July Fruit Preserving Roundup

The dining room became a disaster zone over the past week -- loading and unloading new jars, packing up processed jars, dehydrator parts scattered on top of boxes. With the hot, dry summer that we are experiencing in Ontario, a lot of fruits and vegetables are coming in early. I was worried about missing the bulk of cherry season and with my summer vacation approaching, did not want to completely miss apricots and golden plums while I am away. Also, I wanted to start pickling beets every few weeks since we currently have none in the pantry.

I have compiled all of the recipes that I tried over the last week while there is still time to preserve.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation is still my first stop as a reference tool when canning a new fruit or vegetable. Separately, I made golden plums and apricots in syrup. NCHFP provides the water to sugar ratio for the syrup for a variety of fruits.

While on the subject of golden plums and apricots, I found a great recipe to a combined jam from Canadian Living. The jam is a beautiful golden colour while the taste is sweet and tart. This non-pectin jam took about 30 minutes to cook to the proper setting stage.

If you are interested in an apricot jam recipe, check out my apricot-riesling jam post from last year.

With the help of the husband (who lovingly pitted nine quarts of cherries on a Sunday afternoon), we made four jars of bourbon cherries, nine jars of cherries in simple syrup and eight jars of cherry jam. For the jam, I ended up with 11 cups of cooked cherries and it took one and a half hours to reach the proper setting stage.