preserving summer

plums from our plum tree*

with us being gone for three weeks, our fruit trees producing rapidly, and simply having a much larger garden this year, i have a lot of fresh produce on my hands that i want to preserve. i have been busy, busy, busy this last week trying to find ways to keep the memory and taste of summer's bounty alive through the coming winter.

with the plums, i cut up a bunch and froze them to use for smoothies, but i also decided to try my hand at fruit leather - a new venture for me. i got some advice from my expert aunt and then decided that even though i didn't have everything i needed to really make it the way i wanted to that day, i would try a little sample by doing one batch in my oven overnight.

i pulled out my plum and banana fruit leather in the morning and it looked beautiful. until i tried to pull it off and realized that wax paper is not an appropriate substitute for seran wrap or parchment paper. whoops. i should have waited until i bought more seran wrap and borrowed a dehydrator from a friend.

they still look pretty, right?

i had a lot of basil that needed to be used, some fresh garlic left over from another recipe, and just the right amount of pine nuts in my pantry, so i decided to make pesto late one evening.

i froze it for later use, since we had already had some fresh pesto just a few nights before. i have heard of this method before but never tried it. it doesn't look too appetizing, but should taste fine. hopefully it works out. we only have fun shaped ice cube trays in our house, so i have triangle and stick pesto.

these are the berries i picked this week.

i canned some blackberry jam with them...

and made a delicious pie. my first pie, ever.

served up with a scoop of tilamook vanilla ice cream. delicious.

although this has nothing with preserving, this my latest favorite: a pear and pecan salad that i have probably eaten four times for lunch this week. it is a great summer salad. easy to make and impressive for guests. i have been eating it with poppy seed dressing instead of the dressing in the recipe, but that dressing is great, too.

it has been fun to try my hand at some different methods of food preservation that i haven't tried before and i am looking forward to making the most of my garden/tree situation this summer and doing some more into the fall. canning diced tomatoes and marinara sauce, canning and freezing peaches and pears, canning applesauce, drying apples, and a few other things are still on the list. we'll see how it goes. my children may mutiny before the season is up. i'm sure madeleine is sick of me putting her off "just a couple more minutes," while i try to finish cutting up more plums or whatever else i am working on. she'll thank me this winter?

*great photos courtesy of audrey's camera. she lost it at byu last week and thankfully, someone turned it in. i picked it up from campus for her and couldn't resist taking some great shots with it before returning it. thanks, audrey. i think i might need one of my own.