June Harvest Foods
Strawberries fresh from the garden, straight to…
…yummy desserts and…
…freezer jam. I so love this jam, the strawberry flavor really shines and the sugar (compared to canning) is minimal (4 cups fruit to 1 & 1/2 cups sugar). The only pectin I’ve ever found that uses this little sugar is Ball’s No Cook Freezer Jam packets as shown below.
Husband also picked pounds and pounds of cherries for me this month and I got some rhubarb from a friend, so there was also some canning to be done.
Cherry pie filling in the back, rhubarb jam in the middle and cherry jam in the front. The rhubarb jam is new for me and I LOVE it. I tried two recipes, one with ginger, one without. The one with ginger is OK for chip dip (especially spicy chips) or good for jam if you really, really like ginger (recipe here). The cherry jam is a new recipe (seen here) as well. I find most jam and jellies use way too much sugar and it ends up masking the fruit flavor. The new rhubarb recipe left enough of the true flavor of the rhubarb for me and the cinnamon added a nice touch (recipe here).
Veggies from the garden thinly sliced for veggie fries. But I think I made them too small or too thin. I tried half in the oven and half in the microwave. I coated them with oil and salted them. Most of them turned out too burnt or too floppy, but a few were perfect. The candy cane looking rounds were Chiogga beets, the white was Oasis turnip, the red was Bull’s Blood beets, and the orange is Purple Haze carrots. I’ll try it again but I wish I had a mandolin to use. It is a very easy thing to do and if you have an abundance of veggies and like chips this is a must try.
I also have some basil in the fridge for pesto. I know this is going to be a yummy month.