(no subject)

[which_chick]

Yesterday was a busy, busy day.



I did ten pints of peach jam plus unsugared peach pulp for (later this year) the making of peach leather. Peach leather is peaches, cooked until they're mushy, run through a food processor so that they're kind of applesauce-texture, cooked some more until the spoon stands up in the middle of the pan, then spread out thin on a sheet of parchment paper and set on top of the wood stove until the end result is a solid. You then carefully roll the solid sheet (it flexes and stretches a little) up with a sheet of wax paper so that it doesn't stick to itself and eat it at your leisure. I have never had a problem keeping the stuff because it gets eaten pretty quickly once it's made.

Since it's August (hot and humid), running the woodstove would be kind of stupid at this point. I froze the pulp for better dehydration weather, which usually rolls along about November. Since the peach leather is for xmas gifting (for La), this works out well enough to suit me.

Peach leather is not a Fruit Roll-Up. Fruit leather is what the world used to have BEFORE the advent of the Fruit Roll-Up. You can't eat it very fast because it has to soften up in your mouth. There is chewing involved. Fruit Roll-Ups contain very little fruit as a whole, very little fruit of the sort they are claiming to be (bananas, which have a lot of solids and are not strongly flavored, are frequently added even to better-quality fruit leathers than Fruit Roll-Ups to make the fruit flavor of the "official" fruit go further), and artificial color and sugar all over the place. I'm something of a purist with my peach leather. There is no added water. There is no added sugar. It's sort of a dull, dark orange because that's the color it is on its own. Ingredient: peaches.

I also made a peach pie and a cherry pie for the covered dish today. The bottom crust on the cherry pie went all wonky on me and I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe I overdid the water just a hair. The other three crusts (top and bottom, peach, and top for the cherry) went delightfully. Mom actually solved the pie crust problem -- she agreed with me that the new Crisco produced a shitty pie dough and went a-researching to find a better way. Attentive readers will recall the pie crust problem with the new, no-transfats Crisco. If you don't recall, the primary complaint is here. Anyway, Mom solved the pie crust problem by changing the fat content from 1/2 cup of Crisco to 1/4 cup Crisco and 1/4 cup butter. This produces a dough which behaves largely as pie dough should. It is infinitely easier to work with than straight transfat-free Crisco. I don't yet know how this tastes because I haven't eaten the pies -- they're for a function -- but the dough behaves properly and that's half the battle.

Comments

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

You have made me very hungry.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I remembered to say "Yes" to both the grape jelly and the peach stuff.

Baby has achieved baby trifecta: sleeping through the night, napping reliably, and falling asleep on his own over the past few days. Probably an outgrowth of the recent achievements of rolling-onto-tummy (they're more comfy that way, but because more comfy, more in danger of SIDS, hence he hasn't been allowed to sleep on his tummy till he learned to get there himself) and sucking-the-thumb.

Which is to say, if things go on like this I may have time for email. I have already had time for lace and time for reading. I doubt my short-term memory will come back anytime soon; Eric says his was shot for several years after the PTSD-inducing experience of Con Chairing.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I've got you signed up for both grape and peach even if you hadn't remembered to tell me. Last year, when I got done with the grape, you inquired as to the whereabouts of the peach stuff and were sorely disappointed to discover that there was none. You've also mentioned an interest in peach stuff during appropriate points in preserve-discussion since last year. While I am fairly oblivious on quite a few fronts, who would like which preserves is not one of them. :)

Yay on the baby progress! (I rank below lace?)

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

It was lace-with-a-deadline. On Sept. 24, the pieces will be collected by my lace group and attached into some sort of table-runner thing, which will then be auctioned for charity. The day before I went to the hospital I finished making the square, but I did not attach the ends to the beginning, so it was a square-with-a-diagonal-cut-from-edge-to-center.

I thought it would take a month to connect the 30 or so pairs of threads end-to-beginning and then wrap them up in the braid that they wanted us to use to hide the ends, but now that Peter's napping I did the connecting during his nap yesterday, and the braiding during his nap today. Whoa.

[cousin-sue.livejournal.com]

It will be years. Really, your memory will come back, but it's not until school time.

Of course, mine may have been delayed because of Otakon as well.