This morning I took a quick walkabout in the orchard. Man-o-MAN (!), have those trees ever been busy. It looks like it is going to be a good year for fruit around here :)
This pic is of apples, of course. I can't help but think of the song "Little Green Apples" .
Now, here's the thing. When fruit trees are overloaded, it is wise to thin out the fruit so that the remaining fruit gets bigger. It's a painful thing to do when you have a small orchard.
Not wanting to be wasteful, I spent some time on the Internet researching unripe apples. Most recipes were for making apple jelly.
Apples are a natural source of pectin, the ingredient that makes jams and jellies set up. I found several recipes for making other jellies using the unripe apples instead of buying a commercial pectin.
Most of those recipes looked like too much of a commitment because they call for letting cooked apples drain in a jelly bag for a few hours or overnight.
No, thanks.
Then I found this recipe for strawberry/apple jam. It's exciting because strawberries are ripe now and I can purchase locally raised berries at our farmers markets. The drawback is that the recipe calls for a ripe Granny Smith apple, not unripe apples. But hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained as "they" say!
If I decide to give this a try, I'll certainly blab, I mean, blog about the experience. I've made jam and jelly many times, of course, but never with "little green apples", so it will certainly be venturing into a new territory!
Marcheta *feeling venturesome :)
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