I Survived the 2011 Peaches and Blueberries!

My new favorite thing that resulted from taking advantage of Tree Ripe Citrus deliveries is fruit leather!

I have made and stored lots of little snack packs of peach leather.  It is a little bit fussy to make, but will be worth it when we can snack on yummy peaches this winter.

To make it, I added ½ cup of water to each pound of peeled, pitted, and halved peaches.  I just used an average of 3 peaches per pound so I didn’t have to keep weighing.  It isn’t rocket science, close works.  I brought these to boiling over high heat and then reduced the heat and simmered for 20 minutes while mashing the peaches with a potato masher.  Next, I lined a strainer with damp cheesecloth and drained off the juice until it quit dripping.  The juice can be used for peach jelly, sweetened with honey and added to iced tea, or just drunk straight.  The drained pulp went into the blender with a bit of honey until it was pureed.  I had to experiment with the honey…no honey left the leather pretty tart, which the kids weren’t crazy about and too much left the dried leather sticky and hard to handle.  Since I do everything completely by the seat of my pants, I have no idea how much honey worked; I just eyeballed it.  But if I had to guess, I’d say 1-2 teaspoons per 3 peaches would probably be in the ballpark.  Then I smeared the puree onto the dehydrator fruit leather trays and let her rip at 135°F (which is what my dehydrator recommends for fruit).  It would also work to spread it on wax paper on cookie sheets and dry it in a warm oven.

Here is the finished leather.

I cut it into strips with clean kitchen shears and stuck the strips to wax paper.  I folded the wax paper in half and then folded it up…

…so it would fit in a snack size ziplock baggie.  Since there aren’t any preservatives, I tossed all the baggies in the deep freeze.  I can grab a baggie or two out of the freezer and toss it into my bag when we go to playdates or open gym or the park.  They should be thin enough and low moisture enough to defrost pretty quickly.

From 5 half-bushels of peaches and 40 pounds of blueberries, the final tallies for peachy and blueberry-y goodness put away are:

• Dehyrated Blueberries: 5 pints
• Frozen Blueberries: 2 quarts
• Blueberry Butter: 8 half-pints and 1-4 oz. jar
• Blueberry Pie Filling: 5 pints
• Blueberry Syrup: 6½ pints
• Blushing Peach-Almond Conserve:  10-4 oz. jars
• Honey Peach Syrup (for iced-tea): 8 pints
• Frozen Peach Halves:  2 half-gallons
• Peach Leather:  20 snack bags
• Peaches in Light Syrup:  35 quarts
• Zesty Peach BBQ sauce:  7 half-pints and 1 pint

Peachy Keen

After taking care of the blueberries, I turned to lots and lots of peaches.  It wasn’t until I got into the third box of peaches that I discovered the brochures that the Tree Ripe folks had tucked in and learned that our blueberries had come from Luduc Blueberries in Paw Paw, Michigan and the peaches came from Pearson Farms in Georgia.

I started with Blushing Peach Almond Conserves, which is a freezer jam with toasted almonds and almond flavoring that I had made last year.  I learned my lessons from last year and packaged it in tiny jars as I discovered that it gets brown and tastes funny after being in the refrigerator even a few days.  It is completely yummy so it was extremely tragical to have to throw away stuff that had gone icky.

Next up was Zesty Peach Barbecue sauce.  Also extremely yummy and a half-pint has already been used on pulled chicken in the crockpot.  In the process of perusing peach recipes and flipping around in my canning cookbook I found a helpful tip that complete altered my life.  It turns out that you can peel peaches the same way as tomatoes…by dunking them in boiling water for about 30 seconds and then the skin practically slides off.  After some trial and error—if you go too long, the skin pretty much falls off and it is almost impossible to cut the peach in half and remove the pit since the peach is so slippery; if you don’t dip long enough, picking off the skin is annoying and piddly—I had honed halving, pitting, and peeling to a fine art.  When not distracted by kids or animals, I could do close to three peaches a minute.  Last year I peeled all the peaches with a paring knife and was almost ready to fling myself off something tall by the time I had gotten through all of them.

I applied my mad prep skills in putting up 14 quarts of peach slices in light syrup and 8 pints of honey spiced peach slices.  The leftover honey syrup practically begged to have more peach flavor and be put in iced tea.  There was enough left over that I made a couple small batches of peach juice to mix with the syrup and freeze.  The juicing left some lovely pulp that I pureed with a bit of honey to make fruit leather in the dehydrator.  I put the fruit leather slices on wax paper and then into baggies which went into the freezer.  They will provide a lovely taste of peachy goodness for snacks at open gym or running errands this winter.  When apple season rolls around, those will make great fruit leather as well.

The last few peaches got peeled, pitted, halved, dipped in lemon water and frozen on cookie sheets before going into two half-gallon canning jars in the freezers.  These will be great for smoothies or, as I discovered while packaging them up, a tasty frozen snack for the dog days of summer.

In between, I made two peach upside-down cakes, a couple batches of raspberry/peach popsicles (raspberries came from our CSA), and all of us just plain chowed down plain peaches.  Next Wednesday, the Tree Ripe folks will be back in Stoughton.  I am planning on getting more peaches and blueberries.  I would like to can both peach and blueberry pie filling, do a few more quarts of peach slices in light syrup, more blueberry syrup and butter, and more dehydrated and frozen blueberries!

Feeling kind of blue

No, not that kind of blue…blueberry blue.  And based on how many I have eaten, I might be looking at least a little blue as well!  The truck we bought Georgia peaches from last year also had Michigan blueberries this year, so last Wednesday, the kids and I trekked to the local bowling alley and came home with 15 pounds of blueberries and 1.5 bushels of peaches.  In addition to all of us eating a lot of blueberries, I also managed to put away a quart of frozen berries, two pints of dehydrated blueberries, 3½ pints of blueberry syrup, and 4 half-pints and one quarter-pint of blueberry butter.  The blueberry syrup and butter come from one recipe…the berries are cooked down, the juice and pulp separated and then the syrup is made from the juice and the butter is made from the pulp.  The truck will be back once more at the end of the month and I really hope I can get more blueberries then!  I would love to do at least one more batch of the syrup/butter and freeze some more!
Since the peaches need at least a couple of days to start softening up, I have only made a dent in those.  Collectively, we have eaten quite a few and I have put up 7 half-pints of zesty peach barbecue sauce.  Tonight I will be doing some blushing almond peach freezer jam.  In the morning, I am planning on making a peach upside-down cake for a homeschool potluck tomorrow afternoon and evening and possibly start canning quarts of peach slices.  There will be a whole bunch of peach slices as we went through them VERY fast last winter!.  I will hopefully also get some frozen slices or chunks and maybe a couple batches of fruit leather…we’ll see!

ETA:  Blueberries came from Leduc Blueberries in Paw Paw, Michigan

Making changes

2011 appears to be declaring itself the year of home improvement.  With three kids, we are living in constant chaos and I feel like I go into cranky-mommy meltdown mode fairly regularly to try and restore some order.  There have been times in my life where home was basically a place to eat meals and fall asleep between hectic here-and-there-ing.  As a homeschooling mom, I am finding that we need our house to be a place that is more conducive to creating and learning and just plain old living.  I am reading Shelter for the Spirit:  How to Make you Home a Haven in a Hectic World by Victoria Moran.  This book was recommended in one of the sessions I went to at the homeschooling conference last spring and has turned out to be just the right book at the right time to make our space more livable.

Being in a rental, there are some things that just aren’t going to happen.  It makes no sense for us to invest time and money in making things more like we like them only to have nothing to show for them when we move out.  So, early last month, I went through our place, room by room to figure out what we need to live with and what changes we can make to make things work.  A few things clearly fall in the need-to-live-with category are the dishwasher and washing machine.  Each has significant personality issues and after several requests to the landlord are as fixed as they are going to get.  So if you could send a good word to the deity of your choice for them to die completely so the landlord HAS to do something, I would appreciate it.

So I have developed my big list which includes simplifying and reducing stuff where we can and getting the stuff we have better organized, as well as creating spaces for our living to happen.  There is also a whole category of things that I am doing to keep things that were a problem when we moved in from getting worse and quick and dirty cosmetic fixes I can do to make things look nicer.

So far, I have made a bit of progress in our upstairs bathroom and in the basement.  Most of the bathroom had crumbly caulk and clear evidence of mildew under the linoleum.  After fight the futility of trying to keep water inside the bathtub for too long, I finally got it fixed.  Really the lino needs to be replaced, with some work on the floorboards underneath, but I did the best I could to get everything sealed tight so we can have splashes without aggravating the problem.  We also finally replaced the light bulbs above the sink with CFLs.  The bulbs were gradually burning out and I didn’t feel the love for having two types of bulbs going on, so we waited until half of them were gone and then replaced them all.  It is now possible to see in the bathroom again.  Very exciting stuff.  Since I have my fancy pants white caulk, I will probably go in and recaulk the sink just so it looks better at some point, too.

The basement has also been getting my attention.  We spent the better part of a weekend planning out shelves.  We currently have a mish-mash of shelves and storage containers and have accumulated just too many toys.  So the first job was upgrading storage.  Since we don’t expect to be in this place forever, we decided that it made more sense to go with something modular that can be taken apart to be moved or to be repurposed.  We have some of these shelves in the garage, so we spent a weekend planning out how many and what size of shelves we wanted and had our pantry shelves put up a couple of days later.  Now I have a good place for canning supplies and equipment, as well as a place to keep the full jars.

We also mapped out shelves for the play area, but the end pieces had to be special ordered, so we didn’t get them until just last weekend.  I have been working on them since.  Putting the parts together is easy.  The shelves themselves, however are a bit fiddly.  The narrower shelves above only needed a chunk about 1” x 1/8” taken off the sides at both the front and back edge.  After having done the ones in the garage, I have gotten pretty good at whacking out what I need to with the Dremel.  And the pantry shelves have only two shelves with a grand total of eight corners, so it went pretty quickly.  However, the shelves for the toy area are taking longer.  For the wider shelves, the premade shelves we are using are a bit too wide, so in addition to the four corners, I also have to take 15/16” of the long edge.  I wish I lived closer to family members who have a table saw or a radial arm saw, but I have gotten pretty handy with my Skil saw, so I am working away.  The other part that is taking much longer is that there are seven shelves, so that means sawing off seven edges and shaping twenty-eight freakin’ corners.  I finished four of the shelves today.  The bad news, however, is the reward for finishing the other three is that the next job is going through all the toys and getting rid of everything that is broken and winnowing down things that don’t get played with.  It is very likely to be not pretty as neither Bug nor Bean parts easily with belonging.

I am once again hoping to get back into the habit of blogging, but I’ve made that promise before, so don’t hold your breath!

Sheep and Wool Swag

What a busy weekend!  We started in earnest on Friday.  In the morning we hit the farmers market for yet another big ol’ box of scratch and dent tomatoes.  We dropped them at home and then headed east to Jefferson to take in some sheep and wool at the (appropriately named) Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival.  Since we went on Friday this year instead of Saturday or Sunday, we missed out on the shearing demo and hall of breeds (which were just starting to set up when we were there), but we did get to see some brand-spankin’-new widdle lambies.  The wee lambikins were only hours old and so cute.  Mr. Beeb insisted that he was a baby baa for the rest of the afternoon.

After bribing the small fries with the promise of a shaved ice if they cooperated, Mama got to look around the market.  Oooo…so many pretties.  Due to budget and time constraints, only two got to come home with me.  I had to get a handpainted sock blank since I want to be Molly Bees when I grow up.  She recently finished knitting these socks from this sock blank (scroll down)

Obviously, the picture doesn’t stay intact, but I just love these colors!  The blues!  The greens!  The blue-greens!  And that wild splash of pinks and oranges.  I can’t wait to see how they turn out.  I have a pair of socks on the needles, so I’ll be in a big rush to finish those so I can start these.  I’m about an inch away from done with the first sock, so I hope they go quick.

After a bit of an incident with Gale’s Art last year, I had to stop again this year.  So many pretties that it was hard to choose, but I decided to go with some impossibly soft blue-faced Leicester in natural colors.  I still covet the trindle spindles I saw last year, but I need to get back to spinning more before I can possibly justify more spindles.  I have a feeling that Gale’s Art might become an annual thing…

When we got home from Sheep and Wool, I peeled, cored and chopped tomatoes and now have four and a half gallons of chopped tomatoes ready to be turned into barbecue sauce.  I made one batch and am trying a couple of other recipes to find if we have a favorite.

Yesterday, Mike and I went to downtown Madison to watch our beloved Hawkeyes demolish their cross-state rival Iowa State.  We got to watch on a big screen and we weren’t the only ones screaming at the TV for a change.  The kids had a fabulous afternoon playing with their adopted grandma.

Ms. Bean and I had a quick trip up to Madison this noon to see a doctor.  She has been a bit under the weather the last week or so (snuffley and coughing), but this morning she woke up so congested that she was wheezing.  She got a nebulizer treatment and perked up considerably.  We’ll be doing the nebulizer more at home and following up with our primary care doc this week.  Based on the timing of it, I have strong suspicions that she has the same seasonal allergies and drainage as me.  I have been taking enough antihistamines to keep from getting all congested, but the nice weather that lets us sleep with the windows open might be taking its toll on both of us!

Peachy Keen

We have plowed through almost 2/3 of the peaches.   We had peaches and cream one night for a bed-time snack.  I made two small peach upside-down cake (that didn’t turn out…my pan wasn’t exactly the right size and the middle didn’t get baked all the way, but it was still tasty!  I made two batches of peach freezer jam (totally seven pints) and put up six quarts of peach slices in light syrup.  We have also eaten an impressive quantity of peaches just plain.  I guess one of the hazards of eating seasonally is gorging until you are dreaming about the produce item and never want to see another one (well, at least not until next year).  Blushing Peach Almond Freezer Conserve is up next tonight if I can pick up some maraschino cherries at the grocery store tonight and perhaps a peach cobbler for dessert.  Then, tomorrow a batch of spiced peaches and I think that will be the end of the peaches.  Any that are left will either be consumed by the locusts that disguise themselves as my children, or, if I can move fast enough, frozen.

It’s a peach!

This morning, I got two half bushel boxes of Georgia tree-ripened peaches out of a truck in the bowling alley parking lot.  My weekend plans include peach freezer jam, Blushing Peach Almond Freezer Conserve, Peaches in light syrup, and Honey-Spiced Peaches.  The house is going to going to smell so good!  That is, if the kids don’t eat them all before then.  Also, I wouldn’t be TOO upset if the humidity were to drop a teensy bit before then.  Maybe a peach upside-down cake…oooo, or peach cobbler?  Maybe I should have gotten a couple more boxes!

We are tentatively planning to do U-pick blueberries up in the Dells next week, so canning season is gearing up.

Garden Time

Aaaaand, turning to a happier topic…

We will be doing the same CSA as we did last summer so we are getting very excited for lots of wonderful veggies to come.  The things I selected to plant around the yard were things for canning and/or to fill in CSA gaps.  I thought I would photograph, label, and blog so there is at least a remote possibility I’ll remember what is where when things start sprouting.  First, the little garden plot:

Herbs in front…we got the onions as transplants from a friend, the cilantro was just seeded today and the oregano and sage are back from last year

Tomatoes around the edge…three varieties.  We ran way short on canned tomatoes last year, partly due to the late blight, so my motto is “Never too many tomatoes.”

The three sisters in the middle…corn, beans, and squash.  Since we get a ton of regular squash from our CSA, we did half in sugar pumpkins and half in birdhouse gourds.  We will experiment with dried corn and cornmeal with the corn, dried beans to be canned for chili, pumpkins for canning, and birdhouse gourds to dry and make into projects.

Next along the side yard:

Watermelon for eating and rinds for watermelon pickles and a little bit of soybeans for edamame snacks.

In the front:

Lavendar for drying and making lavender syrup.  I have gotten fatally hooked on lavendar white chocolate iced mochas at the ‘Bou and rose white chocolate iced mochas at the Ear.  Wild flowers are for the pretty.  I will try again with bulbs in the fall.  I planted bulbs in the fall shortly after we moved here, but they keep getting nibbled by critters.  Not enough to completely kill them off, but enough to keep them from budding or thriving.  The little SOBs were tunneling under the steps and up into the bed.  So this spring I dug all the dirt (down to clay) out of the planter, made a five sided wire cage out of wire mesh left over from the compost bin project, and put the dirt back.  We’ll let the rodents give it the old college try over the summer and plant bulbs this fall if it is a success.

And finally, herbs on the porch:

The only planting I have left is three topsy-turvey planters that I will plant with seedlings that I’ll get when our CSA has its open house, a rhubarb plant I got at farmers’ market last week and some Lily of the Valley that will be put along the back of the house.  I’m thinking a cherry tomato, a jalapeno, and maybe a green pepper for the topsy-turveys.

Yes I Can!

and have been doing so frequently. Can, that is. I got a pressure canner for my birthday and have been using it a lot. So far this summer I have "put up" strawberry and raspberry (both red and yellow) freezer jams, concord grape jelly, pickled beets, watermelon pickles, crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, sauerkraut, beans, greens, creamed corn, and pinto beans. I did the pinto beans as an experiment with my new pressure canner and many other kinds of dried beans will follow when the weather gets cold! The low price tag of dried beans without the hassle of always remembering to soak them the night before? Priceless! At some point, I need to get some pictures of my stash. The grape jelly is particularly lovely if I do say so myself. When I held it up to the light for Miss Bean, she said, "It shimmers like purple diamonds!"

Also, it turns out that the veggies in my chili recipe fit nicely in a quart jar:

So this winter, if I get kidney beans canned, there will be some super easy batches of chili this winter! Other than dumping jars and cooking, the only thing I will need to do is measure and add seasoning, water or beer, and ground been and/or TVP.

There will be at least one more trip to the orchard for apples for apple butter and apple sauce. We got a big bag of eating apples and all the grapes for jelly there last weekend. The concord grape jelly? Between that and the freezer jam, I don't think I am ever going to buy jelly at the store again. The homemade is SO GOOD, that I believed I have been completely spoiled rotten for the other kind. This weekend will be another big batch of sauerkraut as we currently have two CSA cabbages in the fridge.

There are FOs to post and lots of other stuff coming soon...I hope!!!

w00t! We have finished objects

First up, a whole mess of hats (and one pair of mittens) knit for charity. There are a bunch, but I have been going to the Sow's Ear Charity Knit for at least three months now, so spread these out over at least that long!



There is one more hat that fits between the mittens and the green hat. It has a tassle that matches the first two hats and the rest is green. I handed it over to the Sow's Ear without taking a picture. Hat number eight is on the needles. These are pretty quick and pleasantly mindless!

Next up spinning, but not mine! Well, okay, partly mine as I had a hand pretty heavily involved at most times! Here's Bugs:



A very high energy single yarn, which is remarkably apropos! And here is Beans:



Not much, as she lost interest more quickly, but I'm sure we'll pick it back up again sometime.

Next up, mine again. Because I simple do not spend enough time at the Sow's Ear, I have added the monthly Dish-cloth-along. September was a fallish squirrel (in the ever so fallish colorway Swimming Pool):



Next up, more of the kids' handiwork. I have been trying to get Bug started with finger knitting as I have heard that it can be fabulous for helping spunky/spirited/crazy kid settle themselves down. We have had limited success with the finger knitting (VERY limited compared to the frustration level!), so when I saw one of these demonstrated by one of the other kids at our homeschool group, I picked one up for Bug to try. And it was a resounding success. He loves it and has declared himself ready to go to Knit Night. Here is his first FO, a snake:



Bean was devastated at Hobby Lobby since Bug was getting something and she wasn't, so when we got home, I dug through my old cross-stitch supplies and got her started with embroidery (or, as she calls it, sewing). She picked out the colors and did all the sewing herself:



She has picked out a second set of colors and is currently working on her second piece.

Finally, one more from me. I finished up the last of the apples we picked last week and now we have:



There are two pints of apple butter and six pints of applesauce. That's in addition to the batch of applesauce we made last week (and ate the same day), the additional pint or so of applesauce I put in the fridge for dinner tonight, the half pint of apple butter that went straight into the fridge from this batch and about five half pints in the freezer from the first batch of apple butter. I'm going to be peeling and coring apples in my sleep!

Hopefully, I will have a few more FOs before long...I have several thing so close, but just need to be tipped over the edge (which I am just FAMOUS for, by the way). Laminaria just needs blocking, the purse I am making with the leftovers from the kids' slippers is so close...I just need to felt the handle and sew it on. When I felt the handle, I can FINALLY finish Bean's princess hat. I just need to find the purse handle. Umm, yeah. One of the hazards of moving.