Before And After

Day 13: Between one of the Morris dancers and a Parkie friend, I came by a windfall of apples and pears this week, and settled in this morning to the job of paring, coring and canning. I seldom eat the tasteless, over-processed canned fruit sold in stores, but I find it hard to keep home-canned things on my shelf. Since both the pears and apples were tart varieties, I used a medium syrup, preserving the colour with a product called "Fruit Fresh." It's essentially a mix of ascorbic and citric acids, and when added to the syrup, it prevents the fruit from browning, not that any of this will last that long. I'm already into the plums I put up two months ago. Today, I canned two pints of pears and seven of apple chunks from at least five different types of apple. These are going to taste really good when the January snow flies.