Preserving Log (Early Summer Edition)

I’ve fallen behind on my blogging, I’m afraid. Since the stay-at-home order was lifted early last month, I’ve been busier than a one-armed paper-hanger (as my mother used to say). 

Mostly, I’ve been working a lot. All the procedures and routine checkup and vaccination appointments and dentist appointments that were canceled during the lockdown have been rescheduled, and all the doctor’s and dentist’s offices are full. My agency is down by at least three interpreters. Two of them are elderly and not in great health and so are not taking appointments at the moment, and o e of them got stuck in Spain way back in March and hasn’t been able to come home yet. This means there is a ton of work for me, more than I want, really, but if I turn appointments down they often go unfilled.

In my free times, this is what I’ve been doing as far as preserving goes: 

 - several small batches (3-4 quarts at a time) salsa ranchera, as the gleaners pantry gives me the ingredients

- a gallon of kosher fills that is almost gone now. Yesterday I bought more pickling cucumbers and later on today I will gather grape leaves start a new batch

- a gallon ziploc of dried cherry tomatoes. Haven’t done this before and it’s really good. I season them with a little salt and garlic powder and then dry them till they are very leathery or even crisp. Nice for snacking and they add great flavor to a stew or soup.

- froze about a dozen quarts of strawberries. Went to the u-pick with friends when they were up visiting. 

And today I am breaking out the big stockpot to deal with this:

That’s about 25 pounds of mixed stone fruit from gleaner’s. After I separated the fruit that was too far gone and picked out the fruit that was still perfect for eating fresh, I was left with about ten to twelve pounds of slightly overripe fruit. The last hour or so has been devoted to bleaching, peeling, and chopping and my kitchen looked like a couple of murders had taken place (red plums!) but now I have this simmering on the stove:

Spicy stone fruit chutney. It has cinnamon, cloves, black pepper, red pepper flakes, a TINY hint of garlic, brown sugar and apple cider vinegar. It smells like heaven and it ought to be delicious with pork chops, chicken breasts, or maybe a hearty fish like halibut. It’s super pretty, too. 

But man there’s gonna be a lot of it. I think this may be my Christmas present to a few people this year. 

Still sitting out on the front porch: a crate of corn on the cob to be shucked, shaved, and frozen; and about ten pounds of jalapeños to be turned into rajas en escabeche. I might get the peppers done today, but he corn is gonna have to wait.