Alex took the morning off to help me get started and I canned all day long.  In total I made four recipes which amounted to 19 pints and 5 quarts of marmalade which should keep us in marmalade until next year.  In case you are up for a day (or a couple of hours) of canning, here is my recipe.

Marmalade

Instead of normal pectin in this recipe I use Pomona’s Universal Pectin.  You can find it at Whole Foods or any natural grocery store.  It allows the jam to gel with about a third of the sugar that one would normally use.

First things first! Make calcium water:

½ t. of calcuim powder (from the Pomona’s Universal Pectin)

½ c. of water

Mix well together in a clear glass jar and put it in the refrigerator.  This solution will keep a couple of months.  If you see any discoloration: don’t use it.

This recipe will make about 7 pints of jam depending on the size of your fruit.  So take 7 pint jars, screw caps, lids and a funnel and put them into a large pot of water. The water should cover the tops of the jars.  Then cover the jars and boil the water.  Once the water begins to boil, turn it down until you are ready to use the jars.

15 medium sized oranges
4 large grapefruit
4 meyer lemons
¼ t. baking soda
1c water
1 package of Pomona’s Universal Pectin
4 c. sugar

*Note on ingredients: Our orange tree produces oranges that have a lot of pith in them.  In this recipe there is an increase in the amount of oranges to account for this.  You are aiming to have about 12 cups of liquefied fruit so you can adjust the recipe accordingly. Additionally regular lemons can also be used, Meyer lemons are just better.
Use a microplane to zest 3 grapefruit, 5 oranges, and 2 lemons. If you don’t have a microplane then you want to use something that makes the rind similarly small. When you zest just take off the rind not the pith(white part). You can add more or less zest as you like it. Then slice off the rest of the rind and the pith from all the fruit. It isn’t crucial that you get all of the pith off, just most of it. Then cut up the fruit and take out the pits. Then take the cut up fruit and put it in a blender or food processor to turn it into a fruit soup of sorts.

Take the zested rind and put it in a saucepan with the baking soda and water. Heat to boiling and then simmer for 10 minutes. Then add in the processed fruit.  Also add 6 teaspoons of the calcium water.  Then let the mixture boil.  While the fruit is heating up take the sugar and the pectin (it is tan and in the larger pouch) and mix the two together.  Once the fruit has boiled add in the sugar and pectin and stir vigorously until the sugar has dissolved into the fruit.

Once the fruit is boiling, it is time to can.  Take one jar out of the boiling water and set it near the boiling fruit.  Then place the funnel on top and pour enough of the fruit in until you have about and inch left in the jar (the bottom of the screw part of the jar is a good estimation of this).  Then place the lid on top and take your fingers and push it down to ensure that it is secure.  Then take the screw top and place it over the lid and tighten as much as possible.  Two old washcloths are good to use to protect your hands from the hot jars.  Now listen to your jars pop as they tell you they are sealed.

1) Drinking makes the cravings really bad.  Last Friday night, Alex and I decided to get a bottle of cheap wine at Trader Joes and some baked cheese puffs and have happy hour at home.  Both were acceptable to the new diet, but felt just enough like cheating to be fun for a Friday night.  Bad decision.  Half a bottle of wine later, my desire to walk to 7-Eleven and raid whatever sweets they had was really intense.  Not fun nor good.  Lesson learned: must keep the drinking down. Upside: one glass of champagne for dinner tonight seemed to be just fine.

2) Chips should also be on the list.  I couldn’t stop eating those cheese puffs until they were all gone.  Ergo, they go on the addictive list and should not be eaten.

3) I am actually not addicted to rich foods even if they are not healthy for me.  Tonight I made a lovely Julia Child meal because I hadn’t really cooked in awhile and I wanted to create.  I made chicken breasts with a yummy port cream sauce, creamed spinach and a wild rice pilaf.  It was lovely.  It did have just over a half a cup of butter in it and 2 cups of half and half in it so it wasn’t particularly healthy, but I found half way through the chicken that I just wasn’t hungry anymore and I could easily just stop which was a pleasant discovery.

4) Sugar/sweets are everywhere.  I never really realized it until I wasn’t eating sugar, but it is all over the place.  I run into probably 10 times a day easily.  This means there are 10 times a day when I have to repeat to myself that I am not depriving myself of this, but instead this is a decision that I made voluntarily and I intend to stick to it. Society should take note of this and contemplate doing something about it. No freaking wonder our country is overweight!

I also have this constant conversation going on in my head about whether I will be able to try small amounts once the initial month is up or not.  However, I keep trying to remind myself that I need to get through this month first, then I will see what happens next.

However, I have found recently that once I start eating sweets I can’t stop.  It is almost impossible for me to stop before the last of it is gone.  The interesting thing is that I don’t crash from the sugar so I don’t really have a check point where I know I have gone too far.  The more I look at it lately, the more it feels like an addiction.  I realize it sounds a bit silly.  I mean I am talking about sugar, not some illicit drug.  I am not overweight and am a healthy person.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize how much it controls my life.  It is always my go to in a stressful situation to make it better.  I don’t drink, I sugar binge.

So I have decided that I am going to try to take sugar out of my life for the present time.  I want to really see how I am without it.  Can I break the addiction and not crave it so much anymore?  Alex and my two younger sisters have also decided to join me in this quest.  They are intent on cutting it out for a month and then somehow trying to slowly add some back in to bring moderation to how much sugar we consume.  I am not sure that I am going to be able to do that.  However, we will see, one day at a time.

The ground rules, as discussed by my sisters and I, are that we aren’t to eat anything that is composed of more than one-third sugar (mainly refined sugar), but this also includes no guzzling of maple syrup, honey or agave (we are hardcore!).  However, there is a concession for not more than 2 tablespoons of my homemade low sugar jam with peanut butter and toast.  We are allowed one yogurt a day and I am allowed a small amount of agave in my chai.  The overarching idea is that we don’t want to allow ourselves anything that could be binged on to satisfy sugar cravings.  We are also trying to eat healthily so that fat doesn’t replace sugar.  We are not currently trying to lose weight, just get used to the no sugar.  We may try that later as we all seem to have this 15 pounds that it would be pleasant to have gone.

We started on January 2 and so I am at day 3.  It has been a bit trying so far.  My first day there were Sprinkles cupcakes at work to celebrate a co-workers birthday and one of my managers was insistent that I have one.  I didn’t, but it was really difficult as Sprinkles are so yummy!  On day two, we borrowed a lawn mower from our very nice next door neighbor who works at a good bakery.  He gave us a box full of pastries including a whole bunt cake.  Alex about lost it at that point.  There was even a pain au chocolate which is Alex’s favorite.  The pastries went into the trunk where they stayed until Alex had the wonderful idea to give them to the guys at our bike shop when we dropped off his bike to get it fixed.  Today has been decent so far, so almost three days down!

Approximately twenty years ago, as I was changing my youngest daughter’s diapers, I realized that original Desitin relieved the arthritis pain in my hands. I had been changing her diaper from a mild explosion. It was messy. I cleaned her up and to make sure she did not get any diaper rash, I liberally spread original Desitin all over her bottom. In the process, I got some over my fingers.

I was in the middle of an Ashtanga yoga class.  I had been invited by a teacher of mine, Rossana Lo.  It was a lovely class.  I had only done Ashtanga yoga once before in a mysore setting and hadn’t had a good experience.  I was overwhelmed by not knowing the series and intimidated by all the yoginis around me doing many contorted things with their bodies that I could not fathom ever doing. This was different.  The people were more accepting.  Most of them were still doing very contorted things that maybe someday I might or might not ever do, but this time it was ok.   I remember that yoga is about the journey and the destination is irrelevant because even if I were to get to the crazy pose point, there will always be something more. So I sweat and take chaturanga on my knees and remember to do the uji breath and it is good.

However, with the vivid memories of last time still in my head, I decide that I am not dicing up the squash nor the apples.  I will peel them both, but then the cuisinart is going to deal with the rest.  First mistake.  It seemed all well and good – it was still a pain to deal with, but I got everything sliced up.  So I started the cooking: I sauteed the leeks and the butter (the smell of butter cooking is just sooo yummy!).  Then I realized that the pot I was cooking them in was not distributing the heat correctly so the leeks started burning.  I started freaking out a bit.  However, I dive into the leeks with a pair of tongs and start fishing out the burned pieces of leek and add some more butter in.  That should fix things right?  Well it did for the moment.

Then I toss in all the sliced up butternut squash and the apples.  I am supposed to cook both until they are “caramelized” and then add in the chicken broth.  Caramelizing has always been a bit of a mystery me and I have never quite understood the difference between it and just cooking something until it is a bit soft.  At this point I realize that I might have a bit of a problem.  The butternut squash and apples that the cuisinart sliced up is way more than the required measurements of the recipe.  I had thought this wasn’t an issue, but I now realize that I have way too much food matter in the pot and a comparatively small surface to cook it all.  At about this moment, Alex walks into the kitchen.  He looks at my pot and me being slightly disheveled and says,

“Maybe this is a bit much for right now, why don’t we eat something else for dinner and I will put this away for the moment.”

I reply, “No, of course not – I am being stubborn, I am going to finish this soup and feed you some of it for dinner.”  Then I promptly begin to vigorously attempt to stir the contents of the pot, which is kinda hard.  I stir for a bit longer and Alex and I go back and forth as to whether I should be doing this or not.  Finally he wins, I realize that I am exhausted from a particularly hard workout that morning and I haven’t really eaten enough during the day so I am starving.  He directs me to Sophie’s bed and instructs me to lay down with her and he will get us some dinner.  Then he makes us some lovely boca burgers.

The good news is that today I approach the big pot in the fridge with a new take on it.  I have decided that the squash and apples are going back into the cuisinart and I will use the blade to pulse them into smaller pieces.  This worked quite well and I have soup cooling on the stove for tonight’s dinner with some pumpkin ravioli and a light pumpkin cream sauce.

Here’s the recipe if you decide you want to chop things!

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

2 T. unsalted butter

1 ½ c. sliced leek, white and pale green parts only

1 T minced garlic

6 c. peeled and roughly diced butternut squash

3 cups peeled and roughly diced apples

6 ½ c. chicken stock

Sea salt, preferably gray salt

1 c. chopped spiced candied walnuts

Met the butter in a large pot over moderate heat and cook until it turns nut brown.  Add the leeks and sauté until slightly softened, about 5 minutes.  Add the garlic and sauté briefly to release its fragrance.  Add the squash and the apples, raise the heat to high, and cook stirring, until the vegetables begin to caramelize, about 5 minutes.    Add the chicken stock, bring to a simmer and cover partially.  Adjust the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook until the squash and apples are tender, about 40 minutes.  Transfer in batches to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.  Return to the pot, reheat to serving temperature, and season with salt.  Garnish the soup with the walnuts when serving.

So it turns out that raw foodists get a good portion of their nutrition from sprouts.  When plants sprout, they release a good amount of nutrients so that they can grow into a plant.  These nutrients aren’t available when it just in a seed form.  So by eating sprouted plants you get those lovely just released vitamins and minerals.  I had my first experience with sprouting because the bliss balls called for a cup of sprouted oat groats. Oat groats are the seed form of oats which surprising Whole Foods carried.  According to the book you are supposed to soak the groats for 6 hours and then in two days they will sprout.  In the meantime you need to keep them nice and wet.  So I soaked and I waited and I admit, my groats didn’t sprout.  I am not exactly sure why, but I think groats on are on the harder scale of sproutable things so I think I will go back and try something easy next time like alfalfa.  None the less, I mixed them into the bliss balls, which consisted of soaked dates (makes them easier to blend), peanut butter, cocoa powder (so I was supposed to use carob powder to be true to raw foods, but I don’t like carob powder), raisins and some spices.  They were tasty and I am looking forward to snacking on the leftovers today.

“Cooking” for raw foodists involves more of using the food processor a lot and a juicer if you have one, which I don’t.  They gazpacho is entirely just cut up veggies and fresh herbs.  I got to try out a new herb that I haven’t used before: tarragon.  It was a bit spicy smelling and added a lovely flavor to the gazpacho.  The ginger chutney involved more soaked dates, their soaking water and grated ginger.  Then you cut up apples to dip into it.  Super tasty!  I also have to admit a bias for anything involving ginger.  It is the best.

By the end of the meal, I was pleasantly full, which surprised me.  Although I admit that we also opened a bottle of champagne too because it just seemed like the perfect thing to go with the food; so nice and light and airy.  I doubt that champagne is raw food approved.  I have the leftovers in the fridge which I am going to eat for lunch.  My husband loved it all too – he really enjoyed the gazpacho especially.  I think the raw foods meal was a success and I will definitely try out some more recipes.

So back to the library we went for a Julia cookbook.  I got Julia’s Breakfasts, Lunches, and Suppers.  Flipping through the pages, I found the recipes for a “VIP Lunch” which included the recipe for the choulibiac, a watercress salad and pear sherbet.  Not having an ice cream maker, I decided that I would just make the choulibiac and the watercress salad: mainly because it just looked ridiculous and hard and I wanted something just like that.  Choulibiac is a french fish pastry.  It requires 5 different recipes before you can actually assemble the pastry and bake it.  It also has 5 pages of instructions, including a discussion on the use of white peppercorns (mature and used on fish and white sauces) versus black peppercorns (immature and used in heavier sauces and meat).

Yesterday at about 3:30 p.m. I began the first step: making a giant crepe.  Now crepes and I have never really gotten along because they are picky and delicate and I detest non-stick pans which are practically required to make them.  So I was a wee bit nervous.  I read the instructions and the ingredients.  They looked simple enough until I got to the part about leveling the oven.  You see, this crepe will be the size of a cookie sheet and about 1/8 and inch thick.  Therefore, Julia admonishes not to use a pan that is not absolutely level and to make sure that our oven is level.  I checked my pan and it looked level (although not non-stick) and hoped for the best with the oven.  I mixed up the crepe batter and buttered and floured my pan.  Then in it went to oven for several minutes and then under the broiler for several more.  During this process I was supposed to make sure the crepe didn’t “stiffen.”  What this meant was beyond me.  However, as I pulled the crepe out from the broiler and tried to gently pull it out of the pan, I abruptly realized: I let it stiffen and since it was stiff, there was no way I was getting it off the pan without breaking it.  Doh!  Fail on the crepe.  So I ripped it out with some frustration, tried it (tasty!) and threw it in the garbage and cleaned out the pan for try #2.  I mixed up another set of batter and waited and watched it in the oven very carefully.  I pulled it out and it started to come away from the sides.  I could get all of it off except for one side which was thinner and crispy.  No good.  It seemed either my pan or oven was not level.   However, I managed to save a good chunk of the crepe, decide it was good enough and move on to the next step.

At this point, I notice the sweat dripping down my neck and realize just how hot it has gotten in my kitchen.  I found out later that it had reached 94 that afternoon, which was quite hot in my un-air-conditioned house!  Nevertheless, I was going to persevere.  I chopped up the shallots and seasoned the fish and put it in the fridge.  Then I started to work on the pate a choux, which is a pastry paste.  This seemed to go well and I finished, put it and the pan it was in a bowl of warm water and moved on to the fish mousse.  The mousse seemed to go well.  In fact it looked so much like white chocolate mousse that I had a hard time convincing myself that it was really mostly cut up raw fish and that I should not taste it.  Then it was on to the mushroom duxelles.  They are very finely chopped (thank goodness for the Cuisinart!) mushrooms and more shallots.  The interesting thing about them is that after I put them through the Cuisinart, Julia instructed that you should wring the water out of them by putting them in a cloth dish towel and squeezing to get the water out.  I was very dubious of this because the mushrooms looked pretty dry to me.  Sure enough though, I put them in the dish towel, squeezed and water came out.  Then when I open the towel there was a very compact sphere of mushrooms in it.  Then the mushrooms went into some butter to saute until they “begin to separate from each other.” Did I mention this woman might love cream and butter more than I do?

Finally I was ready for the final assembly.  I looked at the clock and realized that it was already 5:45 p.m.  I couldn’t believe the time had passed so quickly; I had been completely absorbed in the recipe.  There were detailed photos in the book and I began to assemble per the instructions.  I even managed to use my damaged crepe in a way that no one could tell the difference.  As I finished off putting the last of the choux on top, I realized two things: I had forgotten to put in the second layer of mushrooms and my choux was way too runny.  Julia’s looked like frosting and mine was not holding its shape and falling all over the place.  I began to panic a bit.  Had I missed something else?  Was it going to turn out ok?  I reminded myself that there was little I could do at this point and that I might as well put it in the oven and hope for the best.  So into the oven it went and I started on the sauce.

The sauce required that I make a fish broth first.  I had procured “fish trimmings” from the fish person at Whole Foods and was now staring at a fish head and skeleton in my sauce pan.  This was a wee bit gross.  So I piled in the required veggies and then a cup of water and a cup of vermouth.  Have you ever used a cup of vermouth in anything?  I quite enjoy my dirty martinis, but never before I had used quite this much vermouth.  It was oddly satisfying.  Once the broth had simmered, out came the junk and in went the cream and a bit of choux (this stuff is very multi-purpose!).  As it thickened, I tasted it to see what spices it might need.  I was a bit suspicious, but the sauce was just delicious!  The flavor was very subtle and with the taste of fish without being fishy.  The sauce also seemed to have the cream almost layered over the broth as a secondary taste.  I was quite impressed.

At this point Alex walked in.  It was close to 7 p.m. and I realized that I was about to fall over.  I recruited him to help me finish up the salad while the choulibiac finished cooking.  Once I “began to smell a delicious odor of pastry, fish and mushrooms” I knew it was done.  I pulled it out and plated two pieces with the sauce and Alex delivered the salad to the table. We tasted it and it was unlike anything I have ever tasted before.  It was quite delicate and flaky.  Alex pronounced it a masterpiece and we commenced the eating of it.  I went to bed exhausted, but very satisfied that I had succeeded in some real ridiculous many-stepped cooking.

Here are some pictures.

In undergrad I became very immersed in Texas politics and rationalized a law degree as a good booster for my political career and a good plan B if I ever decided that I was tired of politics or needed to put children through college.  Then there was law school itself.  First of all, it was located in Houston.  The city and I did not get along the first time we met and spent 3 years at each other’s throats.  It is only recently that we have come to some peace.  I didn’t mind the school part.  I had always been a good student and enjoyed reading the case law and learning the stories behind the litigants.

However, that is when my tentative relationship with law began to completely fall apart.  Law school was everything I was not.  It was all about conforming, keeping your mouth shut and being scared out of your mind (especially first semester!).  I did not conform, ever.  In fact throughout my life I would often make a point of doing things just because they were non-conforming.  I liked to argue politics and would argue with anyone pretty much anywhere.  This sounds all well and good, but after awhile, it was just too much.  I was exhausted.  I was generally the only one in my class that was willing to argue the liberal viewpoint of an issue.  The pressure to follow the established law school track was intense and there was no help for anyone who wanted to deviate from it.  I never dated because the men there simply couldn’t handle a woman that was as smart as they were.  Luckily I had some really good friends and I was still involved in local politics.  That and my desire to get the hell out of Texas kept me sane.

By the time I arrived in DC in January of 2005, I was pretty much convinced that I would never practice law.  I forced myself to take the Maryland bar because I figured I might as well just in case.  It was not a fun experience and my antagonism with law grew.  However, after three years of trying to stay employed in politics, I was tired of job searching every time the money for my position got cut off.  Law beckoned to me seductively.  Come practice it said, we will give you a decent salary and guaranteed employment.  So I started applying to law firms.  I was still applying to political jobs, but I reasoned, if something came through on the law side, I would see what it was like.

Within a week, I had two interviews with small firms.  I decided that it was fate and I took one of the offers.  Over the next year, I discovered exactly what it was like to practice law.  It was a topsy turvey year and not one that I would ever like to repeat. Needless to say, when I moved to the Bay Area, law and I were not on good terms.  However, I was trapped.  This is how law gets to you: you pay all that money for the legal education, then you pay to take the bar, then you pay bar dues.  Then you move out of the jurisdiction and have to re-take the bar.  Despite the fact that it costs another $5,000 to do it and I wasn’t sure I wanted to practice anyway, you do it because you spent all that money already and if you want or need to practice again someday it would be a shame to have wasted all that time.

Fast forward a year.  I have just finished taking the bar for the second time and it really got to me this time.  It was hard and the questions were unfairly random.  I am tired and I want nothing more than to chunk it all out the window and leave law behind forever. But somehow I know that it isn’t going to be that easy.

I am taking the bar again at the end of July because I didn’t pass it in February.  Which means I am studying again.  This time around I am not doing a course, but instead I feel like I have a sense of what I need to work on so I have structured a schedule around this.  Problem is, I am incapable of making a schedule that is actually doable.  This goes hand in hand with my love of to do lists and of crossing things off them.  This creates a bit of a problem to say the least.

I decided that this time around I wasn’t giving over my entire life to stuyding.  I just couldn’t do it again so soon.  I need things to stay somewhat normal.  This means that I was going to do yoga, run, have my weekends free and get time off to go see my sister in Houston and a family reunion in Taos.  So last week, I sat down to make a schedule.  Keeping all this in mind, I figured I could devote about 4 hours a day to studying.  Suprisingly that is way harder to fit into a day than you would think.  Then I went through all of the subjects I needed to know and started putting them into the schedule. However, if I was being honest with myself (which I wasn’t) I can’t accomplish in 4 hours what I put down for a day.  Most days probably have closer to 5 or 6 hours worth of work in them, especially when you add in the time to go to the bathroom, search the fridge for snack food and just generally procrastinate which I find if I don’t alot time for it just festers into an entire wasted afternoon.

So here I am today, on day 4 of the lovely schedule and I am going to be behind.  I spent 5 and half hours yesterday studying and promptly burned out on today at hour 3:30.  Additionally this weekend, I made a giant to do list and Alex and I worked through the majority of it, which was quite impressive and oh was it so much fun to cross it all off.  However, I worked myself into the ground and fell asleep at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday night. So needless to say, I might possibly be a bit sapped.

So I did what I always do when I am in need of study motivation, I called my sister, Peggy.  She is a medical student and so has much experience with studying and burnout.  I started to regal her with my lack of accomplishments and promptly got a lecture back from her about how I need to prioritize and that I couldn’t work my into the ground and burn out now.  Furthermore, my schedule seemed entirely unreasonable and I needed to rework it.  To which I replied, “But I don’t wanna rework it!  I just want to get it done!” To which she basically laughed at me.  Which was probably exactly what I needed. Although entirely not what I wanted, I wanted some magical way to accomplish everything on my schedule and my to do list and somehow remain a sane person.  So I will work on the schedule.  I will attempt to make it more reasonable while still including the important parts.  And yet, once again, I will attempt to work on one of my biggest challenges in life: to accept my value as a human being and stop pushing myself so hard to be a human doing.  Big sigh.