- Author: Lauria Watts
This summer remember that fruits are easy to freeze. Many you don't need to blanch or do much to other than wash, dry and perhaps add sugar to (for the best product). Local small berries, if you grow them, are probably past picking, but they are still available in markets. If you can drive up to the mountains or further north, picking both wild and farmed berries should be going on
Summer berries, especially those you pick yourself, or grow yourself, are so much better than those usually sold in stores. If you go somewhere to pick, you are in control of how ripe those berries are. If you plan well you can pick in the morning and have those berries in the freezer or in a jar that evening. Preserving doesn't get much more immediate than than--unless you get the fruit from your own backyard or from a neighbor.
Small berries such as blackberries or blueberries can be washed, dried, placed in a single layer in a flat pan and individually frozen dry or with a little sugar. Place them in freezer containers or freezer bags and you can pour out whatever you need when you need it.
And one last "for instance": don't forget pineapple. Pineapple on sale can be very sweet and cost-effective to freeze. Freezing pineapple is fast too--no sugar needed, just wash, peel, cut it up and freeze. Of course you can jar it up yourself.
Also, don't forget our upcoming classes:
- Author: Darrell Fluman
It is easy to take for granted the improvements to our current produce selections made possible by decades and centuries of careful observation by farmers, nurserymen, plant breeders and even plant hobbyists.
Saturday, on my way home after checking out the latest Nashville Hot Chicken pop-up by Barts' BBQ, I stopped @ Vallarta Markets, a regional ethnic grocery chain located primarily in the San Fernando Valley.
Rainier cherries @ $2.99/lb. A great price considering most retailers hold the line @ $5.99/lb, occasionally dipping to $4.99/lb. The market was 4 pounds lighter upon my departure.
Plump, juicy, fresh, and larger than a quarter. The second picture has the quarter underneath the cherry.
I wanted to process some pitted with the stems in a brandy syrup and some in a lightly spiced syrup. I was thinking I would expedite the process by breaking out an antique cherry stoner although I already knew the answer. NO!
Cherries in the early 1900's were significantly smaller and the bulk of preserved cherries, canned and dried, were sour Early Richmond , English Morello, or Montmorency cherries. Once preferred for jams, jellies, preserves, pies, syrup, pastries and cakes, sour cherries are not the retail force today that they were in an earlier era.
When we think of cherries today, most people dream of Bing cherries or its offspring, big, dark burgundy red, and sweet.
BTW, the Bing cherry was named for Chinese national, Ah Bing, a decade's long employee who worked in the orchards of Oregon horticulturist SethLewelling.Ah Bing returned to Manchurian China in 1889 to visit family and due to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was never allowed to return.
My Rainier cherries would not fit in a finger operated cherry stoner, patented in 1937 by J.C. Brown. They would not feed into a 1920's, No. 50 cherry stoner by the New Standard Corp. of MT. Joy, PA. However, I could hand position each cherry individually in the well below the plunger. Say “goodbye” to speed and efficiency.
I love the ingenuity of early mechanical marvels, designed without Cad-Cam computer programs, CNC machinery, or 3-D printing.
Each design had to be mocked up by pattern makers, a specialized form of woodworking, and made into casting patterns for the foundry to cast the item in molten iron. Patterns had to be made oversize (6-9%) to account for the percentage of shrink as the cast iron cooled.
My cherry canning project is on temporary hold due to the rapid disappearance of the fresh cherry stock from my refrigerator.
It occurred to me that this is the reason why I never have any preserved cherry items to enter into the county fair.
Handful here, bowlful there, then death by attrition.
It's the pits (pun intended).
--Darrell Fluman
- Author: Lauria Watts
Hello in the High Desert! It is really nice to be able to announce a class for you all. Please come, it is free and sure to be informative. So put some green in your landscape and preserve it too.
- Author: Lauria Watts
Just in case you need a reminder for the upcoming FREE Class:
- Author: Lauria Watts
Another Good Class Coming Up. Mark your calendars, it's freeeee!
