Car's in the Shop

While I'm at home, waiting for new brakes, I have time to work on some rhubarb (yes, I bought more) and apricots. I got to thinking they would go well together, and I think I was right. I took the rhubarb chutney recipe I usually use from The Joy of Pickling and substituted some apricots in for the rhubarb, so it was 1 pound of rhubarb and 12 ounces of apricots. The rest of the recipe was exactly the same - 3 cups onions, 2 T. minced fresh ginger, 2 c. cider vinegar, 1.5 c. brown sugar, 1 tsp. crushed red pepper, 1 cinnamon stick, zest of one orange, 1 c. golden raisins, 1/2 tsp. kosher salt. This all simmered together for 35 minutes and then I canned it, minus the cinnamon stick. I ended up with 7.5 cups of chutney.

At this point, I had run out of lids, so I rode my bike to the hardware store and bought more. I also took a few side trips since I'm working on a scavenger hunt for our neighborhood newsletter. I was getting locations and appropriate questions for kids to go find and answer. We have some pretty cool Revolutionary War history in our town and it's nice to take stock of it once in a while.

Once I got back I made a batch of Apricot-Rhubarb Jam - for this I used the Certo recipe for apricot jam and, instead of 3.5 cups chopped apricots, used 2.5 cups of apricots and 1 cup of rhubarb. I also added maybe a half a cup more sugar, thinking the rhubarb might need it. This made 3 pint jars and a little extra for tasting. I'm not sure why I ended up with less volume (the original recipe makes 7 cups) but maybe the rhubarb cooks down more than the apricots do?