Harvest Season

Now that Fall is here, and it’s time to bring in the last of the garden, things are getting busy!

We had the 2 cases of peaches that were canned, and the one that was frozen.

 

 

Beets from the garden

Oven-dried figs, from Mom’s tree.  I didn’t get a picture, but I’ve dried a few sheets of roma tomato halves as well- they’re stashed away in the freezer for this winter.  Drying is easy- cut the fruit in  half the long ways, lay them skin-side-down on a cookie sheet (I use a silicone mat, too) and leave them in a warm oven with the door cracked.  My tomatoes took about a day, but the figs were faster.  I literally have a “keep warm” setting on my oven- about 170 degrees.

Orange tomato , basil, pesto sandwich- tomato from Mom’s greenhouse, basil from mine, and pesto…from Costco.  Heh.  These things just find their way home with me when I visit my parents!  Oh, and pickled beets.  Every sandwich needs a pickle.

Here are the 25 quarts of canned peaches, plus a few pints of fig preserves.  Again, the figs are from Mom’s tree.

Pickled beets.  So. Very Good.

 

6 quarts of apple sauce and 6 quarts of apple juice, courtesy of two crates of apples I took off my friend’s hands.  She was short on time and long on apples!  I have another case of apples in the garage, plus a few more trees that need harvesting in Mom’s garden when they ripen.

Before the next week is over, I’m going to pull all the basil out of my garden and make a mondo batch of pesto for the freezer.  Now that fall rains have started, and the weather is cooling down, I’m going to harvest all my tomatoes and do what I can with them.  (Tomatoes and basil in the greenhouse, I’ll leave them there, and move in any pots I have- hopefully I can get a few more weeks of on-the-vine time, and I’m hoping the basil will last.)

We ate our first red tomato tonight with dinner, it was AMAZING, but I just know we won’t get many more.  There are a few that are pinking up, and I’ll let them ripen in newspaper.  I’ve been collecting green tomato recipes- I’ll load some gallon bags up for the freezer, to use them in curries this winter.  I’ll pickle a few quarts too, but that seems like such a leap of faith- the best recipe I could find on allrecipes.com says it takes 3 months for them to pickle in the refrigerator.  What if I don’t like the brine?  I had an AMAZING pickled green tomato from a friend a few months ago- she bought it at a store, so I can’t get the recipe.  But it had the funk of a good green olive, plus a little heat.  Oh my wow, it was good.  If anyone has a favorite pickle brine, please share!

 

 

How to Can Peaches

To get set:

1. Load your dishwasher full of quart jars, and rings, and start it running.
2. Fill your canner half full of water, and put it on the stove to boil.
3. Take a case of (FREE STONE!) peaches, and put as many as you can in your sink, and fill it up with cool water.  (Elbertas, Hales, and Red Globes are all favorites.)
4. Put all the sealing lids you’ll need in a saucepan, cover with water, and just barely simmer (to soften the sealing compound.)

Next to the sink, you will need:

• a cutting board, chef knife, and paring knife
• scrap bucket
• big bowl of water, treated with a few Tablespoons of lemon juice

Start peeling and pitting your peaches, then chop them into slices, or pieces, or halves.  I like pieces, because I can fit more in a jar, and there’s less chance of getting air trapped in there.  As you finish, throw the skins and pits in the scrap bucket, and put the peach pieces in the treated water.  This will stop them from browning.

When your jars and canner are ready, start loading your jars with peaches!  Bang them on the counter, on a towel, every so often to make sure they settle down into the jar.  When the jar is about 3/4 full of peaches, pour in 1/3 cup sugar and fill the jar with peaches up to about half an inch from the top of the jar.  Fill with water (leaving half an inch of head space on top) and run a knife around the inside of the jar, pressing against the fruit a bit, to find any errant air pockets.

Wipe the rim of the jar with a wet cloth to get any sugar or fruit off, put a lid on, and screw a band on just finger tight.  Keep going until you have enough jars to fill your canner.

Load up the canner, and make sure they have at least an inch of water covering them!  Bring the canner to a hard boil, and boil for 25 minutes (or 20 minutes if you used pint jars.)

Let cool, undisturbed, on a towel for a day.  Take all the rings off, rinse the jars, label them, and squirrel them away!  (Any jars that didn’t seal, store them in the fridge and eat them.)

These are absolutely delicious- my husband will eat a jar in one sitting, if he can!  In my experience, a case of peaches (about 22 pounds) makes 10-12 quarts of canned peaches.  Obviously, this depends on if you had to throw away any bad fruit, etc.

A note about peeling the fruit- you can dip the peaches into boiling water for about 30 seconds, then plunge them into ice water- this blanching will let the skins slip right off.  In my experience, ripe peaches aren’t hard to skin at all, and blanching isn’t much faster than just peeling them outright.  Plus, blanching can make a big watery mess.