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Jul. 9th, 2005 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI picked more raspberries this morning. I have about three quarts of them now, been throwing them in the freezer until I decide what I want to do with 'em. They made an assload of raspberries this year -- some years they do better than others and this year, despite being on the dry side, was apparently good for raspberries. Now, I don't want to get into the my raspberries make more than yours do competition because I'm pretty sure I'll lose. Joe's raspberries are prolific as hell, at least that's the impression I got when he called me up the other week to find out how many raspberries one would need to make a pie out of them. (A normal-sized pie takes five cups of fruit.) This was after he'd thrown some at the neighbors and so forth. Apparently he's drowning in red raspberries over there in Mt. Wolf. This happened a couple of weeks ago at his house with strawberries.
Judging from observed results, I'm moved to note that anyone wanting to grow red raspberries should give the cultivar Heritage a whirl. It grows like a weed under mild neglect -- his patch is continually threatening to eat the shed at the back of his yard. The fruits are large, the canes vigorous... right, damn it, I'm jealous of his raspberries. *sigh* I have raspberry envy. I'm not saying that my raspberries are lame. They're not. I like 'em a lot, honest... but his are very alluring.
I think he should learn to make jam. It's not like that's difficult. Recent experiments with strawberries have led me to believe that one can make a quite tolerable fruit spread item by cooking down fruit a third (by volume -- if you start with three cups of fresh fruit, cook until you have two cups of cooked fruit) and then adding an equal amount (by volume) of sugar. In our example, you'd start with three cups of fruit, cook-and-mash until you have two cups of stuff, add two cups of sugar, and then cook the lot until it's suitably thick. The commercial pectin stuff (it makes jelly and jam set up, the most common brand in these parts is Sure-Jell) is designed to give you a maximal volume of jelly or jam from a minimal volume of fruit. Sometimes, yield isn't what you want. Sometimes, getting the hell rid of the damn fruit before it rots is what you want... and yield isn't as important as using up a volume of fruit in a hurry. Interestingly, when you go into making-preserves with the intent to use up fruit instead of the intent to generate huge yields, you come up with substantially better-tasting stuff.
Also, there is a skunk living under my house. This is somewhat annoying because the reek of skunk rises up from underneath the floorboards on occasion. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to get rid of it that don't involve going into the (dark, probably contains snakes, has at least one skunk) crawl space with a firearm?
Judging from observed results, I'm moved to note that anyone wanting to grow red raspberries should give the cultivar Heritage a whirl. It grows like a weed under mild neglect -- his patch is continually threatening to eat the shed at the back of his yard. The fruits are large, the canes vigorous... right, damn it, I'm jealous of his raspberries. *sigh* I have raspberry envy. I'm not saying that my raspberries are lame. They're not. I like 'em a lot, honest... but his are very alluring.
I think he should learn to make jam. It's not like that's difficult. Recent experiments with strawberries have led me to believe that one can make a quite tolerable fruit spread item by cooking down fruit a third (by volume -- if you start with three cups of fresh fruit, cook until you have two cups of cooked fruit) and then adding an equal amount (by volume) of sugar. In our example, you'd start with three cups of fruit, cook-and-mash until you have two cups of stuff, add two cups of sugar, and then cook the lot until it's suitably thick. The commercial pectin stuff (it makes jelly and jam set up, the most common brand in these parts is Sure-Jell) is designed to give you a maximal volume of jelly or jam from a minimal volume of fruit. Sometimes, yield isn't what you want. Sometimes, getting the hell rid of the damn fruit before it rots is what you want... and yield isn't as important as using up a volume of fruit in a hurry. Interestingly, when you go into making-preserves with the intent to use up fruit instead of the intent to generate huge yields, you come up with substantially better-tasting stuff.
Also, there is a skunk living under my house. This is somewhat annoying because the reek of skunk rises up from underneath the floorboards on occasion. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to get rid of it that don't involve going into the (dark, probably contains snakes, has at least one skunk) crawl space with a firearm?
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Date: 2005-07-10 03:27 pm (UTC)I'm still thinking a bowl of wet catfood (assuming you don't have barn cats who will rise to this bait as well) would probably be a big draw. I know it will pull in raccoons like crazy.
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Date: 2005-07-10 03:50 pm (UTC)I do have the two housecats, Tumnah-the-favored and Tine-the-less-favored. However, they come when called and will be locked in the house for the duration of the skunk project, should it come to that. Right now, since I've been home for two days straight, it's been all quiet on the skunk front. Perhaps the skunk didn't like ten hours of Hikaru no Go and has moved on? One can only hope.