Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Keeping Up

It seems like once fall hits it's so hard to keep up with harvest time. I've frozen a gazillion beans and peppers, dehydrated some tomatoes, and my latest project has been peaches. We didn't grow them but they are local. We got many many pounds of peaches from Cam's Grandparents in Williamsburg, IA. The challenge has been figuring out what to do with them before the fruit flies (or gnats or whatever you call them) drive us crazy!!
So as you can see I've been doing some jam up - I found this great product called Ponoma's Universal Pectin that allows me to use only fruit because it doesn't rely on high sugar content for gelling. Instead, I used fruit juice concentrate (frozen) as the sweetener. That allowed me to play around a little bit with a few flavors. All have a peach base but the juices I used (from left to right) are: Raspberry Cocktail, Apple, and Grape. They're all tasty and I won't have to buy jam for a VERY long time.
Another thing I tried was peach granola. I have a wonderful raw granola recipe that uses mostly apples which I replaced with peaches this time and instead of pineapple I used a couple of apples and the result is a tasty, crunchy treat. I really love the way it turned out!!

I've also made some peach roll ups and plan to make even more. In addition, I'll juice some peaches and freeze the juice in Ball freezer jars. I'll probably dehydrate the pulp or use it in more granola. I have a lot of work ahead of me.

3 comments:

David said...

Stacey,
Great blog. I found my way here by way of "environmental ministry" in your profile.
The granola looks and sounds great. Where's the recipe from?

Stacey D said...

I linked the recipe in the blog but you can find it on my raw food blog: http://staceyraw.blogspot.com/2008/10/trusty-raw-granola.html

Glad you stopped by :)

David said...

Stacey,
Thanks again for the recipe. As promised, I've posted a handful of green ministry resources at BIA. If you'd like, I'd also be happy to email some items that I have as PDFs. Once I have my Sunday school class outlined, I'd be happy to send you that, as well.