Last year, I went to a bunch of food writer/blogger conferences in order to see beloved people, make some new friends, and help promote my book. In contrast, 2013 has shaped up to be a quieter year (which is fine by me). I’m skipping the bulk of the gatherings in order to spend a little more time at home and save my pennies for next summer’s book push. In fact, the only conference I’m participating in is Eat, Write, Retreat, which is landing in Philly in just a couple of weekends.

Part of the fun of Eat, Write, Retreat is that organizers start building the conference community well before everyone arrives at the DoubleTree. One of the ways that they’ve done this is by inviting everyone who registered before April 15 to participate in the Amazing Apps Culinary Challenge. Now, I’m not typically someone who gets excited about challenges and contests, but this one is a little different.

While there are prizes to be awarded at the conference, I actually felt like I won the moment the box arrived, thanks to all the OXO goodies (as well as a gorgeous assortment of potatoes) that it contained. Potatoes, graters, and ricers, oh my! What’s more, I’ve been needing something to shift me out of the cooking rut I’ve been in recently. Inventing an appetizing little dish featuring potatoes and using some of those new tools was just the boost I needed.

I grabbed the two large, russet potatoes from the basket (approximately 1 3/4 pounds) and got to work. I peeled then and shredded them on the coarse OXO grater that was in the box.

Any time I’m shredding just a pound or two of potatoes, I opt for a hand or box grater. It’s so much easier to clean than my food processor. Then, I bundled up the shreds in a tea towel and squeezed as much water out of them as possible. If you’ve ever made a latke, you know the drill.

Then I whisked together two eggs, 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, two tablespoons minced green onions, one tablespoon chopped dill, and several turns of a pepper grinder. While whisking, I also heated three tablespoons of olive oil in a 12-inch cast iron skillet and heated my oven to 425 degrees F.

I added the potatoes to the batter and stirred until they were well combined. Then I spread the potato batter out in the hot skillet. It was quite thick, so I used my spatula to tease it out into an even layer. Do take care not to make a perfectly smooth surface, as it will brown better with a few crags and nooks.

Once in the skillet, I cooked it over high heat on the stove top for about five minutes, until a peek at the bottom of the pancake told me it was just starting to brown. Then slide the skillet into the oven.

The trick with a giant potato pancake like this one is that you want to bake it first, until the interior is cooked, and then you turn on the broiler to get a really nice, crunchy top. Mine took approximately ten minutes of baking and another four of broiling before I was satisfied with the color and texture.

Now comes the appetizer part. This potato pancake can actually go a couple of different ways in that department. For a cocktail party, you could slice it into slivers and top it with a number of delicious tidbits. The potato pancake is just as good at room temperature as it is hot, so works quite nicely on a table of finger foods.

In the picture, I’ve dolloped each wedge with a little bit of mascarpone cheese and then added something tasty on top (from top to bottom, you have last summer’s apricot jam, a grape tomato half, and a sprig of dill). Little strips of smoked salmon or trout would also be fantastic.

For a more perfectly plated appetizer, here’s another serving option. Cut the potato pancake into quarters. Top with some baby greens (I used mache) and a perfectly fried egg. The texture of the crunchy potato layer with the delicate leaves and runny egg is seriously great (I ate that plate right up as soon as I was finished with the photos).

It’s a good starter for fancy brunches or a farm to table-style dinner. It’s high in Vitamin C. And it’s also great for those folks who can’t manage a pasta course, due to wheat or gluten allergies. For those who have a jar in their pantry, a dab of tomato jam would not go amiss here.

How would you turn a giant potato pancake into an appetizer?

Related Posts:

• Preserves in Action: Apricot Jam on Ricotta Cheese
• Dried Apricot Jam from 250 Home Preserving Favorites
• Preserves in Action: Open-Face Turkey Sandwich with Apricot Preserves

Every season, I find that I become infatuated with a new flavor enhancer for my batches of jam. I’ve previously gone through hot and heavy phases with cinnamon, vanilla, lavender, and star anise, and though we’re still early in the canning calendar, I predict that this is going to be the year of rose flower water.

Right now, I’m seriously into this small batch of strawberry rhubarb jam with rose flower water. It’s essentially the same recipe as the one I contributed to Food 52 last week, but with a smidge less sugar and two glorious tablespoons of rose flower water. It is fragrant, sweet, and wonderful on a nutty slice of toast (it’s even more divine if you spread a layer of tangy fromage blanc between the toast and the jam).

Before I set you lose with the recipe, let’s talk for a moment about what I mean when I say rose flower water. This is not the rosewater that one daubs behind her ears, nor is it the tea rose perfume was so beloved by grandmothers the world over. It is a distillation of roses that is designed for culinary uses. And when used with economy, it is delightful. If you have any trouble tracking it down, try the Middle Eastern aisle of an international grocery store.

One final thing to know about rose flower water. It is somewhat fragile. As you’ll see in the recipe, you should add it at the very end of cooking, so that you don’t end up boiling way its fragrance.

Related Posts:

• Small Batch Strawberry Rhubarb Jam + Rhubarb Recipes from the Archives
• A Thimbleful of Jam
• Strawberry Rhubarb Jam with The Daily and More

In recent years, I’ve developed something of a habit of planning vacations to jar-friendly destinations and them coming back here to share what I saw. Recently, Scott and I spent a week bopping around Lancaster County and the Lehigh Valley, and really, there’s no better place for jar spotting.

For the first half of our trip, we stayed in a fabulous condo across the street from Lancaster’s Central Market. On Tuesday morning, we zigzagged our way through the market (it’s only open Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday). Scott grazed on samples of baked goods while I snapped a few photos of jars.

I loved the preserves and charcuterie on offer at Rooster Street Provisions. I kicked myself that I didn’t get any of their cured meats.

I love that Linden Dale Farms is selling their yogurt in jars. They’re a type that is rated for home preserving, so not only can you get some delicious yogurt, but then you can turn around and can up some jam or pickles!

Hot sauces, jams, jellies, and pickles as far as the eye can see!

Amish-preserved foods. I used this photo as a header for a post recently, and a few folks thought it was my stuff. It’s not! So sorry for the confusion!

This photo is from our visit to Good’s Store in East Earl, PA. It’s one of my favorite places to guy jars, because they devote an entire aisle to canning gear and they’re always fully stocked. I loved this tower of the blue heritage jars and couldn’t help but pick up a couple boxes.

On the last day of our trip, we were headed to a friend’s annual barbecue in Allentown and so stopped at the Allentown Farmers’ Market to pick up something to bring. I couldn’t resist snapping an Instagram photo of this wall of preserves.

Related Posts:

• Jars on Vacation: A Week in Lancaster County, PA
• Photos from a Food in Jars Potluck
• Black Raspberry Jam

There was a time when I regularly brought three or four jars with me every time I made a trip to Whole Foods, in order to buy various nuts, grains, and dried from the bulk section. However, I do most of my grocery shopping on foot and so lugging glass jars can start to get pretty darn heavy.

Several years back, I added a set of three light-weight, reusable bulk bin bags from Kootsac to my array of produce bags (if they sound familiar, it’s because I’ve mentioned them before) and have come to love them with a passion. They’re nearly weightless, so they don’t increase the amount you pay at check-out. They wash like a dream. And they appear to be nearly indestructible, as I’ve had mine for four years and they are showing no sign of wear at all.

Morgen, the creator of the Kootsac, is offering up a package of her reusable bags for a giveaway (scroll to the bottom of the post for details) and took the time to answer a few of my questions about her nifty product.

Q: What inspired you to start making Kootsac?
A. I buy almost all my dry food from the bulk food section of my natural food stores. One of the top reasons why I do this was to save on packaging but I began to accumulate plastic bags. I would wash them and hang them to dry on my porch but, as most people who do this know, the bags become yucky after a few washes.

I searched online for reusable bulk food bags and could’nt find any – this was 6 years ago. I am a textile artist and designer so I have the skills to make them myself which is what I ended up doing. I feel like making Kootsac bags is one small thing that I can do to contribute to the movement towards living lighter on the planet.

Q: How many have you made since you started selling them?
A: I think I’ve sold about 8,000 bags since I started.

Q: How many plastic bags do you think your Kootsacs have kept from the landfills?
A: It’s hard to say how many bags have been kept from entering landfills but I can make an estimate based on my own usage. I use at least 5 bags a week, which in 6 years of use would have saved 1,500 bags from entering the landfill, so each bag would be worth 300 plastic bags in 6 years or 50 bags a year.

If I sold 8,000, then potentially Kootsac could have kept 400,000 bags from entering the landfill. Wow! I like those numbers! That’s provided that people who buy them use them, and of course some people may use them more or less times per week than I do.

Q: What’s been the best comment from a Kootsac user about these bags?
A: I have had such amazing feedback from customers which makes this a hard question to answer, but here’s one I received very recently: ” I love Kootsacs! These are such fabulous bags I’ve been using for over a year now that I had to buy more!!! I save so much money buying my organics and whole grains in bulk and these bags work PERFECTLY for just about anything dry. They’re amazing!!! I save my bread tabs to use for closing up (more re-using!) which work perfectly, and I get so many complements on these. Thank you, again, for a truly beautiful product!!! ”

Thanks to Morgen, I have three ripstop nylon bags, three silk bags, and a cotton produce bag (it’s also good for bread and bagels). Here’s how to enter.

1. Leave a comment on this post and share your favorite thing to buy in bulk.
2. Comments will close at 11:59 pm on Friday, May 17, 2013. Winner will be chosen at random and will be posted to the blog on Sunday.
3. Giveaway open to everyone.
4. One comment per person, please. Entries must be left via the comment form on the blog at the bottom of this post.

Disclosure: Kootsac provided me with a sample set of bags, and is also providing an additional set for giveaway. However, no money changed hands and all opinions expressed here are entirely my own. 

Related Posts:

• Giveaway: Beautiful Earth Produce Bags
• Love the Bulk for Earth Day

Happy Monday, friends! I’ll be back later with the weekly giveaway post, but I wanted to drop in this morning and share a couple of events I’ve got on the schedule for the next seven days. I’ll have cookbooks with me for sale at all three of these events!

This Thursday, May 16, I’ll be at the Glenside Free Library in Glenside, PA at 6:30 pm to teach an introduction to pickling class. We’ll talk about hot pack, cold pack, and how to ensure a crisp pickle. This is a free event and there will be plenty of pickles to taste at the end of the evening.

On Saturday, May 18, I’m teaching a low-sugar strawberry mint jam class at Greensgrow (an urban farm in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood). The class is from 12 noon to 2 pm and costs just $35. Click here to sign up.

Finally, on Sunday, May 19, I’m teaching a strawberry vanilla jam class at Blooming Glen Farm in Perkasie, PA. This class is from 10 am – 12 noon and costs $50 per person. If you’ve never been, Blooming Glen is an impossibly beautiful farm and offers a lovely setting for a class. Click here to sign up.

Note: Registration for the classes this weekend is currently low, so in order to ensure that they goes forward, please sign up sooner rather than later.

Related Posts:

• Upcoming Canning Classes and Les Dames Symposium
• Photos from a Tomato Canning Workshop
• Upcoming Classes and Events: Glen Mills! Syracuse! Perkasie! Troy, NY! Chicago!

My favorite farmers market opened for the season last weekend. I missed the first day because I was sleeping off the effects of food poisoning (which led straight into a week-long cold. The last month has been a doozy for me in terms of health), but I got out of bed this morning in plenty of time to fill my shopping bag with arugula, russian kale, asparagus, sorrel, green garlic, and an entirely indulgence cluster of fragrant lilac. Spring is here and it feels amazing.

Here are some of the links that tickled my fancy this week:

• Get yourself ready for grilling season with these pickled shallots with thyme. 
• Capture spring with a jar of strawberry rhubarb shrub.
• Speaking of rhubarb, how about curried rhubarb orange chutney? I’m kicking myself that it never occurred to me to add curry to rhubarb without prompting.
• Mint and celery soda. You must click through to check out the color!
• Strawberry rhubarb bars held together with coconut. Amazing.
• I have an inexplicable number of canned whole tomatoes left from last fall’s canning session and so this recipe for stewed tomatoes is calling my name.
• I’ll be freezing some rhubarb later this week so I’ll be able to make this honey-sweetened cherry rhubarb jam when cherries come into season around these parts.
• Like umeboshi? Check out the work involved in making it.
• Want to know more about pectin? Look no further!
• My lovely intern Olivia ended her time with me a couple weeks back. She’s written up her thoughts about the internship.

Reading all your comments over the course of the last week on the Cooking With Flowers giveaway, about the many ways in which you guys eat flowers, made me continually hungry! Thank goodness spring is here and flowers are everywhere (even here in the city).

The winner is commenter #165, which is Linda. She said, “I like to add my arugula flowers to my salad.” Sounds delicious!

Related Posts:

• Links: Rhubarb, Fiddleheads, and Aladdin Tumbler Winners
• Links: Biscuits, Jammy Sweet Rolls, and Homemade Sodas + Winners
• Links: Waffles, Parfaits, and Pickle-brined Chicken + a Blue Jar Winner

Last weekend, on the very tail end of our vacation, Scott and I spent an hour walking through the Allentown Farmers Market. While there weren’t any local strawberries to be found, there was plenty of ruby stalks of rhubarb from area farms and gardens. I bought a generous sackful and have been throwing a little one-woman rhubarb festival in my kitchen this week (between sneezes from a most irritating spring cold).

I cooked up a small batch of strawberry rhubarb jam that went live over on Food 52 earlier today. I liked that one so much that I made a second batch that I spiked with three tablespoons of rose flower water (influenced by Cooking With Flowers!). I also made another batch of this roasted rhubarb compote with vanilla (it’s insanely good). I’m currently out of rhubarb, but plan on getting more this weekend to cook into chutney and syrup.

When that’s all done, if there’s time, I’m going to make a batch of strawberry rhubarb butter, and another of rhubarb jelly with rosemary (I don’t mean to be a tease, but it’s a recipe from the new book! And it’s so, so good). It’s such a joy to have something fresh and good to work with.

How are you guys using rhubarb these days?

Related Posts:

• Small Batch Strawberry Rhubarb Jam with Rose Flower Water
• A Thimbleful of Jam
• Strawberry Rhubarb Jam with The Daily and More

A few years back, I was a member of a CSA share that regularly included edible flowers in with the lettuces, tomatoes, and zucchini. While I was charmed by the presence of these flowers, I was always flummoxed when it came to actually using them. If only Miche Bacher’s new book, Cooking with Flowers had been around then. I would have done so much more with those tasty blooms.

Organized by variety of flower, each section begins with details about the particular blossom being featured. Then come the recipes, which manage to straddle the line between being appealing new and still familiar enough to get the old salivary glands working (for instances, how about a scoop of Lilac Sorbet).

As a preserver, I’m particularly interested in the ways that flowers can enhance my preserves. I often used dried lavender buds in jams and jellies to add a floral note, but now I’m contemplating the ways that lilac, nasturtium, and rose petals could improve or add interest to my basic sweet spreads. Makes the mind boggle a little, doesn’t it?

Thanks to the nice folks at Quirk Books, I have two treats to share from this book today. First is a giveaway of a copy. Here’s how to enter.

1. Leave a comment on this post and tell me about a time you ate a flower. Could be at as a garnish on sculpted white rice or the time when you were six and learned that guava flowers were delicious (true story).
2. Comments will close at 11:59 pm on Saturday, May 11, 2013. Winner will be chosen at random and will be posted to the blog on Sunday.
3. Giveaway open to U.S. resident only.
4. One comment per person, please. Entries must be left via the comment form on the blog at the bottom of this post.

The second treat is a recipe for Dandelion Jam. It’s a recipe that was originally intended to go in the book, but because of space constraints, was cut from the volume. However, Eric from Quirk knows I happen to have a thing for jams and so asked if I’d like to feature the recipe here. I said yes and here we are.

I’ve not made this jam, but having read the recipe, I do believe it should work. For a preserve like this one, cooking it up to 220 degrees F will improve your chances of getting a good set from it. Also, do note that while it instructs you to put the finished jam in sterilized jars and seal them, it also requires that you store them in the fridge. This is because the jam doesn’t have the proper acidity for boiling water bath canning.

This photo courtesy of Quirk Books

Disclosure: Quirk Books provided me with a review copy of this book, as well as a giveaway copy. No money changed hands and my opinions are entirely my own.

Related Posts:

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• Tomato Mango Jam + Breakfast for Dinner Giveaway
• Cookbook: Edible DIY + Giveaway

I’m back from vacation. It was a lovely respite from regular life and though we didn’t go anywhere particularly exotic, Scott and I really enjoyed bopping around Lancaster County and the Lehigh Valley. I had plenty of blog reading time while we were away and so here are some of the links I’ve collected to share.

• Peanut butter and jam turnovers. Could be a fun addition to a Mother’s Day brunch. 
• Homemade cream cheese. Brilliant.
• Looks for a new way to fancy up sparkling water? How about this rhubarb raspberry fizz!
• Speaking of rhubarb, this melted red onion and rhubarb fondue sounds gorgeous.
• Still more rhubarb! This time, baked into scones with strawberries.
• I had some banana jam at a food swap last summer that blew me away. This one sounds equally delightful.
• DIY beeswax food wrap.
• Save those strawberry scraps and make your own strawberry vinegar.
• A tour of a small batch jam factory. Love those giant jam pans.
• And finally, because it’s spring and we’re all going crazy for whatever seasonal produce is available, pickled fiddlehead ferns.

Time for winners in the Aladdin Mason Tumbler. Thanks to all of you who took the time to enter and share your favorite vacations! Our winners are commenter numbers #75 (Paula), #166 (Athena), and #422 (Anotai Udomwittyakrai). I’ll be in touch with all the winners shortly.

Related Posts:

• Links: Strawberries, Rhubarb, and a Cooking With Flowers Winner
• Links: Biscuits, Jammy Sweet Rolls, and Homemade Sodas + Winners
• Links: Waffles, Parfaits, and Pickle-brined Chicken + a Blue Jar Winner

In the past, my work as a writer, teacher, and food preserver has taken me to libraries, barns, farmers markets, and private homes. Tonight, for the first time, it’s taking me (or at least, my books and jars) to an art gallery. A collection of my jams, pickles, and preserves, along with copies of my book, will be part of the new show at the Art in the Age shop/gallery in Old City, Philadelphia.

Called The Return of Spring, this group exhibition features an eclectic mix of work from environmentally inspired artists and craftspeople from the Philadelphia region. It opens tonight at part of First Friday and runs through the end of the month. There’s a reception tonight from 6-8 pm and you can get more details about that here. I hope some of you can make it!

Related Posts:

• The Food in Jars Cookbook + Giveaway
• Giveaway: Cooking With Flowers + Dandelion Jam Recipe
• Cookbooks: Fine Preserving, Salt Sugar Smoke, and Whole Larder Love