If you have a few hours to spare this weekend {all you need are two!}, grab yourself five pounds of fresh from the farmer's field tomatoes and make some jam. You won't regret it.

This is another recipe from the Food in Jars blog, and it can be found in the recently released Food in Jars cookbook. As I've mentioned before, I love the Food in Jars recipes precisely because they are written for small-scale projects. Working through one recipe won't take your whole day, and it's great for testing out new recipes like this jam because if you don't like it, you aren't left with quarts of jam to give away. But you're going to like the jam, so if you want to give some away, follow our lead and make a second batch.

This is one of those absurdly simple recipes, you don't have to peel or seed the tomatoes, just throw them in the pot with the rest of the ingredients and let it simmer.

In about two hours you go from the pot above to the one below::

Then it's just a matter of putting it in jars and processing {the processing directions are presented clearly at the beginning of the cookbook, making it your one-stop-shop}.

And as for serving, we've come up with a few options. Sarah likes hers spread over toast. I like mine spread over cream cheese on a toasted bagel. Calder likes his with cheddar cheese and some crackers.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's definitely a rich jammy, jam. It's sweet, tomato-y, warm from the cloves and cinnamon, and spicy from the pepper flakes.

Beach Week(s) 2012

Some of us stayed for two weeks, others for two days. All of us ate the crabs and clams. Some posed for group shots on the beach because the light was just right, while others sat it out on the screened porch. Next year we're doing it for the whole summer. Get ready.

We're still feasting on farm-fresh summer veggies! Here's what we did with our share the week before everyone scattered for work & vacay::

I posted about the birthday carrot cake here. If you have some extra carrots and a can of coconut milk, get to it.

With the rest of our carrots, we whipped up a supper easy carrot salad.

It was three weeks ago and I can't exactly remember the ingredients, but it was some combination of carrots, raisins, roasted walnuts, and parsley. The dressing was a simple combo of lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and ... ?

So many of our vegetables are roasted each week {on Tuesday night I immediately made a pan of roasted veg from that day's box}. Since we were flush with three medium sized zucchinis, I did a lot of roasting. I like to keep the zucchini pieces relatively large when roasting, it creates juicy delicious pieces of zuke for eating. One night I did a pan of just zucchini with some olive oil and salt, then before we were leaving I did another pan of zucchini and eggplant.

Between the carrot salad and the roasted zucchini and eggplant, it was easy to throw together delicious salads for lunch as we were busy packing for our trips.

On the menu this week? Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.

What the what?

Hello! I flew from the mountains to the ocean and spent a week soaking up the salt and sun... now I'm back and having some technical difficulties getting photos from the camera to the computer. Fingers crossed that I'll be back soon with some updates on food, knitting, and island life.

Walking through the Aspens