Making Plum Leather

Plum trees grow like weeds in our town, often springing up unbidden. At peak season ripe plums drop onto sidewalks and you have to step around the sticky paste of crushed fruit. Maybe that's why we've never paid a lot of attention to the little copse of plum trees in our backyard once the burst of bloom in early spring wanes. For so many years we've let the fruit drop on the ground and rot away in the ivy.

This year there has been an abundance of especially delicious and juicy purple plums. The easiest way to enjoy them is to stand by the tree and eat the fattest, purplest, sun-warmed specimens within reach. A bowlful on the dining room table make a nice accent and an occasional snack.

But so much goes to waste. What to do with this bumper crop? Even though the season is pretty much over, it seems a shame to let it pass without making an effort to preserve some of the bounty. Make jam? It takes too much time, is really messy, and needs a lot of sugar. Hmmmmm . . . . . what about plum leather? It can't be that hard to make. The only ingredient is ripe fruit. There is a dehydrator gathering dust under the bed.

Step 1: Gather the best and ripest fruit you can find. Wash it thoroughly.

Step 2: Remove the pits by squeezing the fruit between your fingers and picking out the pits from the gooey pulp. Be sure to capture all the liquid.

Step 3: Puree the pit-free mass of pulp and skins in the blender.

Step 4: Push the blended pulp through a strainer to remove the skins. Possibly you could do this before blending, but letting some of the skins mix into the pulp adds color, and perhaps adds nutrients.

Step 5: Brush some olive oil onto the drying rack in the dehydrator -- not too much or the end product is too greasy. You need a special drying rack for making fruit leather.  

Step 6: Gently pour the strained puree onto the drying rack, using only enough to completely coat the surface of the rack. Store extra puree in the fridge for the next batch. Alternatively, invest in more drying racks because they stack and you can do several at once. (I haven't tried that.)

Step 7: Optional -- sprinkle on some grated coconut.

Step 8: Put the top on the dehydrator and set it on the highest temperature (155 degrees F). After a couple of hours, turn the temperature down to 135 degrees F and keep it going until the puree is thoroughly dried out. It helps to set things up in an out-of-the-way place like the garage, so the continuous noise doesn't drive you batty. The puree takes a long time to dry out. Turn the machine off at night, of course, if it takes longer than a day.

Step 9:  Periodically test the puree by touching it gently with your finger -- if it's the least bit sticky it's not done. When finally done (hooray!) lift the lovely, translucent wreath of plum leather out of the machine. Plums have lots of natural pectin so the final material is firm and stretchy.

Step 10: Cut the wreath into pieces and wrap the pieces in waxed paper.

Step 11: Roll up the covered pieces and secure them well.

Step 12: Store in a covered plastic container in the fridge. Eat some right away and marvel at the fresh, fruity taste -- a much more concentrated flavor than the fresh fruit itself. Essence of plums. Share some with friends to hear their delighted response.

Easy Refrigerator Pickles

As of early October we had a goodly pile of lemon cucumbers in the refrigerator, the last survivors after our one very prolific plant had succumbed to mildew and been removed. For months we had been eating the cukes fresh and giving them away. We were tired of them and so were our neighbors.

I had never made pickles out of anything but it seemed worth a try if it didn't take too much time. As usual, a little internet sleuthing yielded some good suggestions.

The recipe I ended up following was compiled from several sources. It had to be easy and not sweet -- no sugar. Mostly it had to be easy.







The cucumbers sliced up nicely into six cups worth. To this was added some chopped cilantro and some chopped green onion.






I brought to a boil two cups of vinegar, plus spices (1 tablespoon each of celery seed, mustard seed, and turmeric) and pickling salt (2 tablespoons), and let it cook for a minute or two.

However, this ended up being way too little liquid to fill the seven pint jars I had crammed the cucumber slices into. Perhaps I hadn't packed in the cucumbers tightly enough, or perhaps removing sugar from the recipe reduced the volume of the mixture. Anyway, I just boiled up four more cups of vinegar with more spices and salt and hoped for the best.

The filled jars were allowed to cool down and then put into the refrigerator where they will stay until all used up. Supposedly they will keep for months, but we won't get a chance to test that out since we are going through them pretty fast.

They are crunchy, spicy, and delicious, although a bit strong for eating more than one or two out of hand. (Next year, I will try diluting the vinegar mixture with water or packing the jars better.)






We've been enjoying them in salads, cut up into small pieces, or, best of all, as a garnish for veggie burgers along with garden tomatoes and lettuce.

Mmmmmm. And so easy. Even with the mistakes, making the pickles took not much more than an hour.

Tomato Extravaganza

By Labor Day, last Monday, the tomato situation was getting critical. It was quite clear that soon there would be tomatoes tucked away onto bookcases (which has happened before) and in the bathroom cabinet (which has not happened so far). The photo above shows everything on hand on Monday afternoon -- mostly Better Boys, lined up from ripest on the left to just-picked, still-slightly-orange on the right.

There are also bowls of Sungolds and the volunteer red cherry tomatoes for snacking and salads, and two demonstration Black Krims at lower right, just to show we are capable of growing heirlooms.



A plethora of Better Boys means it's time to go rummaging in the garage for the mighty Squeezo, the venerable Vittorio Strainer, veteran of many a tomato sauce session of Septembers past. It didn't take long to clean it up from its long hibernation and attach it to the dining room table.

The whole process is so simple. The ripe tomatoes are first rinsed and quartered. (Let the orangey ones sit for another week to ripen up.)



Then all you have to do is fill the hopper with tomato pieces, press them down with the mallet, and turn the handle to push the juicy mass through the screening funnel. Skin and seeds drop out at the end of the funnel while the luscious juice and pulp flows down the trough into a bowl.



The next step is to cook the juice down a bit and package it up in pint size freezer containers as a base for tomato sauce. Take some out in gloomy November or in chilly February and make it into sauce for a vivifying taste of congealed sunlight, a distillate of summertime itself.

Harvest Kitchen

Last weekend was hot, high 80s. The cats were stretched out full length in the coolest spots they could find.

Not far away, a member of a supposedly more intelligent species was holed up in a stuffy little kitchen sweating over a boiling pot of beans. Or, to be exact, a non-boiling pot.

"A watched pot never boils," so goes the old saying. That was my first mistake, no doubt, in my week-end adventure of preparing a huge pile of Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake beans for the freezer.

"Put the beans into a pot of boiling water and blanch them for three minutes," read the instructions. When I dropped several bowlfuls of chopped beans into vigorously boiling water it stopped boiling. I assumed the water needed to come back up to a boil before I started timing three minutes. Wrong. But I wouldn't know how wrong until later.

It took about eight minutes for the big pot filled with beans to come back to a boil. Then I let them boil for another three minutes. Wrong. Wrong.

"Plunge the beans into cold water with ice, to stop the cooking." That step proceeded as indicated. The beans looked beautiful and tasted even better. Completely delicious. After draining them, I couldn't stop snacking. That should have been a clue right there.






"Dry the beans," the instructions continued. "How?" I wondered. I spread them out on a bath towel and patted them dry, popping more than a few into my mouth. So far, so good -- or so I thought at the time.



The next step was to pack the yummy little beanies into freezer containers. The batch filled nine pint-sized containers. I put them into the freezer feeling very pleased with a most productive afternoon in my harvest kitchen. Did I mention the double batch of green soup? Lots of big pots were steaming up the kitchen that day.

Several days later we tried some of the beans for dinner, just to see how the freezing worked. Ewwww, bland and tasteless! Somehow I had managed to remove all trace of flavor.

With a little searching on the internet I came across a blog comments conversation -- can't remember where -- that addressed the issue of how long the beans should stay in the water. The suggestion was to make sure the ratio of boiling water to beans is such that putting the beans into the water does not stop it from boiling. The beans should not be cooked, just plunged in boiling water long enough to disable enzymes and kill bacteria that could cause them to spoil in the freezer. Live and learn. Now I know that beans that taste utterly delicious are beans that have been over-prepared for freezing.

It's not as if we don't have plenty more beans to experiment with. Next time will be better. But what to do with eight more pints of frozen, flavorless beans. Minestrone, anyone?

Zucchini Factory

The great green machine is revving up. Above is the zucchini patch as of mid-June, a couple of weeks ago, and again as it is today. This is a row of three plants, rather close together. In the top photo you can see the lid of the sunken, plugged flower pot that serves as an irrigation reservoir. There is one next to each plant.

Planting History:
Variety: Green Racer zucchini
Source: Whole Foods (Sweetwater Nursery) seedlings
Seedlings planted out: May 10, 2009
First harvest: June 14, 2009


These are the first few pickings in chronological order left to right. You can see that the earliest blossoms are brown and dry and the first couple of fruits are smaller and tapered toward the tip. Probably they didn't get fertilized (that's my theory, anyway) because the bees didn't get the press release. The news is out by now for sure. This past weekend there was a big bag of beautifully shaped zucchini in the fridge. Time for green soup!!! Who cares if the temperature is pushing 100 degrees -- summon up that old pioneer spirit.




There's no recipe for green soup, just a general process. The ingredients change according to the seasons: winter is kale and chard and broccoli; summer is mostly zucchini. Here's a description based on this weekend's batch:

1. Heat up a thin layer of good olive oil in a favorite soup pot.

2. Smash four or five cloves of peeled garlic, stir them around in the oil to infuse the flavor.

3. Saute chopped onion and celery -- enough to make a half inch layer on the bottom of the pot.

4. Add peeled, chopped carrots and potatoes -- as many as you feel like and have on hand. This batch has four big carrots and a couple of medium new red potatoes.

5. Stir it all around until coated with oil. Put lid on and let mixture soften up a bit.

6. Cover with vegetable broth -- homemade mushroom broth can't be beat. Let simmer to soften up the carrots and potatoes some more.

7. Add as much chopped zucchini as you can cram into the pot, along with any other greens you have around. This batch used the whole bag of zucchini -- about 10 lovelies of various sizes. It also includes the last few volunteer kale plants from a corner of the yard. This is the point to add any quicker cooking veggies you have on hand. Some chopped parsley is nice.

8. Add some cooked beans if you have them -- garbanzo or small white beans are great -- for extra heft and nutrition.

9. Simmer until everything is soft.

10. Put in the fridge to cool. It makes blending easier. If you have hungry people hanging around, go ahead and blend right away.

11. Eat some now.

12. And freeze the rest. I take these little packages to work for lunch so often it causes comment. But I am unabashed. Green soup is nectar and ambrosia in one fragrant, sustaining brew, the elixir of life. H. loves the stuff so whenever he comes by he takes a couple home.