Simply Beautiful Pickled Figs and Other Delectables

I know this post will have little to offer to practically every reader, here. I get that. This is so un-relatable to most. After all, who has unripe figs to deal with? And who really wants to go to the trouble to pickle them? I'm only posting about this recent project because it gave me so much pleasure in the making process.

Figs tend to have two crops per season. The first crop ripens in mid to late summer in my area. I've mentioned before, that in my climate, the late crop never ripens for us. In mid-October, I find myself deluged with hard, green figs. In previous years, I've made an unripe fig jam that's pretty good. However, this year, I have more jam and jelly than I think we'll actually use. So I set out on a quest for a good recipe to pickle these figs.

The recipe that I found called for unripe figs. cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, cardamom pods, ginger root, lemon peel, honey, vinegar, and sugar. What I had included unripe figs, cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, cardamom pods, ginger powder, lemon juice, vinegar, and sugar, but no honey. Good enough. I was absolutely thrilled to find the cardamom pods. I don't recall what I bought them for, but I was very glad to have just barely enough for this project.

The aroma of the heated liquid was amazing. As the spices were simmering with the figs, I kept lifting the lid to smell their essence. After 30 minutes of gentle cooking, my beautiful figs were ready for bottling. 

In total, I made 3 large and 1 small jar of pickled figs.
This was such a satisfying project. I enjoyed this whole sensory experience. I felt like I was making something gourmet, plus I preserved garden produce to make it actually useful for us.

Another satisfying project this past week was a small jar of peanut butter-cocoa powder spread for toast. I had been watching Nigella Lawson earlier in the week as she made a Nutella cheesecake. Yum, that looked delicious! Nutella has milk in it so it's something on my don't eat list. But my own spread was made with ingredients that are okay for me: peanut butter (the cheap kind), cocoa powder (the good kind -- Special Dark Hershey's), confectioner's sugar, and vegetable oil to thin to spreading consistency. It tastes like peanut butter cup candy. It's been delicious on both toast and graham crackers, like a cross between a sweet breakfast and a dessert.

Earlier this summer, I made rosemary-rhubarb preserves. I've been experimenting with using fresh herbs in jelly and preserves. I made a batch of crabapple-sage jelly just last week. Adding herbs to these preserves elevates them from simple spreads for bread or sandwiches to something almost gourmet. I served the crabapple-sage jelly with biscuits to go with a soup supper late last week. The rosemary-rhubarb-preserves were delicious as a condiment with roasted chicken and in chicken salad sandwiches.

In my family's early years, foods had to be simple and very recognizable. PBJ's had to be made with a plain jelly, no jams or unusual flavorings. Pickles had to at least look like something from a store. I might have gotten away with my peanut butter-cocoa powder substitution for Nutella, simply because it tastes a little like candy spread on a piece of toast. However, the rest of my little experiments would have been a waste of space in the fridge. I'm grateful to have finally reached a place where I can make things that appeal to my own tastes and are actually appreciated by the rest of the family. This is a good place.