Fruit and One Vegetable
Jun. 28th, 2010 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluesgarden
Today, D and I made our way to another You Pick place, this one a bit closer to home and having black and red raspberries. A couple of hours netted us just under 20 pounds of berries and purple hands. :P We had fun and I'm seriously thinking about attempting black raspberry wine at some future date.
Once we made it back home, there was first napping (a necessity) then, while I picked peas, D broke out the roto-tiller and did some weed patrol. After that, he started mowing and I started cherry pie filling. Once those were in the canner, some of the remaining cherries were dipped in a pectin mixture and then laid out in preparation for drying and the black raspberries went in the juicer. After a while, the cherries could go in the dehydrator to run until tomorrow.
The cooled jars of cherries - 8 quarts and 8 pints, all raw packed in light syrup.
The problem with raw pack! This jar was filled with cherries before being filled with syrup and put into a boiling water bath for 25 minutes. Once they cook, they take up less space.
I did a better job with this one. :)
The cherry pie filling turned out tasty! I actually ended up with just over 4 pints using the USDA recipe, which allowed me to can them rather than taking up (precious) freezer space.
This is a steam juicer - an older one that D picked up at a yard sale for a couple of dollars. Water goes in the bottom, fruit goes in the top, and the juice falls into the middle to be siphoned off through the hose. I just turned off the stove and from the better part of a flat of black raspberries, I have both 1/2 gallon jars nearly full. \o/ It took a while, but the temp may have been a bit too low (and therefore not producing very much steam) for the first bit.
This juice will go to making jelly, but I'm also going to make some jam by the non-steam juicer method just to compare.
The pea harvest (the second official) was 1 lb. 2 oz. this time.
The dehydrator is running over night so now I just have a juicer to clean, another few dishes to do (let's not discuss how many times I do dishes in a day during the canning season), peas to shell, and... I might be done? For tonight?
