Preserving the Harvest by Susie Fox

My journey to become a registered dietitian started in my grandmother’s back yard in 1978.  About 70 years ago my grandparents planted an apricot tree and a plum tree, along with the obligatory citrus grown in Southern California.  Citrus is undemanding; just pick a lemon or an orange when you want one.  Citrus was generally happy on the branch waiting to be picked, and lemon trees would often bear year round.  

The plums and apricots were more abundant and more ephemeral.  Those loaded braches reaching to the ground didn’t last long.  My father took advantage of that phenomenon to eat the freshest possible apricot – one still attached to the tree as he gobbled the fruit around the pit.  There was no way to eat all the fresh apricots and plums before they fell to the ground and spoiled. 

My grandma Frieda was the first to teach me what to do with the bounty.  I found I LOVE stewed apricot, and apricot pie, though I don’t care for the fresh fruit at all.  When I had my own home in Los Angeles, and after my grandmother passed, I discovered I needed to use what I learned from grandma Frieda to handle a bounty of plums and I added to my skill set to make lemon curd for holiday presents.  Unfortunately, lemon curd can no longer travel in carry-on bags, but I have a few more skills to draw on this year.

The abundant plum tree.

Mmmm...yummy.

I have the great good fortune of living in a community where people have been planting and caring for the land long before my arrival.  We have 15 year old grape vines screening our parking lot.  From past experience I know that if we don’t pick and eat them before the weather gets cold and rainy, they start to mold on the vine.  We have 3 varieties but the most prolific is my least favorite.  The skin is bitter, so I end up sucking out the center and spitting out the peel.  

I had several adventures with grapes this fall using two techniques, jamming and drying.  Both had success and failures.  The first drying technique I used was picking bunches of grapes, washing, plucking the grapes off the stems, and putting them in a food dehydrator.  They have a lot of moisture and the skins are intact so it takes 2 – 3 days to dry them in an electric food dehydrator that provides both heat and a fan.  The result was impressive.  The tough bitter skins were no longer tough or bitter.  The raisin was sweet, and were preferred to the original grape. 

Grape jam..made with the skins on, then blended.

"Freezer jam" made and then popped in the freezer.

However there was a lot of sweet goo stuck to the screens of the food dehydrator.  I liked the sweet goo, but . . . couldn’t use it if it was stuck to the food dehydrator.  I noticed the “goo” was coming out of the hole in the grape that I created when plucking it off of the stem.  Next attempt – I put whole bunches of grapes, and small clusters in the food dehydrator still attached to the stem.  This worked much better, even though the food dehydrator trays didn’t stack as well.  Soon the grapes shrunk, and all looked normal.  Result – the stems shriveled to almost nothing, and the grapes were juicier, sweeter, and no mess.  Really cool to look at, fun and tasty, and it was faster since I didn’t have to destem the grapes.  They didn’t seem to take any longer to get dehydrated

Jamming was also fun.  I read several recipes, most asked me to separate the skins from the pulp and do different things with them.  That was too much work for me.  I decided to put destemmed grapes in the crock pot and see what happened.  After about 4 hours on low, it had cooked into mush which I ran through the Vitamix, shredding the skins nicely.  I then put it back in the crock pot and added sugar, and left it on low for 3 more hours.  

I wasn’t sure if it was “jammy” enough, so one batch was poured into a container for immediate use (not canned), and I put some on the stove to boil for about 20 minutes, and then put it in a “freezer jar”.  The 20 minutes on the boil was turned it into jam, it began as a great syrup for pancakes.  I also left some in the crock pot overnight on low . .  . . that turned to charcoal that I couldn't clean out of the crock pot.

Will I ever get the charcoal out of my crock pot?

Susie is a resident of Songaia and a registered dietitian.  She leads youngsters in garden and forest adventures:  http://www.foxintheforest.com/.