Cherries

Last summer, one of Ed's former co-workers invited us to pick cherries from her cherry tree, so we did. We filled three buckets with sour cherries.

We made and canned some cherry pie filling. It tasted great, and the consistency was just like you'd get from the store. We used Mrs. Wages Fruit Pie Filling Mix. It yielded three quarts, but we canned them in pint jars instead of quart jars. We made two pies and a cobbler with them.

We also used our dehydrator and added the dehydrated cherries to cereal and homemade granola bars. I think we may have let them go a little too long in the dehydrator, so next time we'll have to keep an eye on them a bit more. They were too dry, but they still tasted good.

We froze what was left after canning and dehydrating. Thanks for letting us pick cherries, Becky!

Seedless Blackberry Jam

Here's another one of the jams we made forever ago that I never got around to posting. Ed doesn't like seedy jams (neither jams with seeds nor jams of disrepute), so I made some seedless blackberry jam using this recipe. It took a little more work than usual (to get the seeds out), but it came out really well.

The consistency was similar to apple butter, but a bit thicker. It's good on toast or with peanut butter in a sandwich.

Here's the label:

Would definitely make this one again!

Fig Jam

I should probably finish posting about all of the jams/jellies we gave for Christmas soon. I already posted about the Honey Lemon Jelly and the Meyer Lemon Jelly, and there are more to come after this one. So, we made fig jam. We made it some time around August of last year, which is when the cases of figs can be found at the local supermarket. We used a case of 18 figs and got about five or six half-pints (can't remember exactly, now that we've given most of them away).

Fig Jam

We used the Fig Preserves recipe from the book The Art of Preserving (Williams-Sonoma), which is the same book the Meyer Lemon Jelly recipe came from, but we wanted jam instead of preserves (preserves = fig pieces in syrup), so we crushed the fruit and cooked it until it was the right thickness.

Here's the label:

This tastes SO good! This is actually the second batch we've made of this jam, and I think it came out better than the first, which was already good. It was a bit thicker than our first batch, so it was more difficult to spread on soft bread, but it wasn't too bad, and the color was more vibrant in this batch. This recipe is definitely a keeper.

Honey Lemon Jelly

I'm still wading through the thousands of photos (not exaggerating) we took in Alaska, so once I get those narrowed down, I'll post about our trip. But for now, here's one of the jellies we made and gave as gifts last Christmas.

Honey Lemon Jelly

We used a recipe from the book Well Preserved by Mary Anne Dragan. It was quick and easy to make, and it's mostly sweetened by honey, so it has much less sugar than the usual recipes. It tastes pretty good. We've been putting it on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the past couple of weeks.

And here's the label I made:

Meyer Lemon Jelly

We made our first from-scratch jelly last year. We used the Meyer Lemon Jelly recipe from the book The Art of Preserving (Williams-Sonoma).

It takes a lot longer than the other jellies we've made using liquid pectin, but it was nice to try something different. The set is softer than we expected, but it doesn't really bother us.

The Meyer lemons have a very different taste (and price!) from regular lemons. We might try this recipe again with regular lemons for a comparison and a little more sour punch.

 
I made some labels using Avery 22807 2" glossy white round labels, which is the same kind I used last year. They're perfect for canning lids. I used the blank online template (on the Avery site) to design and print them.

Red Wine Jelly Taste Test

We had some red wine jelly left over in the 'fridge, so we spread it on some tea biscuits. It was quite good. The jelly has a strong aroma, but the biscuits sort of toned it down.

For once, the natural lighting was excellent. I think the snow reflecting the light helped a lot. I think I'm finally getting a feel for how to take decent photos with our camera.

Red Wine Jelly
Yields about 3-4 half-pints
2 cups red wine
3 cups sugar
1 pouch liquid pectin (3-oz. pouch)

Combine wine and sugar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (3-qt. or larger). Stir to dissolve sugar and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring continuously. Stir in pectin and boil for 1 min. Remove from heat. Skim foam, if necessary. Pour into glass canning jars and either: 1) let cool, then store in refrigerator, or 2) process 10 min. using boiling water method.

Canned Gifts

We made and canned several jams and jellies in 2011 and gave some to our family members. Ed's brother, Mike, really likes grapefruit, so we tweaked a recipe to make grapefruit jelly. It was actually pretty simple (just freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, sugar, and liquid pectin) and definitely tastes like grapefruit.



Grapefruit Jelly

We made some other jellies while we were at it, since the grapefruit jelly recipe only yields about 3 half-pints. We used some wine a friend brought to our house a long time ago for red wine jelly (the alcohol boils off when you make wine jelly, so it's more like a fancy grape jelly with a little different taste). It has a really pretty reddish-purplish color when you hold it up to light, but that didn't make for a good photo on the day I took these pictures. Red wine jelly can be used for flavoring roasts or tenderloins, among other things.


Red Wine Jelly

Next was white wine jelly. This tastes sweeter and milder--more like something you'd put on bread or crackers.
 

White Wine Jelly

 In early August, we made our first attempt at fig jam. We got a case of fresh figs from Valli Produce and used the whole case. The recipe yielded 6 half-pints, with a little left over to put in the 'fridge. It's really good.


Fig Jam

We made another batch of pineapple jam, which is a family favorite.


Pineapple Jam

And last, but certainly not least, kiwi daiquiri jam (that's what the recipe in the Ball preserving book calls it). We've made kiwi jam before, but this recipe is our new standard (one main difference is that it calls for powdered pectin instead of liquid pectin, which is what the other recipe called for). The best part is that the seeds are more evenly suspended (in the other kiwi jam, they would all rise to the top inch or two of the jar).


Kiwi Daiquiri Jam

I got some label stickers at Office Depot and made my own labels, so here they are all together and labeled (the light wasn't very good all week, and I needed to send these out, so it's not the best quality photo it could've been, but you get the idea).



It was fun to try some new recipes in 2011. Any suggestions for 2012?

2010: Year in Review

Since we weren’t blogging in 2010, here’s a quick run-down of what we were up to last year:

January: Jennifer went on a work trip to Washington, DC, with a side work trip to Annapolis, MD. She can recommend a few good restaurants if you're interested. Ed and his dad went to re-fight WWII at MMP's annual Winter Offensive in Bowie, MD.

February: Jennifer didn’t get the flu (up until this point, she would get the flu just before Valentine’s Day, like clockwork)! We went to the Wisdom for the Heart banquet on Valentine's Day--always a good time.

March:  Ed and his dad again went to a WWII ASL tournament, the Bitter Ender, in Raleigh, NC. Jennifer, her mom, and her grandmother went to Myrtle Beach, SC for a women's retreat and had fun together.

April: We went to Charlotte, NC to see Bill Cosby live. We did a lot of little projects around the house: more canning (pineapple jam), making two rain barrels, starting a garden, and some more baking (bread, pizza, and pretzel rolls).

May: We finished up the BSF year and stepped down as leaders. We went to the Biltmore Estate and finally got to see the flowers in bloom (until then, we’d only been there at Christmas time, which is nice, but we really wanted to see the flowers). 

June: Jennifer finished her first (and, so far, only) year of Chinese lessons at work. We went to colonial Williamsburg for the third time in a year, the first time in hot weather (we had to get our money's worth out of our year-long passes!).

Parade in Williamsburg, VA in June



July: Jennifer went on a work trip to the Dominican Republic. She'll talk a little more about this in the future. Stay tuned. Oh, and we canned some fresh cherries in a light syrup and saw Erwin Lutzer guest-preach at Colonial Baptist Church.

August: Ed got a new job (yay!) at Aqua-Aerobic Systems, Inc. in Illinois. Before starting his job at the end of the month, he went to Florida to help with some work at his grandmother’s house. We and Alexis also went to a Tears for Fears (TFF) concert (which was super fun) in Charlotte.

September: The movers packed us up (which feels really weird but is nice when you’re moving that far away) and Jennifer prepped the house to go on the market. Lots of painting and cleaning. Jennifer and Alexis went to another TFF concert over Labor Day weekend in Richmond, VA and got to be in the front-ish row (the “rows” were sort of fluid—standing room only). The next weekend, the girls (Jennifer, her mom, Ed’s mom, and Alexis) went to a theatrical performance of Mary Poppins in Charlotte. The performance was good and we had a good time together. Later in the month, Jennifer flew to visit Ed and unpacked a lot of our stuff (we didn’t know Jennifer would be moving in October back when we bought the non-refundable plane tickets).

October: Jennifer moved to IL to be with Ed and work her NC job remotely. We went to Ed's cousin's wedding in MI. Jennifer went on another work trip to Miami, FL and met a child star. Ed joined a community band because they had a bassoon he could use.

November: We got a water softener for our apartment (due to a chunky brewed tea incident...yeah). We canned some kiwi preserves because kiwi were 8/$1; it's really good, by the way. For Thanksgiving, we went to Minneapolis-St. Paul to visit with some friends from our church in NC who had relocated there. We also discovered that Jennifer apparently can handle the drum part on Rock Band.

December: We went to FL to visit with Ed’s grandmother and her side of the family for Christmas. While we were there, we went to The National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum. After that, we spent way too much time watching movies and shows on Netflix, but we needed some down-time as we recovered from colds (again).



At the beach in Ft. Pierce, FL

So, those are last year's highlights for us. We are so thankful that God provided for our needs, especially a job for Ed, and that He still is providing.