Something new

Stephen's boss has given us a variety of fun things from his garden this summer. When I sent a thank you note detailing the 3 items I had made with one gigantic zucchini along with a piece of decadent chocolate zucchini cake, the donations increased. The latest was a bag of quince. He wanted to "see what I could do with them". What else? I made it into a quince blueberry crumble cake and sent it back to work. Bags of produce come home, tupperwares of baked goods go back.

We were then invited down to the horse ranch to collect the remaining quince since he was done trying to make stuff from them. What is a quince? (click on the word and you will find out)Well, it's related to the apple and pear, but it much harder and grainy. It really should be cooked to be eaten. It gives off a strong floral and tropical scent, kind of like pineapple. One of those fruits you generally want to add a lot of sugar to. He mentioned it has roots in the Middle East and some speculate it was the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Hmmmmm. . . . . . . .
So this week I spent trying to get rid of this bushel of quince by cooking them down to juice. Then last night some friends came over and we made a stock pot of jelly. And some quince sauce which I was calling quapplesauce. We started out at 16 cups of juice and added 13 cups of sugar and I was planning on having quince jelly coming out my ears. Well, several hours later of constant stirring, I had EIGHT MEASLY PINTS.

It seemed like such a slap in the face. I had washed and heated all these jars and was simmering a bunch of lids just waiting to cap off my jars. And I only used EIGHT. Some will go to our friends that helped with the stirring and the sauce, some will go to Stephen's boss. (with a flashlight behind it)

It's a beautiful pink color when juiced and turns ruby when jellied. I had a little bit of the leftover jelly on a sharp white cheddar cheese grilled sandwich for lunch and thought "dang, maybe that was worth it after all".