And on another note:
10 lbs of pear-blems mentioned below has been rectified with the aid of one Magic Chef food dehydrator lent by the illustrious lady J9. About 8 lbs of pears are now desiccating in my kitchen for future mastication.
And pasta round 1 is done:
pasta is a skill.
I am learning.
It is veryvery fun.
Plastic hangers are good for drying pasta before storing.
You can't let fresh pasta get too dry, 'cause then it's not "fresh" now is it.
anyway...
A week ago, some friends and I went to Sauvie Island for a carpooling adventure to pick stuff. I picked 10 lbs of pears, which are now all ripening and need to be eaten pronto,baked or preserved. I also picked about 10 lbs of tomatoes and a goodly number of peppers. My own tomatoes have been ripening fairly quickly as well.
So it only made sense to make pasta sauce and can it. Pasta sauce is so easy to make and so much better with fresh ingredients, like tomatoes that are actually ripe and not just red. Granted I didn't have time to make sauce the day I picked the tomatoes, but I guarantee the sauce tastes very tomatoey, because Matt is not a big tomato fan and he says the sauce is VERY tomatoey, but good. Anecdotal proof is always right, just so you know... 
I now have 9 jars of pasta sauce and had enough left for dinner last night. It was tasty!
Today I used a gift card I received for my birthday to purchase an accoutrement to go with my pasta sauce. Homemade sauce deserves homemade pasta and so this is my new toy. 
My jams are not perfect crystalline jelly concoctions of sugar and fruit. They are more thick, compote like, opaque brews of witchery. This is because I am akin to a person who does not like to read manuals on how to work electronics. I do not follow recipes, to sort of quote the fearsome pirate Barbossa, "it's more like, hmm, guidelines". This has lead to some interesting creations and me jams are one of them.
Tasty but not Smucker's. and you know what? That's what makes homemade, unique items special. It's also what makes regional foods regional. Uniformity is for soldiers. Milk and butter used to taste different depending on the season and the grasses the cows ate. My jam has less sugar and more fruit than store jams, but the jelly isn't glassy and clear and sometimes it's not jelly at all, but it goes on toast and down the hatch all the same.
so my recent vats of witchery include peach and raspberry. Peaches for the afore posted Sauvie Island and Raspberries my other half picked up from the Saturday farmer's market. The raspberry, I can attest is lipsmackworthy, the peach, well, the leftover peach-juice jelly made wonderful oil free banana muffins and bread. The jam itself is a mystery! but it looks might fine. How could not with fruit like this:
Other Jams of the season include these concoctions :
blackberry with ginger and mint
blackberry with cinnamon and honey
peach with ginger
mixed berry
blueberry
I hear they are tasty. I have only sampled peach with ginger and chardonnay, which was a limited run, I think there is only one jar left. It is more a topping for yogurt and ice cream than a jam, but the black berry with honey and cinnamon was good, rich but good (honey has a strong flavor in jam when you boil off most of the liquid cause you don't have pectin...)
Each batch gets better in technique and consistency than the previous.
And with labels like these:
who dosn't want some witchy pirate jam? hmm???
yeah, I thought so.
(home made bread by Matt)
