I Cannot Take Responsibility

He dressed himself this morning.

The Fruits (and Vegetables) of My Labor

This has been quite a canning season for me. I've been canning for quite a few years now, but spurred by the vegetable garden outside (I'm guessing, because who really knows where the obsession comes from), this is probably the busiest one I've had. I'm realizing that I've written about canning here, here, here and here. Hmmm.... well, here's another post about canning, and where I fess up as to what I canned.

Okey dokey. When I left you in suspense, I was working on a peach/plum harvest that we did at a local farm. We had a blast that day, and the kids are champion fruit pickers. We had gone on Sunday, and then I spent Monday and Tuesday (and Tuesday night) canning (and freezing a bit) what we had picked. This is what that looked like: Curious??? Wanna know?? Me too, actually, 'cause there's a lot there. Ok, here's the rundown.

Out of the plums (11 pounds), I put up:

3- 1/2 pints of Spiced Plum Butter. Wow, try this one. The smell is unbelievable, and the taste is out of this world. Seriously good!

4- pints of Plum Jam (which was really 5 pints, but I only had 4 pint jars ready, so the extra went into a reused jelly jar in the fridge.) This jam is surprising-tasting, which is the only way I can think to describe it. You think that it's going to be really sweet, like most jams are, but then it's got a really fresh taste to it with the sweetness, so the sweetness kind of goes to the background. Every time I taste it, I am surprised. It's very good.

6- pints of Sugar Plums. Meaning, whole plums in syrup. There is no spicing with them, just plain fruit in sugar water. The plums we picked this time around were small reddish plums. They easily fit in the jar, and they were so pretty. So instead of chopping all of them up, I picked the nicest ones, poked them with a fork and preserved them in medium syrup. They float, which seems to be my curse when preserving fruit, because no matter how I pack them, hot or cold, tightly or not, any type of syrup, they float. But they are pretty, and I know they're going to be delicious, so who cares??

Ok, I started with the plums on Monday. You know, as a warm up. On Tuesday, I tackled the peaches. 32 pounds. My kids like to pick peaches. :) That made:

6- 1/2 pints of Spiced Wine Peach Jam. (that's the first picture in this post) Ok, this one is very good, but it's because of the spices. I don't really taste the wine in it at all, which is a shame, because I used a good wine for it. I am hoping that if it mellows a bit, I may taste it more. When it's fresh, the wine taste is pretty nonexistent.

6- 1/2 pints of Lavender Peach Jam. Ok, yes, I can recommend this one. The lavender is there in smell and taste, and the peaches are a wonderful compliment to it. Neither one is overpowering. This is one of those frou-frou chic preserves you'd see in some store somewhere, selling for $12 for the 1/2 pint or whatever. So I think if you were going to can to give gifts to someone, this would be the one to make. And it's easy, which is the kicker. Very good, and very impressive!

2 pints and 1 1/2 pint of Peach Butter. This one is ok, but I think it would have done better with a bit of spicing, like the Plum Butter. I added a cinnamon stick during cooking, but it could have used a bit more....something.

6- pints of Honey Spiced Peaches. Yeah, more buoyant fruit. Oh well. These are peaches basically hot packed in a sugar syrup that uses honey as the sweetener. The spices are added to the jar, and then the peaches and syrup are put on top of them. It will need to mellow to get the spices to do their thing. I used cloves and cinnamon sticks for half, and star anise for the other half. All I can say about this one (because I didn't taste it) is this; if you enjoy mead, make these. We do, so I did. That's the smell from the honey syrup. It was good!
2- pints of Fruit Ketchup. It used peaches, tomatoes, and some other stuff. I was intrigued. I have tomatoes. I figured, what the heck?? It smelled good, but I have no idea how it tastes, because hot ketchup is not something I really wanted to try. I'll have to let you know about this one...

With the rest of the peaches, I was going to make canned peach pie filling, but the recipes I had for it either made a too-small amount (like 4 pints--what can you do with that? That's only 2 pies worth, so it's not really worth it) or a too-big amount (like 7 quarts--and I didn't have enough peaches left for that), so I just cut them up, treated them to prevent browning, and froze them. I can still make peach pie with them, and it was easier.

That took care of the peaches and all the fruit we had picked. But the garden had produced a bit too, so I put up:

3-pints of cherry tomatoes in water. No picture here, but trust me, they're floating. :)

2- pints of Gingered Zucchini Marmalade. Being as though I have some zucchini, and I have frozen a ludicrous amount, I thought "hey, why not? I'll try something different.". Famous last words. First, there was a marmalade disasterThis, friends, is what can happen when you leave to go pee. Don't do it. Just hold it in. Trust me, you'd rather hold it in than have THIS smell permeating your kitchen. Oh boy.

After the burned batch, and all the scrubbing I did to clean that pot, I tried again. It worked better, but I think I overcooked it. Then, not to give in, (because I won't be beaten by zucchini) I tried again. The third batch was the best. I stopped before I thought it was done, and it actually was the right time to stop. So go figure. I did have extra, and I have tasted it, and all I can say is eh. What a description, huh? The zucchini isn't there at all to taste, so that's fine, because that would be odd, and all you can really taste is the lemon and orange in it. I didn't taste ginger at all. Yeah, I don't know about this one. I think if you're going to make marmalade and risk marmalade disaster, make orange or something. Leave the whole zucchini thing out of it. I don't think I'll repeat this recipe.

Ok, after that whole thing, it was like 10 o'clock at night, and I was feeling like I needed an easy win, so I made Cabernet Franc Jelly.

This is the super-easiest thing to make, it's ridiculous. Get a good bottle of wine, a little sugar, and some liquid pectin. Voila! Wine jelly. It is good, it is fast, and it sounds super impressive, too. And it's good with cheese and crackers and also as a glaze for meats. Win win. :)

See the ridiculous jars, by the way? Those were the store's answer to "I just want a jelly jar, please". That was it. I went looking for those quilted jelly jars, and that's what they had. Wide mouth, "platinum" band. You KNOW I'll never find the tops for those things again, right? UGH. Plus, the shape is so weird, they just kept falling through the rack in the canner, over and over again. Oh well. At least the color is pretty.

Wednesday I spent cleaning up the kitchen. Thursday I took the day off (go figure). Friday we went tomato picking, because although I am growing tomatoes, I grew heirloom tomatoes, which don't all ripen at the same time, and cherry tomatoes, which you can't really sauce (though I may try it anyway). The kids picked plum tomatoes and some globe tomatoes which were so perfect my mom called them "Disney Tomatoes", and on Saturday, I tomatoed. On Saturday, I put up:

6- pints of Chunky Garden Salsa. I used the tomatoes, some jalapenos, some zucchini (go figure), some peppers, etc, and salsa'd. It seemed soupy to me. I haven't tried it yet.

6- quarts of Plum Tomato Sauce. Just plain, no spicing. I figure I'll do the spicing when I cook it up for dinner.

3- pints of Ketchup. This took a LONG time. A LONG TIME. I started with it, because I figured, what the heck, by the time the ketchup is ready, the jars will be warmed up, the lids will be ready, I can peel all the rest of the tomatoes, and it'll be good to go. I also should have added, and I can clean all the bathrooms, weed all the gardens, and read War and Peace, and THEN it'll be ready. That's how long it took. The result is good, really good. But I don't know if I will repeat this one. At least not on a day when I have other things I want to do.

Then, because I do have lots of ugly heirloom tomatoes in the garden, and because I didn't want to mix them up with all those pretty "Disney" hybrid tomatoes, I used them separately to make 2 different kinds of sauce, which I didn't can, but I did freeze. I made a Mexican Yellow tomato sauce with Chipotle peppers, and a red tomato sauce with basil.

I just reused old sauce jars I'd been saving for those. This was the easiest. Make the sauce, let it cool a bit, plop it in the jars, freeze. Good deal.

And that's it! I am done canning until apple time now. Or until I see a good deal on u-pick pears or something....

Oh, stop me now!!

Gifts

Did you ever notice that the best gifts are the ones that show that someone was thinking about you, and just wanted to give you something that they thought you would like? A lot of times they are things that don't cost anything, but are rich in thought. I received many gifts this week. It was a wonderful week.

Last Saturday, my mom brought me a bunch of lavender. She has Provence lavender growing in her garden, and this year, she got a bumper crop. The smell was just intoxicating. Well, she went outside last weekend, and was cutting the flowers because they were really finished, but the bracts were still there (and wow, do they smell good), and she brought me a huge bunch to dry. The bunch is both hands around, that's how big it is. The smell coming from the bag is just better than I can describe. What a gift. I am so thrilled she thought of me.

On the same track, she was growing watermelons in her garden. They are cute little watermelons, a variety called Sugar Baby, or something like that. She gave me one. Another wonderful gift!

On Friday, we had the gift of a day out. This week has been long, with a lot of canning going on, and running around getting ready for school. Friday, we went out tomato picking and picnicking. It was a nice break, and the kids (and I) had fun picking tomatoes. In fact, Little Boy turns out to be an expert tomato picker, which was previously unknown.

I've been so busy, I haven't had a chance to really catch up on my blogs, but I finally got a minute, and found another gift. Cathey has given me an award!!

And look what she said about me:

Jocelyn - this mighty woman adds magic to everything she does from stitching and quilting to gardening and baking.

Thank you Cathey!! I am honored and thrilled and truly touched by what you said!! I will display this award proudly. Thank you so much!!

So many wonderful gifts this week. I hope you all are having a wonderful week too!

Fall Found Me Again

Last night, I got done cleaning up the kitchen after 2 days of canning (and making a mess, too), and went outside to look at the vegetable garden. It was a cool evening, the sun was going down behind the trees, and the air was a pale blue. I was in the tomatoes, picking a few that were ready, and a little breeze blew, bringing the scent of fall to me.

And all of a sudden, I was a child again, sitting in my room at my parent's house, doing my homework in the evening, at the desk in front of the window. The windows were open in my room and the crisp fall air smell came in and told me of promises of leaves turning, and the dark excitement of Halloween to come. It was that smell--that smell of the evening in fall--the one I can never seem to find here that seems to have found me. It lasted a minute. It lasted less than a minute. It was gone as fast as it came, and I didn't find it again all evening, though I tried. But it was there, for a moment, and I was back in time with it.

I know I have said that fall smells different here--it does. I miss the smell I knew. Why it brings me back to being a child, I don't know. Maybe because things were so much simpler then, though I didn't know it at the time. Maybe because it feels like a safer time. All I know is that the fall found me again last night, and it brought tears to my eyes. I was truly thankful.

It's sort of summer here again today. The heat has come back, but it's bite is gone. The leaves have continued to slowly turn. I can tell that summer is over--what comes during the days is just a shade of what it was. I am looking with excitement to the coming season. I hope you all are too.