The Little Brook: All Because of the Apricots

It's 95 degrees out. It's hot. Yet I spent the day baking and canning. I believe I am insane.

Poor Percy. I understand, buddy, I really do.

The day became what it was after a planned trip to the farmer's market and a sleepless night thinking about organizing my freezer.

I know, have I nothing better to do than think about organzing my freezer all night? Well, yes, sleep would have been nice. Unfortunately, my inability to sleep as of late caused my brain to stay awake despite my best efforts of stopping it from doing so, and while it was looking for something to think about, it came about the abundance of summer squash we have and the fact that it has caused a bit of a traffic jam in the freezer.

Squashy devils. Oy!

So, having been fueled by stupidly-late night ponderings on what to do to clean up the freezer, I got up this morning to head to the farmer's market as planned, and then come home and clean up the freezer, in hopes of appeasing my brain, so MAYBE I'll get to sleep tonight.

Of course, things never go exactly as planned, do they? I find mostly not. I went to the farmer's market to buy carrots (to bake a carrot cake) and some lettuce for salads. That was it. Then home to clean. Well, I did get the carrots which were lovely, and I did get the lettuce,

but then my daughter spied cherries, so we got those,and then I spied a stand selling peaches and apricots.
We don't go to the farmer's market all the time, and you know how quickly things go in and out of season, so we bought a couple of pounds of peaches, and I eyeballed the apricots.

I like apricots. I like apricots in syrup, actually. But I shudder at eating the ones in the supermarket because of all the crap preservatives they put in those things. And fresh apricots are like $3.50 a pound or something ridiculous, and that's not happening, because what if I don't get them "syruped" and they go bad? What a huge waste of money. Plus, where are they from? California? Mexico? But these apricots were sitting there. And they looked nice. And they are very local. Plus, they were "seconds", meaning slightly blemished but still perfectly good and much cheaper. Well, I'm going to cook them, aren't I? Does it matter if they're not all that pretty? Not a bit. So, ok, no convincing here, I buy 5 pounds of "seconds" apricots for a total of--get this--- $4. Whoo hoo!

Ok, so I've got my carrots and lettuce and cherries and peaches and now apricots, and we head home. And on the way there I spy a sign that says "Blueberries U-Pick". I think about it. It's getting hot. Maybe it'd be best if we just go home. We were at the market a while. Little Boy wants a drink. .....But the blueberries will be a good price. The kids like picking things themselves. Or maybe they'll have some already picked and I'll just grab a couple pints and we'll go off home with little interruption. Hmmm...

The U-Pick won. We pulled in and since there were no already picked pints waiting for us, I asked the kids if they'd like to pick blueberries. They were extremely enthused. Kids after my own heart. Little Boy has forgotten he wanted a drink (he always does--he's SO 4), and we're off. About an hour later both in the sun and out in the shade, with the kids picking blueberries like champs, and Little Girl eating almost as many blueberries as she picked, we brought them back to the stand. Three and a half pounds of blueberries for--get this again---$4. Whoah!

Ok, really to home now. Fed the kids lunch, gave Little Boy his drink, and now to the freezer.

Messy, messy.

I pull everything out.

And attempt to put everything back in.

Ok, bit of cramming going on, but so far so good. I am nearly completely out of room. But I do have the "problem" that I just created for myself--those apricots and the blueberries. I have to do something with them. So I figure I'll can them. Apricots in syrup (yum!!!) and then I can can the blueberries in water, for baking later on. Ok, that's a plan. So I get the water going in the water-bath canner and get all my jars and such ready to go, and I prep the apricots. I get them going, make their syrup, then the jars are ready. So in they go, nicely as you please, and I pop them in the canner. But now I have to wait. 20 minutes. That's a while. So I figure, I was going to bake a carrot cake, so heck, why not?

So I do. And that goes so quickly that I have some time left, so I figure hell, I'll make some zucchini bread. It uses the same oven temp and everything. Kharma.

So I do. And then the jars of apricots are done (I got 4 pints-mmmmmm!!!), and the cake and breads are in the oven, and I'm going to get started on the blueberries. But I need to prep more jars and lids. So that's a little "down time". And I noticed that I had a frozen pie crust in the freezer that I really didn't have room for. So what if I just put together a little free-form and very rustic blueberry tart? I've got the crust. I've got the blueberries. Kharma again.

So I do. And I pop that in the oven just in time for the jars to be done, so I heat up the blueberries, get them in the jars nicely as you please and pop them in the water bath. Ok, 15 minutes of down time and now the carrot cake is done, the zucchini breads are done, and the tart is done.