Confessions of a Roast Garlic & Sweet Onion Jam Thief

Baby, there's no delectation like peculation. An inveterate fridge-snitch, I've encountered many a tasty leftover that doesn't belong to me. Some favorites:
LJ's coconut milk curry with the big juicy shrimp (I know, dear. I'm really sorry. You even hid it in the upstairs fridge at Canada House).
ALL's cashew butter (what it is it, 10 bucks for a wee bitty jar? Wicked, wicked me).
V. Cafe's marinated olives (five gallon pailfuls of juicy briny delight! By the end of the shift my apron pockets bulged with pits)(no, of course I didn't violate the health code).
A. Rose's garlic-onion jam (and you're so good at savoring your treats. I hang my head).

I can change; I swear from now on I'm a new person. I'll keep my kleptomaniacal lips off my housemates' possessions and make my own roast garlic and sweet onion jam.

For the exorcism of vampires, colds, and leftover biscuits:
Dice two and a half enormous sweet onions and throw them in a large stockpot with a long splash of olive oil. Confit them: simmer them gently forever, adding more fat and stirring if they brown & stick, while you roast the garlic and prepare the pectin. Alternatively, lay them out on an oiled baking sheet and roast them with the garlic.

Take three heads of garlic, maybe five if you have a cold, peel off the really loose papery stuff, and slice across the top so each clove has a little peep-hole. Place them in a skillet with a little bit of water and roast them at 400 till quite creamy inside. You may want to add more water or partially cover the dish.

I used Pomona's Universal Pectin because it doesn't require a mountain of sugar. It comes with directions. But you can probably get by without it if you just cook everything way down at the end.

When the garlic is nicely browned, squeeze the cloves into the onion pot and mash everything with the potato masher. Add 1/4 c. cider vinegar, the juice of one lemon, 3 tablespoons of salt, a lot of pepper, 1/4 c. brown sugar, some molasses for good measure, and 2 tsp. calcium water if you're working with Pomona. Bring it all to a boil.

Mix the pectin (2 tsp) with 1/2 c. honey and add to the onion mixture. Stir vigorously and return to a boil. Boil for a minute and pull of the heat. Pack into sterile jars & do the whole canning thing, or just put it in a quart jar or two and keep it in the fridge.

As a concentrated source of the sweet-savory-sour culinary triumvirate, this jam makes a great gift for the flavor-shy. Tell them to use it as a glaze, marinade, sandwich spread, and soup.

Blackstrap

My blood hasn't been rich enough lately for the vampires, who favor salty & ironic flavors. So today I bought myself a bottle of Plantation blackstrap molasses -- while wondering what marketing manager was naive enough to think the name Plantation wasn't, at the very least, encumbered with much too heavy a load of historical baggage.

Blackstrap molasses -- according to Everyday Foods, and my mother's copy of Joy, and Harold McGee, too -- is better for fattening cattle than feeding to people. It's the final by-product of sugar production. After cane syrup has been boiled and evaporated down three times, dark sticky mineral-rich blackstrap is left behind. What primarily interests me is the fact that 1 tablespoon has 20% of your recommended daily iron intake, plus calcium, potassium, magnesium, and chromium (do keep in mind that iron from vegetable sources isn't as readily absorbed as that from animal sources). The flavor has all the rich intensity of the deep caramelization found in roasted coffee, seared meats, licorice, and dark chocolate, along with a downright metallic zing of particular interest to the bloodthirsty anemics among us. I put blackstrap on ice cream, cornbread, pumpkin pie, porridge, sweet potatoes, yogurt, and bananas, and drizzle it into stir-fries and baked beans with some cider vinegar.

Incidentally, a good friend of mine is lucky enough to come from a sprawling old Mennonite family with its very own Tigermilk recipe for the nutriment of its pregnant women. It includes both blackstrap molasses and orange juice -- a shocking combination until you consider that their babes are all healthy, and vitamin C helps with iron absorption. I plan to track down the recipe someday when it's needful. In the meantime, let us toast the vampires with shots of blackstrap and join in that rousing old chorus:

I gave myself to sin
And I've been there and back again
I gave myself to Providence
The state that I am in

Flesh and Blood

The vampire's been mining my veins again, so I wasn't surprised yesterday when I was dizzy, tired, and thirsty for blood. Growing desperate, I lifted my muzzle, howled at the stars, and set off on the hunt. I feel a wee bit sinful hunting in this city of vegans, but I'm very conscious and principled about my bloodthirsty, fleshcraving, bonecrunching carnivorous habits.

After several hours with my nose in the wind, I tracked and felled some grassfed hamburger. At home with my kill, I sprinkled the meat liberally with Celtic sea salt and pepper, pressed it into large, thin patties (they tighten up plenty), and threw them down on a hot #9 Wagner till browned on one side. I flipped them, topped them with sharp cheddar cheese, and let them brown on the other side in only as much time as it took the cheese to melt -- so as to get as many of those magic caramelized sugars on the surface of the burger before the juices cooked out. Because it's all about the juices, anyway.

My meat-eating boils down to having an omnivorous animal body. Back in my idyllic childhood, I ate a lot of venison, steers from our pasture, chickens I helped butcher, and the occasional stray snapping turtle. Meat-eating should be just that: personal, respectful, and nourishing. I was vegetarian for a couple of years in college, and it really took a toll on my health. I wasn't even a coke-and-french fries vegetarian -- I was the real quinoa deal, balancing my complementary proteins and eating the wholest of whole foods. But that's when the vampire started coming round, sucking up my energy and joy and ability to think.

As I composed this post, Badmas dragged up a little mouse from the basement. I think it's her first. She was so proud of herself, so excited by the chase, that she hadn't yet killed it all the way -- so I snapped its neck with my heel. I still feel guilty; I've always been fond of mice (even when they colonized my garret room and ate all my sweaters and pooped on the tatters). I killed the mouse for the least selfish of reasons, but that doesn't mean I don't ache for it. That's what I mean when I say meat-eating should be personal. I injure lots of lives in complete ignorance -- so much of my food and fuel is stained with blood from far away -- but the more I feel the damage I've done, the less damage I will do. And I will not damage myself.

Salt of the Forsaken Earth

Ever since I went to Transylvania last spring I've been mysteriously anemic. My blood pressure is often at dizzying lows, my heart slow and passive. There are things that help, like exercise, exorbitant water consumption, exorcisms, and SALT. I personally believe the reason salt is so effective is not that it stiffens my blood vessels but that it makes my blood so tasty to the vampire that he can't help but savor it in deliciously delayed moderation, luxuriating in the subtle & sanguine notes of blackberry, innocence, and chocolate, instead of guzzling it all down like the eternally damned fiend he is.

And that's because salt is the primary difference between restaurant food and home cooking. Snow it on your meat before roasting. Dump a cup in the pasta water. Your dinner guests will lower their forks in surprise, lost in the lovely clarity of sodium-enhanced flavors -- and later, the vampires that crouch by all your darkened bedsides will pause in their feasting, looking sweetly vulnerable for failing to notice the drops of your blood still dripping on their lace cravats, and ask themselves, "Is that a hint of sumac and Spanish paprika?"