canning, pickling, preserving, putting up.....what's your plan this year?

[grasswire]

Calling all cookers -- best recipes for jams, sauces, pickles, whatever -- put 'em here! Whether your bounty comes from the farmers' market or your own garden, it's not too early to start thinking about it!

[grasswire]

1. one thing I'm going to try is my grandmother's recipe for Harlequin Jam

....as she wrote it many decades ago:

Pear Harlequin

Peel, core and slice thin 2 qrts of ripe pears (not too soft). Add one No.2 can of pineapple cut into small pieces, this is better than crushed pineapple.

Peel very thin 2 oranges and snip rind into small pieces. Add to the juices.

Then measure combined fruits and add 3/4 of their quantity sugar.

Simmer until thickened somewhat and just before removing from fire add half pint bottle of marachino cherries halved with the juice.

Long cooking darkens color or this conserve so do not cook for long.

[yellerpup]

4. I bet that your Harlequin jam is gorgeous.

I'd try that. So far this year I've made 7 half pint jars of strawberry jam, 1 pt. strawberry syrup, 6 half pints of strawberry rubies (whole, small preserved berries) and 1 liter of strawberry cordial. If I hadn't burned myself on Wednesday, I would have made a half-dozen jars of cherry jam this week. I'll keep an eye out for pears in the market. I just go with what looks good when the farmers come to town. I also have a quart of serrano peppers that need pickling. Thanks for this thread! :hi:

[grasswire]

7. owie ----- how bad is the burn?

Nothing hurts worse than a burn IMO.

Are your cherries sour, or sweet? It's very hard to find sour cherries on the market here.

[yellerpup]

12. I'm keeping it bandaged.

I didn't think it was so bad but I covered it to keep it clean. The next morning I took the bandage off and did not notice that I had one blister on my wrist between the size of a dime and a quarter. I had forgotten about being burned altogether until I took a load of hot clothes out of the dryer and ripped the blister half off. I am still keeping it covered and it appears to be healing nicely. The cherries around here are always sweet. I don't think I've seen any sour cherries except for (and I can't remember where I saw them) once I saw a woman digging frozen cherries out of a gold toned 5 gallon bucket with Michigan prominently mentioned. The lady was swarmed by smiling hordes of shoppers. Must've been a farmer's market.

[noamnety]

2. I made blackberry jam this year

and added some finely chopped candied ginger to part of the batch. It's amazing without being overpowering.

[hobbit709]

3. Too much like work.

And it's too damn hot to do anything like that in the kitchen here.
I just freeze everything.

[Phentex]

11. I'm going to freeze tomatoes, trying a few herbs...

but I don't have the energy to try canning.

[pengillian101]

16. I'm with you.

Canning is behind me. I freeze. Whole tomatoes in Foodsaver bags. I just rinse them, and leave them whole, unpeeled and with the stem on, then vacuum pack them. I have done this now for 3 or 4 years. It works great. Of course it's not like a fresh tomato when thawed, but who cares in a soup or stew.

I take out the frozen tomato, and run it under really hot water and the skin just slips off. And there ya go. I suppose a dip in boiling water would work just fine.

It cannot get simpler than that in my book. :-)

[hippywife]

5. Been picking blackberries for days now

and lots more to come. Bought some organic blueberries. I'm freezing both for today. I'd make preserves but I have tons of other stuff to make today. :hi:

[grasswire]

8. I miss reading your marathon posts

Whatcha cookin' this week?

I bought some organic blueberries too, but I ate them all. Two pints. Some with greek yogurt and a sprinkle of nutmeg. They were delicious.

[hippywife]

13. Well, I'm not cooking a whole lot.

Put on the braciole with the Sunday gravy earlier today, and the water is on for the pasta.

I frozen seven pints of blueberries and three of blackberries. Going to make sure I get at least as many blackberries as the birds this year. LOL

Made cream cheese/feta/garlic & herb tortilla pinwheels with Greek olives, green onions, and marinated artichoke hearts (had to use what I had on hand) on spinach and herb tortillas and a black bean corn salsa for Bill's lunches this week.

Soon I need to start my Fanny Farmer banana cake and some brownies. That ought to keep him for the week.

After that this week, I just don't know. I do know it will chicken scallopini next weekend but in between I'm a little "meh, whatever." It's just so freakin' hot to think much about it.

Your harlequin jam sounds interesting. I don't know that I've ever heard of it before. It's so nice you have some memories like that to hold on to.

How is everything else going with you these days? :hug:

[The empressof all]

6. It still hasn't hit 75 here yet!

My poor tomatoes look like such runts and my squash plants are still puny. Usually by June the wild blackberries have taken over the hill behind the barn. Not this year. We were still able to take the weed eater to them yesterday.



I'm going to be doing lots of dehydrating this year. I'll be doing tomatoes and blackberries of course because they'll be growing here. I'll also be trying to make this wonderful conserve of berries and oranges that we had during a visit to the Oregon coast. I'm not usually much of a canning person but I do want to try that one when the berries come in.

[grasswire]

9. yeah, what a spring!

The master gardener who lives next door is shaking his head. Yesterday was our first really warm day, and that apparently was it for this week.

[Phentex]

10. We have skipped June and now have the July temps and humidity...

the tomatoes are starting to take off and everything else in the yard has gone crazy. Finally enough rain to make things grow.

Still, I miss having coffee outside in the morning.

[hippywife]

14. We have, too.

It is unbearably hot. I've been making myself go out the last two mornings before it gets bad to pick the wild blackberries, but I still come in dripping wet and miserable.

Good to hear that your tomatoes and all are doing so well. There's always a trade off with each season, isn't there.

:hug:

[pengillian101]

17. Yikes, what's with the weather, Hippywife?

It was hot, hot, hot last month in northern MN and now we're back to wet and rainy spring-like. Tomato plants looking good so far and ahead of schedule, but they need some more heat, eh?

Summer fruit is such fun and it's good you are enjoying those blackberries! The local Strawberry farm's haven't even ripened yet. I'll just freeze them also - but by trial and error, I'll hull them first

:hi:

[hippywife]

23. I dunno but

it's not looking like a very promising summer. It was 90 degrees by 9 a.m. this morning.

I've frozen strawberries. Just hull and slice them in halves or quarters. They freeze fine.

:hi:

[The empressof all]

19. It was Fricken COLD this morning...

It was 45 degrees here this morning when I had my first cup of coffee. Will we even get a spring this year? Summer's next week right?

[Vinca]

15. I usually dry tomatoes in my dehydrator, can some dilly green beans

and make up a mountain of pesto and freeze it in ice cube sized chunks. Last year I tried making jam with the ground cherries and found it a little seedy. This year I might try again and strain some of them out. Sadly, the ground cherries don't freeze well. They take on a funny, almost fishy quality. If I had a greenhouse I'd love to keep some of them growing fresh year round - they're my favorite thing from the garden.

[japple]

21. My SIL always makes relish with them. They are the same thing

as Jerusalem Artichokes, aren't they? Her relish is very good and goes well with greens, pintos, peas, etc.

[noamnety]

22. sunchokes are jerusalem artichokes

They are the roots of a sunflower looking type thing.

Ground cherries are like a tomatillo, very closely related except the husk on a tomatillo is all stuck on the fruit whereas it pops right off a ground cherry. Ground cherries are sweeter though, more like eating a fruit than a green veggie for salsa. They are my favorite thing from the garden too!

sunchokes/jerusalem artichokes:


ground cherries:

[wildeyed]

18. I will be dehydrating later in the season.

Tomatoes and it looks looks like there will be a tone of squash chips. time to hit the farmer's market as well. I buy the "ugly" but perfectly edible fruit and freeze it for smoothies and/or make fruit rollups in the dehydrator. Great way to get local food at a great price. Helps the sellers out too, since food would normally go to waste.

[bearfan454]

20. I plan on canning tomatoes

I use them a lot in the winter.

[yellerpup]

24. 6 jars of raspberry jam yesterday.

Raspberry absolutely sends me and I found some good ones at Costco and used the simplest recipe possible: 4 C. fruit (I crushed the berries before measuring in order to get the biggest flavor possible) to 4 C. sugar. Last night for dessert we had mango sorbet topped with fresh raspberries, a dollop of cool whip (sorry, I'm allergic to lactose) and a still-warm raspberry jam drizzle over it all. Made for really sweet dreams last night!

[Warpy]

25. Right now, no plans because I'm waiting for my fridge to die

The freezer is nearly empty and so is the Costco freezer after my power blew up last week and I gifted my neighbor with the last of the Copper River salmon and other goodies I had. Unfortunately, even getting 220 passed through the system for a few seconds before I hit the circuit breakers didn't finish off that old fridge.

If the fridge dies before August, I'll be replacing it and freezing what local produce I can get, adding roasted green chile to it in September. If not, I'll continue to grumble about it and live on commercially frozen stuff and canned tomatoes.

[murphymom]

26. Pears

We have two bartlett pear trees in our yard and in a good year we get way more that we can use fresh. A couple of years ago I canned about 2 dozen jars of pear slices in apple juice, with a piece of cinnamon stick added and they turned out really tasty, very light and mild. Last year I had some serious health issues just around the time when they were all getting ripe and I wasn't up to canning, so a lot of the fruit went into the compost. I'm hoping they won't get away from me this year.

We have a couple of Italian plum trees, but the fruit production is kind of variable, sometimes we just get enough to eat, other times, there's enough to do something with. If we get enough fruit, I might try some jam.

I'd love to try some pickling, but since I'm now on a low sodium diet, anything I make would pretty much be just for murphydad.

[kestrel91316]

27. I'm gonna can up some pickled jalapenos soon. The good local ones will

be coming in season next month.

I had previously canned jalapenos en escabeche, but I think I prefer just plain pickled ones, with the carrot slices in there.

As the weather cools off and fall crops come in I want to do a bunch more different types of pickled vegetables. Guess I better round up my refrigerator dill recipe so I can do them - Kirby cukes are in their prime right now.

[Retrograde]

28. Strawberry preserves, for the first time in decades

that was yesterday; today I'm working on the quarterly batch of chicken stock.

We haven't had much of a spring here, and my garden is not doing as well as it should. I'm hoping to get the sour cherries picked today before the jays eat them all, but those will be either consumed immediately or frozen.

ETA: does making limoncello count as putting up or preserving?

[pengillian101]

29. I got lucky at a family gathering!

Gifted with peach jam - how lucky am I!