WATERMELON PICKLES

My mother used to make these. Spicy with cloves and ginger, they’re cloyingly sweet and vinegar sour. I found a recipe she used, clipped from the San Francisco Chronicle about 1970 (on the back of the recipe is an ad for I. Magnin, which hasn’t been around for a few decades).

The recipe called for four quarts of watermelon rind. That would involve one of those regulation-size watermelons, 20 – 30 pounds, which were the standard when I was a child and maybe still is elsewhere. It also called for pickling lime (Calcium Hydroxide) and ascorbic acid (powdered Vitamin C) which I could get but didn’t feel like buying if I didn’t have to, since it might be a while before I could use the full containers.

Most recipes I found called for that old-fashioned watermelon because it has thicker rinds than modern variations. But there’s two of us in this house and there’s no way we could possibly consume all that melon before it went The Way Of All Melons into the garbage.

This is what I went with, adapted from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving. It works with thinner-rind seedless watermelons, which average 6 to 12 pounds and are just the right amount for two people. (I am not speaking of mini-melons or “personal” melon.) The spices can be varied and increased or changed to personal preferences (star anise, anise seed, and peppercorns come to mind) but as always, follow strict canning and preserving rules such as found at The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

It is easier to peel the whole melon with a vegetable peeler before cutting it up. There is no need to remove every single bit of the pink (or yellow) flesh from the rind and in fact a little of the melon remaining on the rind looks pretty.

Serve these with anything rich and fatty, such as fried chicken, pork chops, a cheese plate, or alongside cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. These cannot be considered low-glycemic or low-sugar but they are delicious.

WATERMELON PICKLES

• rind from one seedless watermelon, about 6 to 12 pounds, peeled and cut into pieces about 1″ – you’ll have about 7 to 9 cups
• 1/2 cup pickling salt (i.e. non-iodized)
• 8 cups water
• 4 cups granulated sugar, divided
• 2 cups apple cider vinegar (5% acidity)
• 1 lemon, thinly sliced, seeds removed
• 3 teaspoons whole cloves
• 2 teaspoons whole allspice
• 4 cinnamon sticks, about 3″ each
• 1 2″ piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

Put rind in large ceramic or glass bowl. Dissolve salt in water, pour over rind, cover and let stand 4 hours. Then rinse thoroughly and drain.

Transfer rind to stainless steel or enameled saucepan. Cover with fresh cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 2 to 6 minutes, until as tender as you prefer (I like mine on the crisp side). Drain and return to bowl.

Combine 2 cups of the sugar, the vinegar, lemon slices, cloves, allspice, cinnamon sticks, and ginger in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar, and pour over the rind. Place a plate over the rind to keep it submerged and leave overnight.

Next day, drain liquid + spices into a saucepan, add 1 cup sugar, and bring to a boil. Pour over the rind, replace plate, and leave overnight.

On the third day, prepare canning jars, lids, and rings in hot-water bath.

Drain liquid + spices into saucepan, add 1 cup sugar, and bring to a boil. Add the rind, return to a boil, then remove from heat.

Pack rind into prepared jars and pour liquid with spices and lemon to fill jars within 1/2″ of rim. Add lids and bands. Process 10 minutes for 8-ounce jars, 10 minutes for pints. Remove from canning kettle and let cool. Label and store in cool dark place. If any jars do not seal, store in refrigerator.

Depending on how large the watermelon was, this makes 5 to 9 8-ounce jars.

ORANGE AND DATE MUFFINS

Image by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash

I have been making muffins a lot recently – primarily whole-grain, lower-fat, lower-sugar oversized muffins, to stand in place of a fry-up type of breakfast. This is what I made this morning. It’s adapted slightly from a version in Mollie Katzen’s The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (which has a very detailed explanation/recipe for making bread and other baked goods).

I often put dates in oatmeal and cookies. Dates are very sweet and keep extremely well – I store them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. They’re very high in fiber, antioxidants, potassium, B vitamins, and calcium. While they do contain a lot of naturally occurring sugar (as opposed to processed sugar), here they stand in for added sugar.

The dry ingredients and wet ingredients can be prepped the night before, then combined in the morning and baked to have fresh hot muffins in about half an hour.

ORANGE AND DATE MUFFINS

• 1 cup unbleached white flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup raw unprocessed bran or wheat germ or additional whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 large orange
• 1 cup pitted dates (about 8)
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk (or milk with a teaspoon of vinegar added and allowed to stand 5 minutes)
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup

Preheat oven to 375°. Grease a 12-cup cupcake tin or 6-cup oversize muffin/popover tin.

Combine dry ingredients in large bowl; whisk to combine. Set aside.

Grate zest from orange into a 2-quart bowl. Remove the peel and as much of the white pith as possible and discard. Cut the orange into small pieces over the bowl to catch any juice (remove any seeds). Chop the dates into small bits and add to the orange. Break the egg into the bowl and then pour in the buttermilk and whisk thoroughly to combine egg and buttermilk.

Melt the butter and honey together and slowly pour into the buttermilk mixture, whisking all the time.

Pour buttermilk mixture into dry ingredients and mix just enough to wet all the dry ingredients. Spoon into the greased tins and bake at 375° about 20 – 25 minutes. Test with a toothpick to be sure they are done.

Run a butter knife around each muffin to loosen it, then remove muffins to a cooling rack.

Makes 12 cupcake-sized or 6 oversized muffins.