{"id":5339,"date":"2014-06-23T13:28:01","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T13:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5339"},"modified":"2016-04-08T13:30:26","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T13:30:26","slug":"a-note-from-chef-becky-june-23rd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-chef-becky-june-23rd\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from Chef Becky : June 23rd"},"content":{"rendered":"Dear CSA Members,\r\n\r\nI know I wrote that last week was the last week for apricots but luckily, there is\u00a0still at least one more week. This is your last chance to get any apricots in largish\u00a0quantities for making jam. If you haven\u2019t already I highly recommend you do; even\u00a0a small batch will work. If not, I fear you will regret it because few things in life\u00a0are so simple to do that will give you so much pleasure. The satisfaction of making jam, even the littlest amount will give you a sense of accomplishment not to\u00a0mention the sensory pleasure of having luscious, deep orange apricot jam on a cold\u00a0winter\u2019s day on your warm toast.\r\n\r\nApricot jam is probably the easiest jam to make; they don\u2019t require peeling and\u00a0they are small so they don\u2019t require a lot of cutting, either. Pectin is not necessary\u00a0as they have enough of their own natural pectin to get a decent set. All you need\u00a0is a few pounds of apricots, a wide shallow pan, a little sugar and lemon juice and\u00a0you\u2019re all set. Yes, you\u2019ll need jars too and new lids but they are plentiful at the\u00a0hardware store right now and even at Safeway.\r\n\r\nI like my apricot jam straight, which is my tendency. Exceptions are strawberry\u00a0cherry, plum blueberry and nectarine plum. All those combinations are for practical reasons; the nectarines add pectin and thickness to plum jam, the cherries add\u00a0pectin to the otherwise very runny strawberries (the cherry flavor is barely detectable to the dominant strawberry), and the blueberries give wonderful color and\u00a0thickness to plum jam which on its own oxidizes very quickly to a brownish color.Apricot stands best on its own, it has beautiful color and a fantastic sweet tart\u00a0balance that like no other fruit, and more closely mimics the experience of eating\u00a0it fresh.\r\n\r\nWe have some very ardent jam makers for customers and they seem to be divided\u00a0as to which variety makes the best jam. This year we heard from several who\u00a0swear that the Robada makes the best jam. Robada jam has a definite character.\u00a0Upon tasting a spoonful of a customers Robada jam, I felt the first sheer pleasure\u00a0and happiness of the apricot flavor, then a little jealousy (it was really good), but\u00a0ultimately it had a slightly tangy finish that I didn\u2019t care for. Some think you can\u00a0only make jam with Blenheims which is what I used until I met the Goldensweet.\u00a0I found Blenheim jam to be a little too runny. For me, Goldensweet is the best,\u00a0having just the right amount of texture (thickness) and perfect acid\/sweet balance.\r\n\r\nSo, this is your last chance to get apricots. I hope you take advantage of what this\u00a0wonderful apricot season has offered and make some jam!\r\n<h5><em><strong>Chef Becky<\/strong><\/em><\/h5>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear CSA Members, I know I wrote that last week was the last week for apricots but luckily, there is\u00a0still at least one more week. This is your last chance to get any apricots in largish\u00a0quantities for making jam. If you haven\u2019t already I highly recommend you do; even\u00a0a small batch will work. If not, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-note-from-farmer-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1o7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5340,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5339\/revisions\/5340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}