Posted
Sep 08 2008, 09:21 AM
by
Donna Freedman
I spent Saturday afternoon in the kitchen turning free fruit into food for the winter. Sitting on my countertop are nine pints of home-canned pears, six jars of apple butter, and five jars of plum-pear jam.
I have enough apples left to make about four quarts of applesauce, but I'm going to wait until the last of the pears ripen. That way, I'll be able to process both fruits in the water-bath canner simultaneously. I got the apples and pears by putting a note on Freecycle, asking permission to pick fruit that wasn't being harvested by homeowners. A neighbor allowed me to pick plums -- I still have about 15 pounds of them to deal with -- and for the past few weeks I'd been picking blackberries around the corner from my apartment.
Saturday's experiment in urban gleaning cost me $13.20 for sugar, jar lids, one box of pectin and the gas to drive to pick the fruit. I'm not sure how much it cost to run the stove on high for 20 minutes and to run a slow cooker for seven hours. Not much, I expect, since my average electric use is 39 cents a day and I make most of my meals at home.
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