Ambrosia

With the come of autumn, our children have gone to their current educational endeavors. My husband and I find we have more time on our hands and yet, somehow, it never feels like enough. Today, after all the rain we had, we decided to go apple picking. 

The orchard is about a 35 minute drive away so we do have to make sure we have about a two hour window to get up there, pick a half-bushel of apples, eat some cider donuts and head back. Today they were highlighting a type of apple I've not encountered before - Ambrosia apples. They're sweet and good for eating, not quite as tart as honeycrisps can be. We got a bunch of those, some cortlands, ruby macs, and honeycrisps. 

I took all the ruby macs and made pink applesauce - about 10 cups in total. These got canned in eight 4-oz jars to take to the youngerchild this weekend, and five 8-oz jars for home. I'll probably make another batch with more of the apples, but leave enough for a pie or apple cake. 

Asian Pears in Syrup

My friend who has a pear tree also has acquired an Asian pear tree. I missed the pears, being out of town, but the Asian pears are ripe now and she offered me some. I went over earlier today, in the rain which thankfully was not as bad as predicted, and picked some. 

Processing them in syrup was easy. In fact, they are the easiest fruit I've ever done this with - easier to peel than peaches and easier to cut than pears. I used one of those apple slicers that cuts out the core and makes eight even wedges. I made a light syrup, tossed the wedges in to keep them from browning, and when I had them all ready I boiled them for five minutes and hot packed them with lemon juice in the jars to get the acidity low enough. I used the official recommendations for processing.  Scaling the recipe, I expected to get six pints, but I ended up with eight. 

Thanks!

Where Did the Time Go?

It's unclear what happened this year. I haven't canned anything since those blueberries and I even stopped baking bread for a while, breaking a 10-year streak of not buying sandwich bread. There is definitely a lack of motivation involved, for many reasons, but there is also less produce coming from my farm share since I changed shares, and I have not had "the right day" (the right combination of weather, time, and picking partners) to go foraging for blueberries or elderberries or picking strawberries. I have been out of town A LOT, which means I missed the aforementioned blueberries and elderberries when they were in season. Legion has suffered a bit from my travels as well, but I seem to keep being able to rescue it. Hopefully that trend continues.

My red currants were the only thing that did well in the garden this year and I never planted any other vegetables. I think I may have to give up on the low bush blueberry plants, each one produces about one blueberry despite being covered with flowers in the spring. 

In the freezer I had stored just under 1.2 kg of red currents from early summer. I already have jelly from last year, so I decided to make jam instead. It will be seedy. Hopefully that is ok. 

1.18 kg red currants

3 cups sugar

1/3 cup water

This was cooked to about 220˚F and then processed in boiling water for 10 minutes. Made 5 8-oz jars and 1 4-oz jar.

I hope the fall gives me more energy, and that I can climb out of this hole in which I have fallen.