The business of Summer is, for me, a balancing act between preserving the abundance of fruits and vegetables that come up during this short season and enjoying the warm sunny weather with my family.
Saturday I put up two gallons of garlic scapes to ferment into pickles. I took yesterday off, albeit unintentionally, to sit by the neighbor's kiddie pool and comfort my over-tired three year old.
Today I have put a half-flat of strawberries in the freezer, and am getting ready to pit six pounds of cherries, also for the freezer.
In years past I put as much fruit into jams as I could manage. I still have two lonely jars from last year (one blackberry, one apricot) waiting for somebody who still eats toast to enjoy them. It is a bit of a welcome relief to realize I'll be taking the easy route this year. Fermenting into pickles, freezing, and dehydrating seem to be the best way to preserve the harvests without adding tons of sugar or depleting nutrients with heat. They are also far less labor intensive than traditional jams, jellies, and pickles.
What about you? Do you save your local harvests? What are your favorite methods?
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