Juice Sunday
We finally used my grandmother’s steam juicer today.
If you’ve never heard of one of these things before, it’s something like this. I will never make crabapple jelly without one of these, because you get the most crystal-clear jelly you will ever see, without having to cook apples and then hang them from cheesecloth to drain for hours; risking cloudy juice in the process.
We bought around 9 pounds of cherries yesterday and ran them through the juicer and are now attempting fruit leather with the remnants of the fruit. The main goal of the juice is to get some cherry syrup, which is the ultimate pancake syrup in my opinion (if it’s chokecherry syrup, it literally cannot be beaten).
I’m glad it’s been relatively cool and not oppressively humid all weekend, considering we steamed fruit for 2 hours and then had more steam pouring out of the oven when we started drying the fruit leather. Hopefully that will last when I have to cook the juice to make syrup and then run the canner on it.
A little over a year ago, I was canning peaches for the first time. I’ve done strawberry jam, and another round of peaches since then. I can’t wait to see what the jelly looks like. My favorite thing is to use the faceted jelly jars, because when the jelly is really clear, the jeweled aspect of the jars really pops. It’s one of those visually satisfying things I wish I could explain better than to say “it just looks pretty.”
It still feels bittersweet doing things like this. There’s the accomplished satisfaction of completing a slightly complex task, followed by the sadness that I’m doing this without the aid of the person who originally taught me. Being this was also the first time I’d used the steam juicer, I feel like there was still some of the lingering smells of my grandmother’s house and kitchen. When I washed it and then started boiling water, there was one last waft of that very specific smell, and then it’s probably gone forever. The power of sense memory is something so strange and wonderful.
We keep being busy, which means I’m still doing Blaugust at the last minute of my days. I think August might continue to be this way. I have a full week of work ahead of me followed by family visiting from out of town the same week we have book club and D&D; and then August will be half over and the end of summer will rear its ugly head. The rapidity at which summertime moves is also mind boggling.
With Monday around the corner and a busy day behind me, I’m still looking forward to whatever the week holds. I’m planning to make my first bike commute, and then… well, I guess we’ll see.
