Summer is Drying Up

Ok, I don’t know about you, but I’m counting the days til fall and looking forward to some of my favorite things: sweaters, stews (or any food cooked in one pot for an extended period), heavy desserts, RAIN, and call me basic, but pumpkin spice is not out of the question either. That said, there are a few things to do before we wrap up the heat and get ready for the chill! Fruit is coming of like wild right now and in our house we’re trying to save all we can!

We’re pretty pro at canning over here, freezing isn’t out of the question, but hands down, my favorite preservation method has to be drying. It’s easy, it’s hands off, it doesn’t require hot boiling liquids, I can “set it and forget it,.” Typically we’re drying loads of tomatoes, plums, apples, figs, but THIS year, we did something new and made raisins, so I took pictures to share the journey with you!

I used this recipe/process, and now I sort of what that dehydrator, but I digress. Our grapes came from Deep Roots Farm at the Hollywood Farmers Market and were a golden grape that was fine eaten as-is, but not amazing - not like the Canadice grapes we’re growing - those never make it in the house let alone a dehydrator.

As you can see, I forgot pictures of the actual drying, but the un-stemming and blanching was a bit of a bear - not hard, but definitely time consuming. The entire flat of grapes turned into not quite 2 quart jars, but I can tell you they are some of the absolute BEST raisins I’ve ever eaten and our toddler is a little obsessed.

I’m pretty excited about using these in pumpkin bread later this fall and excited to have tried a new thing. Even with the time it took, I can absolutely say I’ll do it again!

But what does any of this have to do with food justice or gleaning?

So glad you asked!

1) Grapes are growing wildly all over the place and there’s a whole round up of Share in the Harvest pages moderated by Albert Kaufman, friend of PFTP. Check it out and see if you can score some grapes!

2) We are toying with doing some dehydration training using solar dehydrators/ovens - do you have experience doing anything like that? What lessons have you learned that you’d pass on? OR would you attend something like that?

Getting the fruit off is the first challenge, but after that comes USING so much fruit at once. We’re excited to share the preservation journey with y’all and hope that when it’s safe we can host fun gatherings to Share the Harvest, and then Save the Harvest!