Muffin Top

homemade cantaloupe sorbet, originally uploaded by c(h)ristine.

I’m going to talk about two things that don’t seem to go together: personal trainers and desserts. This is because I challenged myself to make my personal trainer a dessert dish. Something healthy but delicious–what could I make?

My personal trainer, predictably, chides me for eating butter and ice cream. He is just so very opposed to dairy products, but I think it has to do with his own lactose intolerance. However, he is a fan of sorbet. I would make–sorbet!

But what flavor of sorbet? I wanted to make something that Haagen Dazs wouldn’t produce, so that nixed strawberry, mango, peach, and raspberry. I thought about cherimoya, but couldn’t find any. So I began to think about fruit that was very in season–landing on cantaloupe. Doug, my trainer, LOVES cantaloupe–he’s weaned me OFF watermelon by suggesting I eat more cantalouope in its place (”it’s the WORST of the fruits, do you know how much sugar is in watermelon?” he exclaims, much to my watermelon-loving dismay. “Try cantaloupe,” he proposed).

This makes a fantastic sorbet. Unlike many sorbet recipes, this does NOT require an ice cream maker, just a blender or a food processor. In many ways, it resembles granita.   Recipe follows…

(more…)

homemade strawberry jam, originally uploaded by c(h)ristine.

This summer, I read my share of posts on jam: Tea and Cookies posted throughout her summer about various jams (ah, the travels she took to wonderful berry kingdoms!)…and here on Muffin Top, Eric posted about jamming as comfort activity and Connie posted a wonderful write up of sour cherry jam.

How could a girl resist falling in love with the idea of jamming? At first, I read with awe about jamming, something I saw as akin to alchemy. Sterilize jars, lids, make jam, boil jars in canner, seal…so many steps, so many having nothing to do with cooking! It was…MAGIC. And if it were to go wrong, it would be TRAGIC (as bad magic tricks go). I was intimidated.

But in the end, my desire for homemade jam overcame any intimidation I felt.

I wrote emails to Tea and Eric. Tips, got any tips?
1. Don’t cut down on the sugar–and Tea’s post on her sad strawberry saga was particularly insightful. Don’t double the recipes either. Pectin can be picky.
2. To pectin or not to pectin? As I conducted my research, I found that there is an “anti-pectin” camp, and another camp that sees nothing wrong with using pectin (the thing that makes your jam jell). Martha Stewart is in the no-pectin camp, because I found none of her ercipes included pectin. If you’re making jam with a low-pectin fruit, you want to go with pectin. If you’re making jam for the first time, you want to go with pectin. You may want to go with a low-sugar pectin (I did, and it turned out GREAT). You may also go with Pomona’s Universal no-sugar pectin, too, if you are adverse to sugar. I tried it. I prefer the low-sugar pectin brand.

Um, those are basically the tips.

I used the recipes for blueberry and strawberry jams on pick your own. I am in LOVE with canning!

And now I’m eyeing a bag of locally grown tomatoes, and want to can tomaotes, too. What can be better than to pop open a can of tomatoes in the middle of winter, when all the tomatoes are gone?

Canning–a combination of alchemy, crafts (yes, it’s like doing crafts) and pragmatism (after all, it is a way to preserve fresh produce for much later). The thing is, I keep eating the jam–what will I have by the time winter comes?