Annie, that broth looks fantastic! I still have a huge frozen turkey in the freezer that I bought on sale at Thankgiving. Meat prices continue to be outlandish, and now eggs have gone through the roof. So, I'm glad to have some saved. Soup is always a delicious and economical meal during the coldest months.

Martha

A sticky business ...it’s Seville season again.

Here is my latest harvest: I went out between raindrops and gathered up the fruit that had been wind-blown and fell on the ground. As long as I was out there I picked all the rest off the Kumquat tree too since there weren’t very many. The little orange ones are Kumquats and the yellow ones are Key Limes. (They are ripe when yellow. ) There are quite a few still-green Key Limes hanging, but that’s good for a longer harvest. The Lemons are all ripe but they’ll hang until needed. I also have Meyer Lemons that are ripe and they’ll hang for a while longer.

I usually make a Kumquat Marmalade from the fruit, but I had a huge harvest last year and still have jars left. I will probably send most of the Kumquats to my grandson who loves them whole. They are just the right size to pop in one’s mouth - orangy-sweet on the outside and orangy-sour in the inside.

Martha, I grew up with a Grandma that went through the Depression and at one time my Dad spent nearly a year at the VA hospital, so no income. We didn't waste anything, my Mother said she could squeeze a penny so hard she could make Lincoln wince. I sure wasn't going to waste perfectly good turkey carcasses, Grandma would reach right down from heaven and slap me! I used some for turkey and wild rice soup and canned the rest for turkey gravy, stock for dressing and whatever suits me.

Floral, I LOVE marmalade, unfortunately I cannot grow citrus here and I never see Seville oranges. I did make marmalade from some Valencia one year, and it was good, but not quite the same.

Kate, I'm envious of the Meyer lemons. I make lemon curd with them and my girls eat the stuff with a spoon, like it's pudding. Kumquats are nice too, of course, but I think I've only had those maybe twice.

Here I canned Readinglady's Hot N Sweet Confetti Jelly, 6 half pints and one little quarter pint. It makes great filling for cheese thumbprints and delicious glaze when a spoonful is melted onto warm beets. It's basically the Habanero Gold recipe, but enlarged. It's sometimes difficult to double a recipe, but Carol did that, and I'm grateful. My original Habanero Gold recipe only made 3 jars, but the larger recipe is much more efficient.

Annie

Annie, the last time I cooked a turkey, my BF threw away my beautiful turkey jello. He simply wasn't thinking. sigh.

floral, other than in a photo, I've never seen or eaten Seville oranges! If I ever do see them, I will certainly buy them to try.

Kate, your harvest is beautiful! Key limes are never seen here and kumquats are rare... I'd be willing to bet big money that your homegrown kumquats are far superior to anything that we can buy.

Aw, PM, that's just sad, and such a waste. I bet he won't do it again, though! :-)

Annie

I think you’re right about that, Annie! He’ll probably treat all future turkey jello as if it’s precious material. lol!

What is everyone’s weather like?! We are having the most unusual winter here that I have ever experienced. From mid Nov until immediately before xmas, we had at least a half-dozen snowstorms and at least 3 feet of total snowfall.… very typical. Then the storms stopped and we had a bit warmer than normal temps and, gradually, nearly all of it melted. We still get a little snow, and we get some rain — it’s nothing like normal. We have bare ground here now and it has basically been bare ground for weeks, and that is unheard of! I love it!!! not having to move snow, being able to drive without problems, and even being able to go for a walk!

What should have been an easy make turned out to be a project using many pots, pans and blender. I have a sinkful that I intend to put in the dishwasher and be done with it.

I by no means used all the frozen Apriums from last summer and will need to find something else to make with them before 2023's crop arrives..

Here are today's effort in many strange jars... the only ones left of what were many. (and, of course, the Katz had to supervise.)

Aprium Jam:

Kate, that aprium jam looks really good to me. Never had an aprium or apricot jam, but I love dried apricots (we don’t see fresh apricots here).

Thank you, Party_Music. I don't think Apricot/Aprium anything is very strong flavored and this is no different, but it is good tasting. I was glad to see that it actually set-up after all that bother to make it.

Where do you live? Apricot trees live

in some pretty cold places. (I don't know about Apriums but I suspect they will since they are a cross with a plum. )

I am in z5a NY. We generally have harsh cold winters, tons of snow, and are in an area where we don’t get a lot of sun. Apples grow here. :)

PM, apricots grow here and I'm in 5a Michigan, so you might be able to find apricots there. I have only one local orchard that has them, and if you don't get there first, they are gone!

Kate, the jam looks really good. I used to add apricot jam to my BBQ sauce, the kids loved it. It was a bit sweet for my taste, but the kids went crazy for it.

The weather here is also somewhat different. We had big snows and cold in November, enough to collapse my hoop houses, so no lettuce until spring. Then it got warm, a few days in the 40s. Rain melted most of the snow. Now we have about an inch on the ground, but it' going to be normal next week, highs in the teens and several days of "flurries", so the ski resorts, luge park and skating rinks will be happy.

Annie

I got a Smoked Ham Shank from the store and started to make some bean soup. I ended up cleaning out the fridge and tossing in everything that needed using up. I ended up with a huge pot of soup/stew and, besides a bowl for my dinner, made up 6 bags and 1 qt. jar - all headed for the freezer... and future meals.

I'm sure this qualifies as Harvest since the tomatoes, dried chilis and garlic all came from the last of the garden.

It has been really cold here in Colorado. 6 degrees right now, heading down into the "minuses" tonight...

This is when you break out the "dry" stuff and make it into something. Ground 2.5lbs of masa last weekend, and a round of mustard today:

(2 small jars for gifts, one for the fam)

On the bright side Wednesday is the traditional day for starting the first seeds...Spring will come, eventually!

Annie, none of the orchards around here even grow peaches or cherries, let alone something as exotic as apricots. :o) Fruits you can count on seeing grown locally are strawberries, blueberries, apples, pumpkins, and sometimes red raspberries -- many U-pick places for them too. The big orchards announce whenever they get the "donut peaches" in from PA, but I've yet to see one. :p I don't think I've ever even seen fresh apricots in a grocery store around here!

Kate, your soup looks great. I've been going crazy with the beans lately -- I cooked up about 1lb each of dried garbanzo beans, small red beans, and black beans. I then used a portion of each for various meals, and divided and froze whatever remained. I can say that cooking your own garbanzo beans from dried beans is definitely so much better than using canned beans for making hummus! yum!

gardengrl, that ground masa mess looks freakin' amazing. I'd be sitting there in awe... drinking my beer and watching you do that. lol! What is your end product in that process? I'm in that part of NY where we don't see masa... in any form. And I'm looking through the seed books now! in fact, came to ask Annie a question....

PM, there's only one here that I can find, and that's 50 miles away, close to The Lake and its microclimate. I think there are probably others if I went 50 miles south, but I haven't really looked. And, of course, being in the fruit belt, we have sweet cherries and peaches pretty much everywhere you look, and I even have my own two peach trees, although Dad planted them. Unfortunately they are clingstones, and so a devil to can.

I've inventoried all my seeds and ordered what I need for this year, I save the seeds from things like those Great White tomatoes, most of my beans, pumpkins, squash, melons, etc. I do buy sweet corn seed as well as things like beets, carrots, cabbage, etc. I even have my pots and trays ready for planting, with my heating pads and grow lights, all I need is a couple more "lids" for the 1020 trays and onion plants!

As far as preserving, I found that I did not dry a jar of crowder peas quite enough and they were moldy. I threw those out, but I still have a 2 quarts jar full of fully dried crowder peas. Now if I could just figure out what to do with them. And, of course, my big Excaliber dehydrator just died. It's 15 years old and I use it a LOT, but I'm still disappointed.

Annie

@party_music50 yes, the masa was a glorious mess. Let my kid take a few turns on the grinder. I grew flour corn the past two seasons - I wouldn't want to try to survive winter on it but it is fun and sort of in line with everything I do in the garden - trying to get my urban offspring to appreciate the food chain etc. But mostly it's fun!

We got 2.5 pounds of masa and I ground another pound just straight off the drying rack, for cornmeal. Tonight we are doing a cornmeal muffin taste test - half a dozen store-bought corn meal and half a dozen from this. (served with pulled pork and a FoodSaver freezer bag of collards). But before that, we've had a batch of tamales (filled with shredded chicken and the green chiles frozen out of last summer's garden, natch) as well as street tacos with little corn tortillas. Still have one pound left of the masa and will probably do tamales again some time next month when another cold snap inevitably hits.

@annie1992 I went through all my seed packets last week! If I have any energy after work tomorrow I am going to start the brassicas and the alliums. Yay February!

Annie, I didn't know that a dehydrator ever died! And I'm surprised that you can grow SWEET cherries there. I thought they needed much warmer zones. I planted an Evans / Bali cherry and it's grown great here (z5), but it's not sweet enough to enjoy out of hand. Do you know the sweet varieties that do well in z5? Re peaches, I planted two semi-dwarf Reliance peach trees... One put out a HUGE yield several years ago and the limbs broke so badly that the tree didn't survive the next winter. The other tree has suffered some partial limb loss over the years, but it still produces. The problem is that the squirrels steal all the fruit before it's even close to being ripe. :p

gardengrl, I wish I could try your tamales and tortillas!!! Great lessons for your offspring! I'm the aunt who does that sort of thing... like take the kids to the "local" ice harvest in February. There's a little hamlet not too far from here where, in February, the town members harvest ice blocks from a large pond, and move the blocks to an ice barn for storage. All done the old-fashioned way with huge hand saws, horse-drawn carts, etc. In July, they use the stored ice to make the ice cream for an ice cream social. That's a food chain to appreciate. :)

I got my hydrator back from my son and it was filthy from being in his garage. Everything but the bottom went in the dishwasher. Then I discovered that the bottom does heat, but the fan doesn't work. I'll take that apart and see if I can get it to work. I'll be sadly disappointed if it is kaput.

I've decided to not bother starting seeds this year, but rather buy whatever plants are at the nursery. Not one plant that I started last year was what it was suppose to be, and most unusable. Tomatoes don't do very good here because it is too hot in July and August. But.... that Giant White tomato does sound intreguing. Something different.

Well, I did grow that squash/pumpkin that grew so huge that it took over the yard. I got 6 pumpkins and 3 rotted. So I ate/shared one and have two left. While the squash/pumpkin are good, I don't think they were worth the effort; and the huge vines were bothersome. (Well... 7, but the critters ate the first so I didn't count it.)

When we lived out in the country the squirrels would take most of the apricots, but not for the fruit, but rather for the nut inside. I would find the whole of the flesh laying on the ground and the nuts gone. i don't know what they did with the pluots, but they got all of those too. The deer got most of the peaches and the squirrels the rest. I felt like our yard was an oasis of food for all the critters. I get almost all the fruit here in the city thanks to the local cats that patrol my pet-free yard. They chase-off most critters that like to "sample the fare."

Kate I couldn't agree more with your pest woes. I have two gardens, one in the mountains where the deer are plentiful - so far a six-foot fence (wire, to let the light in) has worked but we're remodeling and the workmen keep leaving the gate open :/. In town it's the squirrels. I confess to live-trapping them and taking to a park a couple of miles away. I'll trap out 4 or so over a couple of days and that buys me a few weeks of peace, as they're territorial. (someone is going to say that moving a squirrel is a death sentence in itself, because of the territoriality...)

Have you tried a pumpkin alternative, like butternut squash? We still have 8 of them sitting on the hearth from last summer. They keep really well. I do grow pie pumpkins but if I don't use them over the holidays they start to "sag" - not a good look for the hearth :)

I grew butternut squash before and had success growing it. I like to eat it as well.

I just wish I could grow something like that that would be available to eat over a longer period and not be an all-at-once crop.

PM, I'm in 5a, and I planted Royal Anne and Lapins. A lot of the local cherry orchards have a few of the Royal Anne, they are a white/cream colored cherry which I like a lot and is apparently favored for making maraschino cherries. Most of the local orchards have Bing as a sweet cherry and Montmorency as their pie cherry. When I still lived in the WHite Cloud house I used to drive to a local orchard and pick sweet cherries for $1 a pound. They are a lot more expensive now, so I planted my own. My sour cherries are Montmorency. I'm also hoping for a few plums this year, I planted a Stanley for Elery, his favorite. It's 3 years old this year, so maybe.....

And, yeah, dehydrators die. My first one was an old Nesco, my second one was a Harvest Maid. The Harvest Maid actually caught fire, thankfully it was in the garage, drying hot peppers, so no other harm was done, other than a scorch mark on the cement stair where it was sitting. This is my third, and most expensive. I really liked the Excaliber because it was square and had 9 racks which I could remove and use it to make yogurt. I'll replace it, because I dehydrate everything from onions and garlic to hot peppers and jerky, plus make yogurt and LindaLou's zucchini candy for the kids. It got a real workout, enough that I'll get another one, probably the same model.

Kate, if you have a cool place to store them, butternut keeps really well. I still have several in storage from last September's picking and they just get sweeter.

I do have pests, everything from cutworms and root maggots and coddling moths to groundhogs, deer, rabbits, possums, raccoons, chipmunks and various other rodents. Oh, and a bear or two that likes the cherries. The groundhogs seem to do the most damage, the possums the least because possums mostly like the old/over ripe garden stuff. Nature's garbage collectors, plus they eat ticks, so I leave them alone.

I've been cleaning freezers, so I canned 7 jars of raspberry jam and I think maybe some more beef stock is next.

Annie

My Nesco dehydrator was indeed dead and so I ordered another because I have so many racks for that model. I'm hoping to do some drying this year. I especially like to make fruit leathers.

Annie, I also found more raspberries in the freezer and so will make some more jam. The Aprium jam was a popular item and there is only one small jar left for me. I guess I will need to make more. I do have several more packages of those in the freezer, and everything helps to lighten the load.

Actually, I think I've used up all the beef bone broth and you reminded me that I need to make some more.

Annie, I grew a Stanley plum once -- it was the first fruit tree I ever planted, at a new place, and I chose a bad spot for it and ended up removing it. It fruited quickly -- 3rd year. Now I'm researching cherries, and I got off on a tangent searching for other fruits and berries that would grow here. I was also specifically looking for a sweet cherry bush. I used to work in a building that was situated in a residential area near here... the house on the corner had a small shrub out front, maybe 4' high max, and it produced what looked exactly like full size sweet dark cherries... stems, fruit shape and color, pit, etc. The ground was littered with the ripe fruit that had fallen. I always wondered why wildlife didn't eat those cherries!

This is sounding like the great dehydrator disaster of 2023. :O)

I joined the marmalade contingent. Mine is tangerine! Fruits are from a potted tree we keep in our north-facing living room through winter. I only was able to make two 8 ounce jars, but it tastes great. This is my third year to make it.

I also had a "dehydrator disaster" but mine was in 2022. I was dehydrating some garlic at 135F and was only using two trays which I've done before many times. This time, for some reason, one of the trays and the bottom of the dehydrator got too hot and melted/warped. Not sure if I can melt it back to useable shape again.

It won't be long before asparagus season! I need to find some time to clean the old dead growth out of the beds.

matthias_lang, tangerine marmalade sounds great!!! I bought some really nice ruby grapefruit and am thinking about making a test jar of grapefruit marmalade from that....

LoneJack, I tried a jar of pickled asparagus yesterday and it was the bomb!!! I was going to ask if anyone here has a great pickled asparagus recipe -- this one used quite a lot of crushed hot red pepper so they were spicy! :)

I usually use the Mrs. Wages kosher dill mix and add a clove of garlic. I don't think I've ever added additional spices before.

We don't grow asparagus, so we only pickle them every few years when we can buy a nice batch. But I mate found a missed 2020 jar in the basement and we'll open it after we finish our pint of sweet pickles.

Here's what we put in our asparagus pickles: sliced garlic, allspice, peppercorns, coriander, crumbled nutmeg (hammered, really), cayenne, equal parts vinegar and water, salt, sugar. For specifics, look at The Joy of Pickling, by Linda Ziedrich.

I can imagine that any pickled asparagus recipe would taste pretty good! I also like asparagus when it's raw. :)

I used up another 8 cups of frozen Apriums to make more jam. This time I added 4 T. of Amarretto to the mix. The almond taste brought forward the Apricot taste, and I think it’s the best I’ve ever made.

I think, because of our wierd winter/spring weather, that I may not get any Apriums this year…. not one blossom. I guess it’s a good thing I still have plenty of frozen Apriums from last year.

Interesting idea to add amaretto! Sad you had no blossoms. If your trees produced a lot last year, then they probably wouldn‘t have produced much this year anyway. At least that’s how all my fruiting trees and shrubs behave.

I went through my freezer yesterday and found a quart of my frozen peaches I didn’t know I had! I turned it into peach tarts. :)

I am returning to canning after not doing so for a few years. I recently canned up a bunch of chicken and pork. I really like my induction ready Presto 23 qt and Nuovo portable cooktop combination.

Yum, peach tarts sound good. Better, probably, than the beef stock I have simmering overnight in the big Nesco, it'll be canned tomorrow.

Kate, I hope you get apriums again this year, although like PM, my fruit trees tend to have bigger harvests in alternate years. I had a huge year for peaches last year, so I'm assuming I won't have any/many this year, but I'm hopeful anyway. The jam sounds delicious.

Welcome back to canning, Lucille!

Updating to add that I got 5 quarts and a pint of beef stock, but one jar broke in the canner. It must have been compromised because a small round piece broke right out of the side in the pressure canner.

Annie

Wow, Annie, that is crazy about your jar breaking like that. Thankfully, I've never seen anything weird like that happen before.

Kate, I made some more green hot sauce the other day using mostly serranos and some long hots (it's what I had) and I didn't heed your earlier advice about not adding red peppers. It was only a small lunchbox size sweet red pepper, but it was still a mistake. lol! The red really does quickly muddy the nice green color of the sauce. I'll eat it all quickly so that nobody else notices. :)

It's pretty too when you only use red. 😁