crabapple liqueur

A year and a half ago I wrote about how I had made several pints of (no-pectin-added) crabapple jelly that didn't gel. I tried adding more sugar and, frankly, that just made them into a thick candy syrup. This was fine for oatmeal and pancakes, but not so good for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Now, inspired by the liqueurs class, I decided to add some vodka and water to what is essentially a thick simple syrup with crabapple flavor to make crabapple liqueurs. I added star anise to one jar and rosemary and sage to the other. Now maybe this everlasting crabapple sugar stuff will finally get used up.

let the canning begin!

I am determined to fill all of our canning jars in the next month. It is easy to let the peak of the growing season slip by since it doesn't last all that long here. On top of that, I am trying to make this happen while holding down a 40 hour a week job, hosting visitors, hanging out with friends, taking the dog on walks, and enjoying the great outdoors.  Hence the reason I am the crazy lady who husks a whole lot of corn in the dark.

wassermelonenbüffel

You know the story about using all parts of the buffalo...well, we did that with our watermelon:

First: dehydrated watermelon slices. This is pretty energy intensive and impractical since watermelon is 92% water, but the dried watermelon slices make very sweet fruit leathers.

Next, I pickled the watermelon rind. I just cut off the dark green skin and soaked in salt water (1/4 cup salt per quart of water) overnight. They taste like salty cucumbers--really good! I used the recipes from Dave's Garden and pick your own dot org.


Finally, we roasted the seeds that I picked out.

P.S. Best watermelon recipe I've ever had.

peach canning

We got 20 pounds of seconds peaches for $20 from Ela Family Farms at the farmers market yesterday (as well as strawberries, tomatoes, and basil!). We loaded up my panniers and headed home to start canning. This was our first time canning peaches so we wanted to try a few different recipes to see which we prefer.

With 15 pounds of peaches, we made:

• 3 pints whole peach halves in apple juice
• 4 pints peach butter (pureed with 2 c. sugar)
• 5 pints stewed peaches (no added sugar)

We're also going to freeze some peach halves for smoothies, and we saved some to eat fresh of course.

Traditional canning recipes tend to be super heavy on the sugar, so we wanted to try some no/low sugar recipes. I'm interested in learning how to get pectin naturally--for example, from crab apples--but for now we'll enjoy peach butter instead of jam on our toast.

We previewed the peach butter on pancakes this morning and it was delicious!