There’s been an unexpected benefit to having gone out and chopped my way through the nettles and brambles in search of blackberries, which is that I tromped quite a path out there and unintentionally exposed the plants to quite a lot more sunlight than they’d been getting. That, combined with a couple of weeks of unseasonably sunny, warm weather (which is due to continue for another week!) netted a startling bounty of extra berries! I got about four more cups today!
I need about two more cups and I’ll have enough for a THIRD batch of wild blackberry jam, which I’ll be making in adorable little 4oz jars and using as Christmas gifts. And there are enough unripe berries out there to get those two cups, and if I’m lucky, even more! (Actually I’m really *hoping* for more, in the name of another crumble or something, but I’ll take what I can get. :))
Given that I have two laundry baskets full of apples, I got down to the business of peeling and slicing them for the purpose of freezing. We’ve been reading up on this sort of thing, and one ought to throw the sliced apples into salt (or lemon or sugar) water to keep them from browning and to help preserve them against freezer burn, before freezing them single-layeredly on a cookie sheet (or in my case, ice cube tray) for later bagging. That way you have individual slices instead of huge blobby masses, and can take out as many or few at a time as you wish. :)
I thought perhaps the ice trays’ capacity to hold apples would about equal my enthusiasm for peeling them. I was wrong. They hold about twenty apples, whereas I reckon I’m good for about forty at a go. But I kind of suspected that, and proceeded with caution, so it worked out perfectly, and I now have the first batch of apples freezing. If I’m diligent I can probably easily do two batches a day, but I seriously doubt I’m that diligent. :)
Apple slices, displayed by my helper boy! :)
Oh, hey, I also wrote 2500 words today and got REDEEMER over 20K!