In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen
Vegetable harvests took second place to the fruit last week. You would think I’d lead with apricots or strawberry guavas. But looking at my blog landing page and the photo of the bush beans, I decided the beans were a splendid complement to the thumbnails of the previous four posts. Art over accuracy?
The apricot harvest is complete. Over the last ten days we harvested 51 pounds of apricots. The season total was 78 pounds over a month. The flavor and size of the three varieties, Gold Kist, Blenheim and Royal Rosa were the best we can remember. Last year’s total was 60 pounds both under the best year of 150 pounds. We don’t expect to ever repeat that as the “tree” (three trees pruned as one) is now thirteen years old. With five years of drought stress (2013- 2017) we lost some major branches.
The freezer was nearing capacity, so I rounded up all the canning jars I could find for apricot halves. I hadn’t canned for over thirty years and had left most of my canning jars in Massachusetts when we moved. My water bath canner did come to California though and with a quick review of the USDA’s National Center for Home Food Preservation and a recent Ball Blue Book I was ready. I used all my jars which was only ten but there was renewed pride in my accomplishment. In New England we canned dozens of quarts of applesauce and Bartlett pears every year from our fruit trees.
With such abundance we shared apricot gifts with neighbors and family.
The rhubarb plants are huge so I managed to make several quarts of rhubarb-applesauce with apples from our espaliered tree.
Today it’s Triple Berry Rhubarb Jam.
That’s the reflection of the strawberry guava tree in the puree.
Until recently, my freezer contained 15 quarts of frozen strawberry guava puree. I gave several away to a friend who loves the puree as much as I do.
Then, in a jamming marathon I made 30 jars of strawberry guava jam. My sister and I often make jam together but not this year with the coronavirus overruling.
Learning of my guava puree surplus, a friend asked if I had ever made guava paste. Admittedly, I had never thought of it but was enchanted by my first taste many years ago. So an internet search gave me a sense of what to do. With guava puree, lots of sugar and several hours of attentive cooking I had guava paste, richer and more flavorful than the tinned Goya guayabate I remember.
Loveliness is everywhere. You just have to look. I found it at the sink washing dishes recently.
You may enjoy seeing what other garden bloggers harvested last week at Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.
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