All the Dirt on Gardening

In the Nov 24 All the Dirt on Gardening entry I showed the butterfly box where we put a tiny swallowtail caterpillar rescued before the first hard freeze. These photos show its progress toward butterfly adulthood - It grew to about 8 times the size it was on Nov 24  An grew fatter, too. Yesterday I watched as the caterpillar wriggled toward the next stage  and this morning when I checked it had completed the process to chrysalis.

It is 100-degrees every day now so all the time in the yard is before lunch. After lunch, time in the kitchen keeps me having great fun. Every day several small apples fall out of the tree and I pick them up. I wondered what to do with them and found an answer. A book about preserving suggested that you can make pectin from them. This beautiful volume is called A Passion for Preserves by Frederica Langeland. The photographer, Bill Milne, is skilled at tempting readers to recreate the products he illustrated. This link will take you to the Amazon site where copies of the book are 78-cents and up. At Amazon, the customer complaints are true - the ingredient list does not always match the recipe, the recipes are in pounds of fruit and they are not the quick and easy type. It's not too difficult, though, to make your own pectin if cooking is your hobby. After cooking the apples in water, the juice is drained off overnight. Next, the resulting liquid is cooked with sugar to become a s...