Apple Season: Next

We haven't gone apple picking yet, but it's on the horizon: this coming Saturday, so long as the weather cooperates.

Unlike other years, though, I've already begun to can/preserve/pickle with a will. It started this summer.

Here's the "so far" listing:




spicy tomato-peach salsa
sweet pickled cherries
pickled crab apples
pickled hot zucchini
hot zucchini relish
hot pickled carrots
carrot cake jam
candied cherries
cherry lemon marmalade


I have about two pounds of crab apples waiting to become jelly, and if by some miracle I find more cherries, I'll candy those. (I also need to candy lots of lemon, orange, and grapefruit peel).

After we go apple picking I expect to make apple marmalade, apple pickles, cinnamon flavored apple jelly, apple salsa, and maybe pie filling (if I find good cooking apples), and applesauce. At least!

Then I want to make cranberry marmalade, cranberry catsup, green tomato or cranberry mincemeat, lavender jelly, and various other herbal jellies.

We're already running out of structured storage space in the cellar--we don't have a proper pantry down there--but that won't stop me.

I think I'm obsessed. But it's a useful obsession; its fruits (pun intended) will provide presents and good things for our own table. I've already promised my husband he'll have a carrot cake with carrot cake jam and cream cheese frosting for his birthday.