Low Sugar Apricot Jam

Good Results of a Jam Session

Recipe adapted from Happy Girl Kitchen

As I promised in my refrigerator Apricot Jam post, here's another recipe for Apricot Jam from a class by Happy Girl Kitchen, our local food preservationists. This small family-owned business tried many combinations to get the perfect apricot flavor, color, and gel. They experimented with alternative sweeteners such as agave and honey, but did not get  good results. Even though this uses more sugar than my recipe, it looks better, keeps longer, and has a more complex flavor. The addition of lemon is key to both color and flavor. Lemon also adds acidity, the factor that makes preserved foods keep safely.

Apricot-Plum Stuffing for Apricot-Honey Glazed Hens

Apricot-Honey Glazed Hen with Apricot-Plum Stuffing

Recipe by Robin, inspired by Hawaii Kai Cookbook

Although you could choose to stuff something besides hens this, as I’d said in my Apricot Glazed Cornish Hens post, I wanted to create a stuffing for the hens with local California apricots, plums, and almonds. My first attempt was a success, largely due to some panko breadcrumbs that I happened to have on hand from a failed recipe. I’ve read that you can make your own panko crumbs by leaving a slice of white bread out overnight and crumbling it up the next day.

Week 17 Menu Plan

Pick up Some Blackberries When You Go Out

Featuring radishes, berries, apricots, green beans, potatoes and purslane!

Instead of red potatoes this week, we received the first yellows of the year. My fellow blogger Mira over at Grains and More posted a recipe for Purslane Soup that I want to try, possibly without the peas because we don’t have them. Plenty of arugula or greens, though, if that would work—NOT!

Week 17 Veggie List & Ideas

Our Wacky Apricot Tree: Still Providing Apricots!

It’s the middle of summer and nary a ripe tomato or pepper in Santa Cruz county, thanks to our cool rainy spring. We are getting lots of green beans, potatoes, blackberries, and raspberries. Apricots keep ripening on our crazy tree that fell over at a 45 degree angle last spring, and there are plenty of ‘cots at the local Farmers Market too. I’ll be posting another Apricot Jam recipe soon.

Preserving Fruits: Berries in Light Honey Sauce

Assorted Raspberries and Blackberries

Recipe adapted from Happy Girl Kitchen

A most intriguing idea for preserving berries came to me in a jam-making class by Happy Girl Kitchen, and it’s not a jam. It’s berries in a light honey sauce. Honey preserves and intensifies the berries' flavor. These berries are particularly delicious over lemon bread, chocolate cake, or ice cream in the middle of winter. You can experiment with the amount of honey that you like. Happy Girl uses 1 part honey to 10 parts water, and warns that using more honey can overpower the fruit. But you might like extra honey flavor!

Preserving Fruits 1: Frozen Stone Fruits

Frosty Fresh-Frozen Apricots

Recipe by Debbie from Live Earth Farm

Next week is the middle of summer, and my thoughts turn to preserving the bounty of this time of year. I was talking with my sister Chris about the jam making class I took from Happy Girl Kitchens. She’s in the Southwest, so her local seasonal foods are quite different from ours on the central CA coast. She’s all about the chilies, and especially likes hot and sweet sauces: chilis combined with everything from bananas and mango to strawberries and rhubarb to apricots and plums.

Quick Asian-style Collard Greens

Quick Asian-style Collards Plated

Recipe Inspired by Live Earth Farm

This recipe is a variation of my Hot Kale Salad with Balsamic & Hot Chili Oil, which in turn was inspired by Debbie Palmer, kitchen wizard and Live Earth Farm’s CSA coordinator emeritus. Debbie’s original recipe uses lemon juice in place of vinegar and parmesan in place of sesame seeds. She uses this to dress all kinds of greens. I've made more complex sauces for Asian Greens, but this simpler, faster recipe is surprisingly tasty.

Week 16 Menu Plan

Apricots from our Tree

Featuring potatoes, leeks, collards, green beans, large radishes, zucchini, berries

Potatoes again this week, and they keep getting bigger. Luckily, we are still getting leeks and enjoying the simple goodness of potato-leek soup with and without milk. Perhaps I’ll change it up with some fresh marjoram from the garden this week. Our bounty of green beans this week are inspiring me to make a healthy bean casserole--just like Mom used to make, but without the canned fried onions and cream of mushroom soup. I’m combining two recipes (one for onion topping and one for bean part), with a few tweaks of my own and will share if it’s post-worthy.

Week 16 Veggie List & Ideas

Returning Strawberry Baskets to LEF for Reuse

This is the 16^th week of our CSA’s 16^th season. That means Live Earth Farm has been providing farm shares to subscribers since 1995! Although we’ve only been members for 3 years, I’ve known Live Earth Farm since about 1999, the first year that Farmer Tom and Constance asked me to play music at their Summer Solstice Celebration, an annual party in the fields for members. One of my favorite parts of this Celebration is the U-Pick strawberries. In fact, the deliciousness of the strawberries, year after year, is what finally convinced Bruce and me to become members.

Summertime Roasted Beets

Roasted White & Rose Beets on Their Greens

Recipe by Robin

I have a few recipes for roasting winter veggies that I’ll share come January. When we received rose-and-white baby beets this week, we wanted to roast them along with some Lemon Ginger Chicken we were baking, to fully utilize the energy our oven consumes. So I adapted a winter recipe for summer. I substituted apple cider vinegar for the heavier balsamic and red wine vinegars, and freshened it up by using fresh parsley in place of dry thyme.