative Pickling which I found interesting and exhaustive, including everything from half-sours to kimchi (a newer version also includes chutneys and salsas). Then there's Edon Waycott's Preserving the Taste, which focuses primarily on small-batch seasonal jams and butters. Helen Witty's Fancy Pantry has rightly taken on the aspect of a classic, and is out of print and expensive even in used book stores. If you find one, snap it up!


Then, of course, there's Canning and Preserving for Dummies, which seems fairly self-explanatory to me.


Q: Can I save money by canning?


A: That depends upon what you can and how you can it. If you're canning pretty much all home grown produce and stay away from the fancy stuff, you can probably earn a decent return over time (that is, once your equipment and jars and such are paid for with your savings). If, like me, you can a mix of home grown, gifted and purchase materials, you're unlikely to "earn" much, although you can save a bit over similar commercially prepared products (that is, it's cheaper for me to make pumpkin butter than to buy it, but I think it can be successfully argued that pumpkin butter is more of a luxury product than, say, green beans). Many of the frugality books of the mid-90s embraced canning as a money saver, but in my opinion you need to keep at it for years if your goal is strictly to save money. Here in the U.S., we (currently, at least) live in a world of 24-hour supermarkets with fifty cents cans of beans sliced pretty much any way you'd like them. It takes a lot of canning over many years to approach a savings - not including your time (beans are a pain in the *&%&$ to prepare). For some reason, I tend toward the ever-so-slightly fancier products - mango jam instead of grape jelly and so on - so I tend not to think about the money, but rather that I like knowing precisely what's in my food wherever possible. So, I like to think of canning as a not-too-expensive, productive hobby more than a positive impact on the family budget.


Q: Why do you always talk about your kids? Isn't this supposed to be a cooking website?


A: To call Hot Water Bath a cooking website rather overstates the case. This is a weblog and, as such, contains whatever information I feel like including. More often than not, this means you'll find recipes and more canning minutiae than you can shake a stick at. Sometimes, this means just whatever's on my mind, from politics to reading to, yes, family life. Because my family contains two children they occasionally sneak their way into the narrative. Close readers will notice the "about" box in the upper left of the screen - that's the largest clue as to what you'll find here.


I must say, admitedly somewhat defensively, I really don't feel as if I write about my kids "all the time" - a quick glance at the archives will reveal entire weeks going by without mention of either of them. That being said, I have to point out the following: If you don't like it, don't read it. It's all very simple. You are likely equiped with a mouse, a back button and an Internet tool bar. A good users guide or helpful instruction from a friend will assist you in finding websites and/or blogs more to your liking.


Q: If I buy the stuff, will you make some canned goods for me?


A: No. Not only is it illegal for me to do so in many places, but that would take canning out of the realm of something that I do for fun into another item on my "to-do" list. Why not give it a try? It's really not hard and you just might have a nice time - and, with the outcome of four pints of jam or salsa or whatever, what's not to love?

Well, this ought to be interesting.


We were scheduled to head to Philly this weekend but the other day my husband announces that he'd really rather stay home and get ready for classes (which start on Wednesday) and do a few things around the house.


So I'm all ready to cancel the trip and he says, "Why don't you go on and leave the kids with me. That way you can get some alone time before classes start and things get crazy again."


It's a great offer and one I couldn't refuse. Catch you next week when I'll return with the answers to my latest batch of e-mail, including the processing time for tomatoes, the prospects of saving money with canning and why I write about my kids all the time.


See you then!

I have decided that I no longer wish to be part of the solution. I am now, regretably, just going to have to be part of the problem.


Laurie Colwin once wrote about the process of entertaining and giving dinner parties. She said something to the effect of, "And then you get invited back, so you invite them back and then you go back and forth like ping pong balls and what you end up with is a social life."


I wish. We have lived in our current location just short of a year and a half. In this time we have given three parties and maybe half a dozen dinners. Would you like to know how many invitations we've received?


So that you don't hurt yourself on the advanced math, I'll tell you. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Null.


For a few weeks I've been thinking that it's because people can't stand the thought of spending an evening with us. I know it's not like having the Clintons around or anything, but are we that dull? Maybe they've heard our ostrich story one too many times, or really wish I'd buy a new sweater already or whatever. I've been beside myself with regret, thinking that if only I'd read the Post more often I'd be a more desirable guest, one with keen insight into current events and interesting anecdotes to share over the prosecco and figs. Or maybe if I got rid of that really outdated tie that my husband loves so much...


And then my sister pointed out that we haven't noticed a dearth of people willing to accept our invitations - which are actually taken up with speed and apparent enthusiasm - but rather we seem to have encountered a community where people are loath to issue their own. Perhaps this is because it's a university town and the population is fairly transient, so people don't want to invest. Who knows? All I am sure of is that I have heard over and over again that "No one entertains anymore." Well, this someone did, but she's not anymore.


It's not that I begrudge my guests their food and drink. I don't give parties only to go to them (although that's a nice benefit in theory). I do it to forge connections, to solidify friendships, to share an experience and also for the creative expression of the process itself. And although we've received copious thanks (sometimes even written), I don't do it to be thanked - although one bachelor friend sent me flowers after a party a couple years ago, a gesture I found utterly and completly charming.


I would like to see my friends and acquaintances in their natural habitats. I would like to see what's hanging on their walls and ask them how they selected that particular piece from Sotheby's or Bed Bath & Beyond or wherever. I would like to see Love in the Time of Cholera on their end table and confess that I've never been able to read it all the way through and only know it really from that John Cusack movie. I would like to try their Grandmother's Famous Soyloaf. I would like to run my hand down the sideboard they hauled in from the curb and refinished. I would like to try and brighten their evenings as they've brightened mine - to give them back that which they have given me.


Please don't think me bitter. I'm not, just sad. This fall and winter will be significantly quieter for us than the last. We're planning a lot of family cocooning time. Today I harvested five pounds of basil in preparation for freezing a few batches of pesto - rotini with pesto cream sauce is one of my favorite starters but this year, it'll be the entire dinner (along with an endive salad) in front of the fire. Just the four of us, warm and snug.

I've decided to enter some of my canned goods into the county fair. There are several categories which sounds appealing and I've spent a great deal of time over the past day staring into my canning cupboard hoping to spot a sure winner. Right now, I'm considering key lime or cranberry chutney for the jam/fruit chutney category, marinated mushrooms for the pickles (or maybe the preserved lemons, that would be cool - but can you imagine a judge digging in to sample some?) and maybe one other thing but I can't remember what all the categories are at the moment.


I have no illusions that I might actually win a ribbon or anything (although, I have to confess that I'd be thrilled to do so) but I think it will be a fun experience. I've always enjoyed local fairs and as a child of the suburbs have found them somewhat mysterious, what with the livestock, pie eating competitions and C-list country music performances and all. I guess it's saying something that events at which you may procure one of those fried bread confections as well as a heifer are now pretty far out of the mainstream, although they were once a key joint in the backbone of rural life.


If, at age 18, I heard that not only would I be entering home canned produce (don't you have to cook that?) in the county fair but that I also would actually be looking forward to it, I would have run screaming in the opposite direction and may well have built myself a bunker out of Vogue back issues. At the time I couldn't imagine living in a small town, much less partaking of small town life and, for the most part, enjoying it. The very idea that I could actually, say, grow my own tomatoes as well as read the New York Times or cross-stitch my baby's (my what?) bibs as well as enjoy the latest club music, never ever crossed my mind. I thought life had to be one or the other, not both. I could be an urban sophisticate or I could be a backwater rube (not hard to tell where my prejudices lie, eh?). That there was a golden mean wherein I could forge my own path would have seemed as foreign as the landscape on Mars.


Such are the biases and narrowmindedness of youth and inexperience. I'm older and wiser now and don't feel I know I don't have to make such choices. Play the cello and hang my laundry? Yes. Spread hundreds of pounds of fertilizer and savor an iced chai latte? Yes. Grad school and small farming workshop? Yes. I know now that none of these choices excludes any of the others or even that partaking of any given one says anything at all about the person doing the partaking or life in which it is done. Why on earth did I have to reach my 30s to understand these things? The mind boggles.


And so to this I say, I may be bourgeois and I may be bohemian, but I'm also a bumpkin. And proud of it.

We're just back from a long weekend in Buffalo and as exhausted as I am you'd think we'd flown in from Sydney (probably about the farthest place on earth from central Virginia, at least in terms of travel time). I'd say we drove about 500 miles which required nine and a half hours, with two bathroom stops as well as one for gas. Why do I do this to myself?


Oh, wait, I remember. I do this to myself because my parents started with the, "If you're not too busy...well, it's been a year and you haven't met your nephew and it would be nice to have all the grandkids together and Dad's so upset since Mr. W. died and we might not be around much longer..." Ah, the emotional blackmail that parents can visit upon you. If it could be bottled we'd have no need for non-renewable resources.


And so we're back from the land of family dynamics - who isn't watching their finances, whose kids are mouthy, who is having trouble finding a job because s/he won't take constructive criticism. And don't forget we love you! And I love them back because they're the only family I have and although I'm loathe to admit it, I'm probably just as crazy as they are. At least my brother in law gave me two jars of his blue-ribbon dilly beans. Dilly beans make up for a lot of disfunction, don't you think?

I've been reading a book called The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (Wharton School Publishing, 2004) by C. K. Prahalad, a well known management consultant and overall business thinker. The author's premise is intriguiging: we can eliminate poverty by empowering the poor as consumers who are dedicated savers with deep entrepreneurial instincts and who decidely desire to participate in improving their lives (as opposed to the popular depiction of the poor and sitting around being lazy and waiting for a handout). Prahalad goes beyond the well known concept of the grameen bank and steers us straight into full on capitalism.


Skeptical? Me, too. I have to confess that I had no idea what Prahalad was talking about - it all seemed so counterintuitive. The poor are poor precisely because they have no money. What are they going to buy? Who on earth would actually market to them (other than, say, purveyors of alcohol and pay day loan places)?


Shows you what I know. I managed to squeak through my MBA classes without developing a firm grasp on the finer points of economic theory (I'm more of a decision support girl) so I was relieved to discover the book's case studies detailing the ways that a construction supply company in Mexico, a housewares concern in Brazil, and an eye care practice in India (among others) are using unique methods of community development and financial control to raise the standard of living among poor consumers, as well as provide jobs in the community and a handsome return on investment for business owners.


And, by all accounts, their efforts are working. Their customers are among the poorest people on earth and yet each of these organizations is thriving by recognizing and treating the poor as a market unto themselves and in the process raising the standard of living by providing useful good and services in ways the communities are able to absorb financially.


This is definitely food for thought. Lots of thought. I'm not through with the book so I don't know if Prahalad will address my biggest concern - increasing the consumerist nature of the global population as a whole. I believe in the human right to a basic standard of living and I'd guess I'd like to see another book about how to convince the richest billion or so people decide they don't need as much stuff and using the money for investment is a better idea. I won't hold my breath.


In the meantime, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid is some great summer reading. May not be the most typical beach book, but it's certainly got me hooked.

I decided to add the little PSA above in response to the many requests I've received over the past two weeks for guidance and recipes. I really didn't mind answering the notes - they were mostly very sweet - but the process started to take a lot of time. I'll remove the note after hard core canning season is over, although I might put a directory to the left directing users to key recipes. Really organized bloggers do this, but I'm sure you've already figured out where I fall as far as organization is concerned.


In fact, as if to prove it, I need to report that the blueberry pie filling still hasn't been completed. I've frozen the berries so that I can try again later in the month. Part of the problem (and it isn't really a problem) is that, unlike her brother, the Little Diva would rather do just about anything than sit in her high chair. For the first time in my life I understand the dreaded "children underfoot". The Boy Wonder would happily sit in the kitchen with me playing and singing songs - I became quite adept to chopping fruits and vegetables through endless verses of "The Ants Go Marching" and the ABCs - but she's having none of it. So I'm getting more clever about nap time usage, particularly now that the acute sleep deprivation of the immediate post-partum months has diminished.


While it's harder to explore new canning frontiers, the tried and true are becoming easier. Pickles? Jam? No problem - six pints in a jiffy. Maybe this is another reason for the need to explore new dinner menus since that's the cooking I do when we're back to full strength parenting.


Who knows? Anyway, here's a super-fast recipe for something that's technically a spread, but I've been using it in all kinds of ways for quick meals all summer: Combine well in a medium bowl an 8 oz. brick of neufchatel cheese, a 4 oz. can (drained) of tiny shrimp, a quarter cup of finely diced onion, and one teaspoon of lemon juice. That's it. If you can make it the night before you want it, so much the better since the flavors will meld together, but immediate use is fine, too. I've used this lately as an omelet filling, a bagel spread, a tomato stuffer, a tortilla filling (with a bit of tomato or tomatilla salsa), a crepe filling, a celery stuffer, as as the basis for a casserole and lightly melted as a veggie topper, and as a mushroom stuffer. I've also been wondering if chevre could stand up to a similar treatment, but haven't tried it yet.

Do you remember the volunteer squash I talked about a ways back? Turns out it is a squash - a pumpkin to be exact. There are four baby pumpkins of varying sizes throughout the largest vine I have ever seen in person. The thing spreads six feet by six feet easily and reaches up the garden support a good three feet. This pumpkin means business. Unfortunately, I have also discovered a good case of powdery mildew. So far, the only treatment I've been able to uncover is a broad spectrum fungicide, a solution to which I'd rather not resort. I've read in a few places (and, really, if you can't believe what you read in the Internet, what can you believe?) that using 5 tablespoons of baking soda in a gallon of water works well when spritzed so I'll at least try that as a stopgap. Can't hurt, right?

We've been in a period of transition here at Hot Water Bath and I noticed the other night that a great deal of my cooking is reflecting the changes we're experiencing. It's not just my cooking (today I had six inches cut off my hair and am now sporting a lightly layered bob) but that seems to be the area that has become most noticeable, primarily because meals - especially evening meals - are one of the few times that the whole family is gathered together. We live by the "Cook's Choice" rule, meaning that whoever cooks gets to decide what the rest of us will eat.

Since I'm the most frequent cook this means that I usually get to decide what we have for dinner. Much of the time, this is great. Lately, though, I've felt the burden of routine and have been actively trying to put new and different dishes on the table. I'm crediting this urge to the aforementioned transitions that are affecting effecting (oh, bother) impacting all of us.

We started the week with bulgogi, a Korean beef dish, that we wrapped in Boston lettuce leaves. This was a hit with everyone, especially the Boy Wonder - largely because every food he encounters is immediately classified (and not always correctly) as a Finger Food or a Fork Food. And this was finger food he could cozy up to. The basic marinade can be used on beef, pork, chicken, seafood or veggies but I'm given to understand that beef is traditional. And, since what I had thawed was lean ground beef, that's what I used with the marinade/sauce instead serving as cooking liquids. To make bulgogi start by browning one pound of ground beef in a very small amount of oil or broth. As it browns, add in two largish cloves of garlic, minced and two tablespoons of minced ginger (I use the tiny holes on my box grater for this). When all of the meat has browned, pour over three tablespoons of soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of white granular sugar. Off the heat, stir in a quarter cup of sliced scallions. That's it - super easy. (If you want to use something other than ground beef, stir all the seasonings together and use as a marinade for thinly cut meats and vegetables. After marinating, cook quickly over medium-high heat.)

Serve with separated and washed Boston or green leaf lettuce leaves. I had a dish on the side that also had bean sprouts, shredded radish, and minced cucumber as add-ins.

Fast, inexpensive, filling, and very tasty. Excellent for busting out of a culinary rut, to boot.

Well, this just figures. I've been trying to get into Blogger to update all day and haven't been able to connect. Now I've given one last try and it's time to put the Boy Wonder to bed. Then I'm going to do a spot of work, a load of laundry, and take a nice long shower before heading off to my own dreams.

Drat. Well, my discussion of blueberry pie filling will just have to wait. If all goes well I'll actually be buying the berries tomorrow for canning on Saturday. I'm pretty sure I've got all the ingredients although a quick once over of the recipe is probably a good idea.

One last thing for today: Since I became a mother nearly four years ago I've read all kinds of sort-of political treatises about motherhood, mothering and the general treatment and perception of mothers in the U.S. as compared to other countries. To a one, each of these books has included an anecdote about some mom who has decided to stay at home with her young children who is at a cocktail party (it's never any other kind of gathering - always cocktails) and answers the question "What do you do" by saying "I'm at home with my kids" only to find the questioner looking over her shoulder seeking a more interesting/useful person to talk to. The story is warning to all who would stay at home that people will treat you horribly, but that you should press on with your noble cause nonetheless because (let's all say it together now) it's the most important job in the world.

I have two questions: who's giving all these cocktail parties? And why am I never invited?