My friend called me this week to let me know that the apricots at her mom's house were ready to pick and I could take as many as I wanted. I had to be in that city for an appointment with one child on Friday, so we picked some apricots.
Box on the left is the very ripe ones I picked up from the ground. The box on the right is the less-ripe ones we picked from the tree.
Very ripe apricots do not have much pectin, so they won't really thicken and gel. With the box of ripe ones, I just made a sweetened apricot puree for yogurt. I made jam with the slightly underripe ones.
This is two and a half gallons of apricot jam. It won't last nearly as long as you'd think.
I had started bread dough that morning. I typically make my bread dough in my big stock pot, but I knew I would need that to make jam. So instead I used a dedicated dough bucket I bought awhile back and hate because it's square. This makes it hard to mix in and even harder to clean the dough out of the corners. I had mistakenly ordered it thinking I was getting a round one and then I couldn't return it, so I'm stuck with it.
It comes in handy at times like these, I suppose. And I was very pleased when I thought to use my old 8-inch square baking pan as the lid for it. The pan is very old and kind of rusty, so I don't actually bake in it anymore.
Flipped over, though, it makes for a nice tight lid.
I also finally got around to "krauting," as my children call it.
With some help, of course, because few things are more fun than smashing sliced cabbage with a rolling pin.
I have more cabbages coming out of the garden, so I decided to make a skillet of Holy's cabbage and try freezing and thawing a small amount to see if the taste or texture was affected. I suspected it would freeze (and thaw) well since it's so soft to start with.
I was right.
So then I made a couple of very large batches of it to freeze.
I (over) filled my biggest 14-inch skillet twice and ended up with three quart bags of cooked cabbage for the freezer.
Unfortunately, yesterday when I was driving to the village, the road was absolutely carpeted with grasshoppers. Thousands of them. They haven't made it to my garden yet, but I don't see how they could miss it. It's looking likely that there might not be a lot of other things that make it to harvest this year. But at least we have sauerkraut and apricot jam, right? Right.
There you have it! My life, snapshotted.
4 comments:
Everything looks delicious!
I imagine fresh bread with that apricot jam will be wonderful!
Thanks for the tip on freezing the cabbage! I’ve never tried it before but now I will.
Makes sense that the cabbage freezes; the red cabbage dish freezes well, too. Try the neem oil to discourage the grasshoppers. It is supposed to make them stop eating and is not toxic. Sister Nancy says it smells bad. MIL
What a bounty of jam! I made freezer jam with cherries from my neighbor's tree. I then pitted 6 more cups for the freezer. Too hot this week to bake a pie.
Is there any way to cover your garden to minimize the depredation of the grasshoppers? People around here were covering young trees in soft bags(?) to prevent cicadas from destroying them. (Luckily, the cicadas stopped at the county line, so the trees escaped unscathed. )
Yum
Grasshoppers....phueee
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