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Day: April 9, 2005

Violet Jelly

We have a yard full of violets. This might be a sign of some PH imbalance, but the effect is quite lovely. It also allows for an opportunity to try out an old time recipe for violet jelly, which may be indeed violet in color when we finish.
In the spirit of Miles Efron, let me keep you in touch with the process:
First, Tucker and I went out and picked 8 cups of violet flowers — no stems. This went much more quickly than we anticipated and feared. We thought we’d only make half our recipe and stop of 4 cups of flowers, but the yard had plenty of flowers and we were not too long in filling the full recipe.
Next we rinsed off the flowers and drained them, fluffing a little to shake out any insects. We found none.
At the same time, we set water to boil.
The rinsed flowers were put in a glass bowl then covered with 3.5 cups of boiling water.
Almost immediately the water turned dark blue. We stirred the water occasionly. then let the mixture settle for the evening. The recipe called for only 2 hours of infusion, but other recipes recommend overnight or as long as 24 hours. The consensus is as little as 2 hours or as long as 24.
We assembled the ingredients that we’ll need in the morning.

  • Sur-Gel or any pectin jelling product. This comes in a 1.75 oz package and we’ll need it all.
  • Lemons for their juice. We’ll need 1/2 cup.
  • Sugar. We’ll want to use 4 cups.


[more in the morning when we get underway.]

Side posting: Many years ago there was a band in Chapel Hill called the Blazers. On their one LP “Store Bought” was a song called “Violent Jelly” writen by on J. Earth. J. Earth is rumored to be the father of Ruby Sinreich.

Lessig and Tweedy talk in NYTimes

The Wired sponsored talk at the New York Public Library last Thursday evening with Larry Lessig and Jeff Tweedy was sold out early (within 5 minutes of being announced on the Internet, says the Times).
But there’s a quick write up in today’s NYTimes called “Exploring the Right to Share, Mix and Burn”.
Tweedy notes that filesharing helped the sales of “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel” become double that of the previous CD “Summerteeth” in the first week and that filesharing helped the band survive and thrive after being dropped by their label.
More at the Times article above and more important — WilcoWorld says they will be presenting an archived version of their livecast of the event.

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