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Sometimes, it depends on if a freeze hits at the wrong time, or if it is a very hard freeze. About five years ago, orchards in Michigan lost peach trees to the polar vortex. In my area, there were some years that a honey vendor's trees had peaches, and I was always a willing customer for her organic "ugly" peaches, but she did not have the fruit every year. She has not been to the market since the summer of 2019.
I miss making peach jam.
That's a neat story about how you got your peach tree, Len. My grandmother's house had a pear tree, and I vaguely recall my grandmother saying that my grandfather had planted it. When researching family at newspapers.com, I found a story about his bringing back cuttings from Arkansas. That story pointed to the tree's origins. It was struck by lightning and died around the time my grandmother passed away.
I'm glad you and Diane are safe, Mike. My husband reports that in the week since he was at his larger woodlands, a cottonwood tree across the road came down. It was already cleared away, with a new utility pole replacing the one it took out. It also broke some of our fence. I am happy that it did not hit the black raspberry patch, as I want more berries next year!
Thursday was a busy cooking day. I made yogurt. I made another frittata for lunch. I made and canned the final batch of blackberry jam. For dinner, I roasted bone-in chicken breasts, which we had with the rest of the green bean, tomato, and feta salad I made yesterday.
Thanks to Mike for suggesting checking the canning lids. I found three defective ones--the inner sealing part. These came with the jars. I threw two away. One had slight damage around the edge, but not enough to prevent sealing, so I tried it on a small jar and it sealed. Ball needs to do better quality control.
I envy your 3 freezers, Chocomouse. I'm trying to figure out how to add a small chest freezer to complement our two refrigerators with freezers. That said, your priorities are straight: a fourth freezer for berries!
I made and canned another batch of blackberry jam on Wednesday afternoon. I had intended to do it in the morning, but a rainstorm caused a delay.
For dinner, I used a pound of green beans from our garden to make our favorite summer salad with cherry tomatoes (from the farmers market, as ours are not yet ready), black-eyed peas, green onion, halved black olives, a wonderful dressing, and sprinkled over individual servings, crumbled feta and toasted almonds. This salad will be on our menu for as long as we have green beans. We had it with ham sandwiches.
My husband harvested our first cherry tomatoes today--or rather, they came off in his hand. They are not yet ripe but will finish ripening on the porch. We have a lot of green tomatoes, so at some point we should have a good amount for cooking and making sauce for the freezer.
So far, we only have one honey nut squash. The plants are much slower than last year,
I baked an 8 x 8-inch blueberry streusel coffee cake on Tuesday. I used the countertop oven, and since I was using glass and convection, lowered the temperature from 375 to 350 F. Although it baked through, I could see on the bottom that it was browner where the dish was over the elements. I may not do a cake in a glass dish in that oven again.
I de-seeded the blackberries we picked last week on Tuesday. I have enough for two more batches of jam, and I froze two cups to use for blackberry chia seed jam in the future.
In the evening, I cooked a pot of black-eyed peas. I set some aside for a salad that I plan to make tomorrow and froze containers of the rest for future salads.
We found a good price on a ham at the grocery today, so we had ham sandwiches for dinner, using two buns from the freezer. We also had microwaved broccoli. We had planned to have sweet corn, but there was none at tonight's farmers market. The corn is slow this year.
I baked Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers on Monday from dough I made last week. My husband is happy to have his crackers again.
I tried a recipe for overnight oats that can be eaten either cold or hot. On Sunday evening, I mixed together ¼ cup Greek yogurt, ¼ cup milk, ½ tsp. honey (reduced from ¾ in recipe). I stirred in ¼ cup old-fashioned oats, then let it rest overnight in the refrigerator. (I deleted flax seed, 1 tsp. chia seed and ¼ tsp. vanilla.) The next morning, I topped it with ¼ cup fresh blueberries and about 2 Tbs. coarsely broken walnuts. I enjoyed eating it Monday morning. I can see other fruit and nut combinations. If I used dried fruit, I would add it the night before, but I would still wait to add nuts or pumpkin seeds until right before I would eat it.
For dinner on Monday, I made Crispy Oven Fish and Chips, which we had with microwaved fresh green beans from our garden. My husband is harvesting the green beans and reports that the plants are full of mosquitoes, a new occurrence for us.
We have been out of cookies for a couple of days, and I consider them a necessity for teatime, so on Sunday, I baked my butterless adaptation of a King Arthur recipe, "Soft Ginger and Molasses Cookies." I have baked it once before, and I think that was when I bought the ginger syrup the recipe specifies. As the opened bottle is sitting in my pantry, I wanted to use some more of it. I made a full recipe and ended up with 30 cookies. I hope that will get us through at least a week, but I am better at pacing myself with cookies than my husband is.
Sunday's dinner was easy: the rest of the turkey-zucchini loaf and the rest of the vegetable farro stir-fry.
You are a treasure, Rottiedogs! You always know where to look for this kind of information.
My husband casually mentioned on Saturday that I needed to thaw another loaf of bread. I pointed out that there was no more bread in the freezer and that an earlier heads-up would have been nice. So, in the late afternoon, I baked two loaves of Grape Nuts Bread. This time I used 3 cups of white whole wheat flour. I have found from past experiments that using regular whole wheat drowns the malt flavor. I hope this version will make a healthier bread as well as let the malty taste prevail. We will know when we slice a loaf tomorrow.
Update: the malty flavor comes to the fore with the white whole wheat flour, so I will use it in this recipe from now on.
I used a slightly generous 2 cups of seeded blackberry puree to make a refrigerator chia seed jam, using the same recipe I used for those marginal blueberries the week of July 7, then used the jam for Rye Bars. This time, I added 6 Tbs. of sugar, as blackberries can be more tart but used the same amount of chia seed. I will give it two days to set in the refrigerator then check to see if the consistency will work for another batch of the Rye bars.
To go with leftover turkey-zucchini loaf for dinner on Saturday, I made a farro stir-fry with green onion, celery, mushrooms, yellow squash, and kale. The farro was cooked in turkey/chicken broth from the freezer.
Joan--the recipe was called Oatmeal Scotchies
2 1/4 cups flour (I added the 1/4 cup for a firmer cookie.)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 Tbs. water (I omitted for crunchier cookies)
1/2 tsp. orange extract
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
12 oz. package butterscotch chipsI often added 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
I made and canned three 8 oz. and one 4 oz. jars of jam on Friday afternoon, using some of what I de-seeded yesterday. As I picked another 4 quarts this morning, and my husband picked a quart as well in between his other work, there will be more blackberry processing, but not until they rest in the refrigerator for a couple of days, as that makes them easier to de-see
For dinner, I wanted to make my usual turkey zucchini loaf, but it calls for a peach-Dijon mustard glaze, and I am out of peach jam and unlikely to get my hands on peaches to make more. I wondered if I could replace the peach jam with blackberry jam in the glaze. I googled and found various recipes that use that combination, so I replaced the peach with blackberry in my recipe. It is very good, so I will be using it when I make the turkey zucchini loaf.
To go with the meatloaf, I thinly sliced new potatoes from the farmers market and sauteed them in olive oil, stirring frequently for about 20 minutes, then lightly salted them at the end. I would have liked to use Sunny Paris, but I left them plain in deference to my husband and our dog. We also microwaved fresh green beans from our garden.
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