18 replies to this topic

[ShooterJohn]

Well, I put up cherries for cherry pies and cobbles but wanted to try some cherry/pomegranate jelly because I still had just over a gallon of pomegranate juice from our trees. The trees are almost 4 years old and we got over 200 pomegranates that we juiced. We put up enough cherries for 37 cherry pies and well there is no way we're going to eat that many. So cherry jelly sounded good but since we had pomegranate juice left we mixed them 50/50. We cooked them up and I used a stick blender to whip them up and we canned the jelly. Think there was 37 total half pints we ended up with in this batch. A couple of pictures of the process and I need to get a picture of the jars before they're all gone. Boy are they ever popular.

[True2ThySelf]

My mom has about 3 pomegranate trees but unfortunately not much was used this season. However, next season I will steal them all if there are no objections =D.The jelly looks tasty. How did you pit the cherries or juice the pomegranates?

[ShooterJohn]

We have some hand cheery and olive pitters that work pretty fast. But I got a semi automatic pitter that goes faster but doesn't do as nice of a job as our Oxo pitters. The pomegranates I cut in half and invert them into a shallow bowl and beat the heck out of them with a large wooden spoon. The areils they are called (the seeds) all fall out. We pitted all of the cherries and then preserved them using a cup of sugar and two tablespoons of lemon juice to 4 cups of cherries then vacuum sealed them for freezing. They'll keep for over a year or until we find a use for them. By presevering them the way we do it is exactly one cherry pie worth of cheeries ready to go. The pomegranates are all seeded then crushed for their juice then double filtered and poured into 2 liter soda bottles and stored in the refrigerator until use. You can freeze the pomegranate juice if you need to keep it for a onger period of time.

[Rimrock]

That looks really good, John. I'm sure you will enjoy it. But........... there is no way that you can us 37 cherry pies. As a favor, I would be willing to help you get rid of some of them. Just let me know when you can deliver.

[docskinner]

Make yourself some pomegranate molasses and then make fesenjan - Persian pomegranate and walnut chicken stew.

[ShooterJohn]

We've added some additional jams and jellies from fruit from our garden. Besides what we made above we now have and are continuing to make apricot jelly, blueberry, blackberry, raspberry and more cherry jelly from the crop this year.

Just one of the many buckets of apricots to process.





Just one of the flats of jellies we've made.



Lots more to make but once it's canned it's good for a long time and they make great gifts. We've had friends want to buy more they like them so much.

[Rob]

SJ...I'm in for a site CalPred Cherry Jelly fund raiser.
Can I buy a jar of CalPred Cherry Jelley for $25. ?????

Please don't auction me out of the goods ilike that kife auction last month...Frank killed me.

Is $25 too cheap for this home made elixer?

[Bisley]

I would like reserve my order for the blackberry, blueberry, and raspberry please

[Brant]

Wow - I love blueberry Jam. I got hooked on it forty years ago up in Ontario under the Malkins label during fishing trips.

[ShooterJohn]

I have really gotten into this jam making as I'd get tired of eating fruit and then it went to waste. With all of the different fruit we grow I needed to do something with it. Now we've finally found a way to preserve, no pun intended some of the bounty. I wish my grandmother was still alive to see that I've continued something she did allot of. My wife's pies and cobblers are the best too. Her mother who used to be the pie maker of the family has even said that her daughters pies are better than hers. I'm sure most of it has to do with our packaging of the fruit for pies like these cherry pie filling we packaged here.



Each of those packages is one complete pie filling. It already has the sugar and lemon juice in it before vacuum sealing and freezing. Just thaw and add it to a pie crust and there you have it.

[HOG]

nice work John you're like the ant.

[ShooterJohn]

That's me Steve, I put everything away for the winter.

[nitis]

How about we trade? I will send u some of my prize winning habanero pineapple?

[OrneryOlMofo357]

Habenero Pineapple sounds very interesting! Tell us more! I love hot stuff.

[Baja_Traveler]

That is some awesome preserves! I'm just teaching myself how to do that stuff, and I want to get into canning also.
In the mean time, I've got my bees - the brother and I harvested on Saturday, and we got about 20 quarts out of the one super, I'll be building a second super to add to this hive for double the capacity.

[BullsEye]

WOW. It looks like your having an amazing harvest again this year. I haven't made any jams yet. I may have to get some of my chilies into a jam this year and do some mint jelly as well. My blueberries died and my other plants dont look so happy. I added fish carcasses the other day to the soil in hope that the plants will turn around for fertilizer.

[nitis]

I got busy and knocked out about 30 half pints this evening

First off I made my habanero pineapple jelly to enter in the county fair next week.

Next up was plum jam. I was out at my parents and noticed the ole tree was loaded. I grew up and peanut butter and jam sandwiches off that tree so I had to make some. It's been over twenty years since I had some. The plums were on the small side most not too much bigger than some large cherries. So my mom dug out the pistol and mortar strainer thing and I went to work

End result was worth it something different for the Christmas gift baskets this year

I might experiment with some low/ no sugar tomorrow

[ShooterJohn]

That sounds good. If I make it to the fair I'll have to look for your jelly. I have a food mill type stainer but have been using a new version of it that is made by Roma. You just toss in the cut fruit and turn the crank. It sends the skins out the end and the juice and pulp goes down a tray and into a bowl. We bought it to make salsa as it has a larger screen for making chunkier salsa. But I bought one for my brother to make mulberry jelly with. It has different size screens to remove the smallest seeds. It will even remove seeds from strawberries as well as most of the skins.

[nitis]

This old girl lets me put them in pits and all. These little plums would not be fun to try and pit

Mine will be at the Amador fair not state. Maybe I will try and conquer state next year.