Apricots!
It’s apricot time in the garden! Our tree is full of fruits.
With the heat wave that came through this week, they are ripening quickly and falling off.
I collect them 3-4 times a day and try to process them as soon as I can. Otherwise they turn mushy!
Drying
I’m drying some of them in 2 different ways. One is by keeping them whole and the other is to slice them and exposing them to the sun.
The sun is so strong these days that they quickly start to dry. The whole ones give out the juice which turns into a very tart jelly.
I turn them every now and then to expose each part to the sun. So far so good!
The sliced ones dry much more quickly.
Fruit Leather
I make fruit leather from the very mushy ones . I pit them and pass them through my food mill, then I spread the mash thinly on a tray
that is lightly greased with olive oil. It dries under the sun in 2-3 days.
Fermented Soda / Light Wine
This is the way I make fermented sodas and lightly alcoholic wine ( Thank you Pascal Baudar) :
- I fill a jar with apricots. With my clean hands I mush them and pit them.
- Then I add enough water to fill the jar (with two fingers of head space)
- I add enough molasses or honey to make it sweet to taste,
- I lightly close the lid,
stir it whenever I’m nearby. - In a day or two it will start to bubble ( the wild yeast will be active) .
- Keep stirring and tasting. Whenever I like the taste I bottle it and refrigerate it. Reused soda bottles are great, also you can reuse thick beer bottles or fruit juice bottles.
- At this point if you’d like it to be a child friendly soda, you can keep the bottle (capped) on the counter for a day (shorter if the days are warm, longer if it’s cold) for it to be bubbly. Then refrigerate it. But don’t forget about it on the counter otherwise your bottle can explode! Drink it up in 3-5 days.
Note for boozy soda : Since your drink will keep fermenting in the fridge, I cap the bottle lightly so the gasses can escape and it will become more sour and alcoholic.
In his book ‘The Wildcrafting Brewer’ Pascal Baudar mentions that you can add sugar/honey/molasses as you taste your ferment.This way if you cannot drink it right away the yeasts will have something to work on rather than creating a sour taste.
