AARRGHHUM DEATH BY CHERRY JUICE

So, I ended up standing in the kitchen for about four hours yesterday. I feel for any non-fictional 50′s housewives who had to do this in heels, because GAWD.

First I made cinnamon anise jelly. Yes, I have now mentioned this here three separate times, but come the hell on: Cinnamon. Anise. Jelly. How much better does it get?

It gets better if you make it with homemade apple juice, for the record. Not made with a juicer, either; made with apples cooked in a pot and strained. Yes, I did. I think the jelly itself turned out pretty nicely, and it certainly smelled like Christmas while it was cooking, so I think it’ll be a great holiday gift. I only came out with four jars but I can make more.

Especially since I now know where the spice store is! They had real cinnamon, and four sticks of it (1 oz) was only a few dollars, so I will definitely be going back for more. It’s about 40 minutes away, but that’s well worth the cost of gas because it’s an actual spice store, selling nothing but spices. They didn’t have grains of paradise, but I don’t have any immediate need for them, so no biggie. I will find them one day.

The rest of the time in the kitchen was spent making this recipe. Some months ago BF and I saw Ingrid make it on the Food Network and I was slobbering all over the place so the next week I asked BF to make it on a day when I was at yoga late. It was delicious (although not as delicioso as the show made it seem), but BF told me that the recipe was a pain in the ass and he wasn’t all that interested in doing it again anytime soon.

So this time, I made it, and…he was totally right. So many moving parts, so many steps, so many vegetables! Usually recipes that I consider too much of a pain to make again involve too much chopping or too much precooking, but in this case it’s just a lot of different food ingredients that are mixed with other ingredients and some of the cooking takes a long time and I burned my fingertips like 8 times and it’s just annoying. The thing is, it’s still a pretty good recipe, with roasted vegetables and a yummy amount of dairy, so I’m sure I’ll be foolishly drawn to it again sometime. Especially since it was much more delicious than the last time.

Other adventures for the day included buying a cherry pitter at BB&B and then pitting about 382 cherries. Cherry juice, FYI, is very dark red, and I wished I’d had someone in the house to take silly pictures of me lunging at the camera with red fingers, because it looked like I’d opened up the jugular of a small animal with my bare hands by the time I was done. Also I was very tired of pitting cherries. But there’s another jam I want to make sometime soon, cherry almond, and the big sticky mess I made with the cinnamon! anise! jelly! was actually smaller than usual, so I will probably be pulling out my big ol’ canning pot again before the week is out.

There’s also more rosewater plum compote, which is thus far a total smash hit with everyone I’ve given it to, to make. I’m planning to do all homemade gifts for Xmas this year (I am tired of the consumer cycle, and very tired of trying to think of clever gifts), and I’m not sure I’ll have the time to make as many washcloths as I’d like to (they are a nicer gift than they sound like – they are flower-shaped, knitted, and made of luxurious cotton chenille), so I’m going to put up as much jam as possible just in case.

Today Jennifer was supposed to be coming over for a glass of wine and chitchat, but she cancelled on me at the last minute. I don’t think it’s at all her fault, but I’m still frowny about it, because I bought champagne grapes and some Brie for her so it wouldn’t just be me, a poor main event indeed, trying to entertain her, and now all that fruit will have to be eaten by me and BF (who does not like fruit very much). Maybe, with luck, it’ll all keep until this weekend, when she says she’ll be able to come instead.