Peach Preserves

I've written about dehydrating peaches and making peach butter, but there are a few other things I do with peaches:  can them (as-is, with syrup), pickle them, and make peach preserves.  The latter is actually one of the most common.  As I have noted before, I do make things other than sugar-laden treats with fruit, but peach preserves are easy, and a little bit of peaches go a long way.  I get twice as much preserves as butter for the same amount of peaches, at least partly because the extra sugar in preserves (twice as much) increases the bulk.

Making peach preserves is pretty easy and I have (so far) not screwed it up so it must also be nearly fool-proof.  I start off doing something that is recommended against:  I double the recipe in the Ball Blue Book (BBB).  Pickyourown.org has a recipe, too, that is heavier on the fruit, lighter on the sugar--but I still use more peaches than they recommend.

I use eight cups (actually more like nine) of chopped, peeled peaches.   To peel, float them in simmering (not boiling) water for a few minutes; then the skins come off pretty easily.  You can just pull them off and don't need to cut, except in a few places.  Then I quarter them and chop them into relatively small pieces.  I probably divide each peach into 160 small chunks, which is not as slow as it sounds.  I can peel and chop a peach in about two minutes (or less).  According to the weight/volume on pickyourown.org, nine cups should come to a little more than five pounds fresh (you may need more if you need to cut around plum curculio larvae or other things).  The full recipe is:

8-9 cups chopped peaches
4 tablespoons lemon juice
14 cups sugar
2 packages of pectin.

I add the peaches to the pot and dump a proportionate amount of lemon juice in as I'm filling it; I don't treat separately to prevent browning.  Once the peaches are in the pot, I mash them up with the potato masher, much as I noted with the blueberry preserves.

 I then add the pectin--so everything is in the pot except for the sugar--and start heating it on low/medium heat.  When it boils, I dump in the sugar, mix it up, and turn the heat up a bit to boil it again.  Once it boils for the second time (which can take 15 minutes or so), I let it go for about a minute--during which it will be starting to foam a lot--then turn the heat off.  After that, it's just a matter of filling the jars and canning them.  I use pint jars and get about eight pints from the nine cups of peaches (I usually have a little left over that I just refrigerate).  These steps are straight from the BBB.

The jars seal quickly and I have never had any trouble with them setting up, but once I think it was somewhat thin; tilting a jar would make the contents shift a bit, albeit stiffly.

As you can see in the picture below, the jam is brightly colored and doesn't have any issues with turning brown.  After a couple of years the jam will be darker in color, but still is good.  I've used preserves up to about four years old and they are still fine.

This is an easy and very tasty way to preserve fruit. It probably shouldn't be a mainstay for obvious reasons; each jar has about one cup of fruit and almost two cups of sugar in it.  However, in small increments it's fine.  I go through maybe five or six jars per year.

Although Whey Low says that its product can be used 1:1 in place of sugar for preserves, I haven't tried it.  That'd be very expensive (although I use almost as much in my annual cranberry canner load, that yields seven or eight quarts vs. eight pints).

Although I'm somewhat less than fully objective, I like my peach preserves better than any I've ever tried--even ones made with sugar and Belle of Georgia peaches, which are what I have usually used (off my trees in the back yard, which now have expired).  I don't know what it is about them that makes them better, but they really do have a good flavor.  Making them is well worth the time.

Dehydrating Blueberries, 2017

I've written before about dehydrating blueberries.  I haven't dehydrated any of my home-grown berries yet, but I do get a few two-pound clamshells during peak blueberry season (which is now).  This year prices are up a little; as noted previously, south Georgia got hit by the same freeze that impacted my blueberries.  Many commercial rabbiteye farmers lost their whole harvest.

Commercially-bought blueberries can be sketchy.  I always pick through them carefully and usually find a few that are moldy or otherwise a mess.  Interestingly, even when I keep my home-picked ones in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks, they don't mold--which makes me wonder what the delay between picking and purchasing is normal for commercial berries.

As I sort them, I dump them into a colander, then rinse them off.  Various sites indicate that conventionally-grown blueberries usually have a variety of pesticide residues on them.  I'm not sure why: I don't have to spray mine for anything, bugs or plant diseases.  They are a truly zero-maintenance crop.

This year, I got six pounds at a warehouse club.  In late June, they were coming from New Jersey.  The origin of spring and summer blueberries shifts around, from Georgia to North Carolina, then New Jersey.  In August, they usually seem to come from Michigan.

Drying them is easy.  As I mentioned before, I don't try to prick them with a toothpick.  I do too many at once for that to be viable, and it's unnecessary.  I let them dry for a couple of days at 135 and they're dry enough to store long-term without molding.

The final result is shown below:  contained in the half-gallon mason jar is what's left of six pounds of fresh blueberries after dehydrating (there's room for another couple of pounds' worth).  They could be vacuum-packed to extend their shelf life, but even as-is, should be good for a couple of years.

End of the Blueberry Harvest

As noted previously, this was a lighter than normal blueberry season.  In terms of duration it was also shorter than normal, at about two weeks.  Last year I picked for nearly a month.  This year, toward the end of June, I pulled off what will probably be the last berries I pick.

As the pictures show, there are some berries that aren't even close to ripe yet; that's how my blueberry bushes are.  However, most of what's left is over-ripe (meaning I didn't spend enough time picking while they were at peak), and they're getting infested with ants at this point, making it necessary to carefully check almost every berry to be sure it's not frass-bedecked and hollowed out.

I ended up with about eight pounds, or 40% of what I got last year.  That's pretty decent.  I could've gotten ten pounds if I'd picked more frequently (but last year when I got 20, I could've probably gotten 22 or 23).  All in all, I'm happy with the way things turned out.

Toilet Paper Disintigration

This is a topic that's a bit far afield from what I normally write about, but the blog title does say 'Home and Garden.'  If you're in a rural or suburb/exurb with a septic tank, picking the right TP is somewhat more important than if it only has to make it to the sewer main at the street without stopping up the pipes.

My septic tank has been pumped once, and I didn't see any paper.  However, in those days I used a toilet paper that's off the market now, Charmin Plus: it was a single-ply paper that seemed like it would break down fast (shown is a picture of some Charmin Plus sheets that have been cut up for the test described below).

Consumer Reports and Good Housekeeping have tested TP disintegration  using stirring bars and beakers.  The Sweet Home used a different procedure.  The three have reached somewhat inconsistent conclusions with some types.  All rated softness and other features, as well.  I decided to do my own test with a stirrer to focus on varieties I'm interested in.

I liked the old Charmin Plus.  By the time I realized it had been replaced with Charmin Sensitive, a two-ply type, the Plus was gone from the shelves so I had to switch.  I only have a couple of rolls at this point that I've stuck on a shelf and not used.  Charmin Sensitive is fine when used but Good Housekeeping found that it did not disintegrate (dissolve) well.  The Charmin products were generally rated poorly for disintegration by all sites, except (possibly) for Charmin Basic, a single-ply variety that did not score tremendously well for softness.

I have tried a couple of papers that Consumer Reports rates well for softness and not awful for disintegration.  I don't define softness the same way, apparently. I did not like White Cloud Ultra Strong and Soft (White Cloud USS) very well at all.  I bought a pack of it and gave most of the rolls away.  Then I tried Cottonelle Ultra Comfort Care (Cottonelle UCC).  It's expensive and not rated very highly for disintegration (except for The Sweet Home, which thought it disintegrated well).

Cottonelle UCC and Charmin Sensitive are both okay for me insofar as softness goes.  So a head-to-head comparison between them is what I set out to do.

I also included White Cloud USS, Charmin Ultra Strong, and whatever two-play 600 grit sandpaper the office puts in the dispensers.  I filled a 1000 ml beaker with 800 ml of water and set the stirrer at the same speed for each trial.  I did varying numbers of trials for each brand; I should have done about 30 of each then calculated means and 95% CIs, but what I did was good enough for my purposes--I only did a couple of trials for the office paper and Charmin Ultra Strong.  I stopped the timer when the paper was in pieces; occasionally a trial failed when the paper got under the stirring bar, preventing it from rotating.

The results were interesting.  I expected the Charmin Plus (the old one-ply variety) to dissolve the fastest, and it did: about 6 seconds on average.  Next was the office sandpaper, at 7 seconds.  Cottonelle UCC came in at 9 seconds, and both White Cloud USS and Charmin Sensitive clocked in at 13 seconds. Charmin Ultra Strong was also about 13 seconds.

The treatment the paper got in the beaker with stirring bar is much harsher than what it'd get on its way to the septic tank from the toilet.  I may try a static test next, with no agitation.  However, the relevant statistics are not necessarily the times themselves, but the comparisons of one type to another.  Cottonelle UCC was 50% slower than Charmin plus but the other Charmin and the White Cloud USS were 44% slower than the Cottonelle UCC. The slowest papers had disintegration times that were more than double that of the fastest.

So in a practical sense, what does this mean? The potential for septic tank clogging is a product of two things: disintegration and amount of paper used.  In the latter aspect, Cottonelle UCC may be better than the others I've used (Charmins Plus and Sensitive), which did seem to require more sheets than Cottonelle UCC.

That's about as far as I want to take this.  There are tradeoffs and I'm only willing to go so far for septic system health.

Post-Freeze Blueberry Harvest Begins

As I mentioned in March, there was a late freeze that did substantial damage to the blueberry blossoms.  It soon became apparent that there was some hope for a crop, as noted in the earlier post.

Fast-forward to mid-June and the harvest is beginning.  Last year I started picking berries on June 15, but this year, I could've started on June 6 or so.  I wasn't paying close attention so was surprised when I was down by the bushes and saw they were loaded.  The first day I pulled off 2 pounds and if I had to guess I'd expect this year's total harvest to be about 6-8 pounds, which is down from last year's 20--but not at all bad under the circumstances.

Apple Pie from Pre-Made Filling

Earlier I mentioned canning apple pie filling.  The payoff comes at times like Memorial Day weekend:  a friend was having a cookout and I volunteered to take a pie.  I have blueberries and peaches in the freezer from my own harvest last summer, but decided to use up some of the canned filling I put up a couple of years ago.  It's very easy.  I previously wrote about using the same canned filling with whole wheat pie crust, but in this case I used store-bought white flour crusts.  All I did was lard up a pie plate, dump the filling into the bottom crust, do a bad job of joining/crimping the top crust onto the bottom, and bake at about 375 for 50 minutes.


I normally do lattice-top pies, but for some reason a solid crust seems more appropriate for apple.  Assuming one has a crust that can handle being cut into strips, the lattice top is actually easier in the crimping department.  I also have a pie bird that I have never actually used in a pie; instead I cut slits--which work well.

By the way, for a pie made from raw apples, the solid crust can be problematic: the apples will cook down a lot and lose volume as they bake, leaving air spaces under the crust.  Since the pie filling is pre-cooked, that problem is more or less eliminated.

The results are decent.  I think the pie the filling makes is pretty basic, although good, but I've uniformly gotten rave reviews whenever I've taken one somewhere.  Fast and easy (setting aside the pre-work of putting up the filling) is a good combination.

Mountain Laurel

Here's another native plant:  Mountain laurel.  The blooming season in Georgia is over--it's late April/early May in the near-foothills, and probably mid-to late May in the mountains.  They bloom later than native azaleas, but are otherwise similar in many respects.  However, they aren't rhododendrons.  The Latin name is Kalmia latifolia.  They inhabit the same kinds of spaces as native azaleas.  I see them mostly on slopes and often near water; they exist in semi-shaded areas (sometimes the shade can be substantial).  The blooms have no scent.  Unlike native azaleas, they are evergreen--keeping their leaves through the winter.

They're uncommon in nurseries, but a few improved cultivars exist.  One person at a nursery told me they were difficult to transplant.  I got some one time from a native plant nursery in NC, but they died in my suburban yard by the wood line during one of the long dry summers (despite getting supplemental water).  As far as I know, they're just ornamental, though some animals may browse them.  They're nice.

I have a few back in the woods near the river at the rural place.  I see them in the woods at the various places I run and mountain bike--again, usually on slopes, often near streams.