Wild Plums! Chokecherries! Fruit Leather!

Looking Forward, Looking Back pt. 4-

Chokecherries and Plums

basket of wild plums

Sometimes, in th' midst of life, th' camera just doesn't come out. So it was with our fruit leather last year. We made plenty, but failed to get a single picture of it once we got it off th' drying trays. Heck, we could barely let it dry out. Usually, by th' time a batch was dry, it would have bunches of little chunks missing from it already. Here's a  tutorial on making fruit leather. It's really a simple, great way to preserve food. There's also some nice photos to get you excited for the upcoming summer harvest. 

Th' first thing to do is to find your fruit. We used Chokecherries, Plums, and Crab Apples, in many different combinations, but the addition of th' crabs really added a nice tartness to all th' leathers.

That same apple orchard i wrote about before also contained some plum trees. 

purple plums

pink plums

We got'em home and separated them into nice pretty piles.

five different types of plum

And here's me picking Chokecherries in th' mountains. 

Rocky mountain Chokecherries

Choke cherries follow most of th' water courses here in th' Rockies. So do th' roads. It's somewhat like driving through an orchard. This is a very important food to th' people who lived here before us.

They would dry them in large quantities in th' late summer sun, which works quickly around here. They would mix them with buffalo meat and dry them together. We heard they also crushed th' pits into th' drying fruit, so we had to try that. Th' pits are one of our favorite flavors- kinda like an almond, or an apricot kernel. It's very addictive, and we eat loads of them. They do contain Cyanide when eaten fresh, so bear that in mind, and don't eat too many. When dried they are fine, th' Cyanide gets released. But i hardly need to say that, as we don't know anyone who wants to crunch that hard pit just for a taste of an almond. But we do, and OH is it good! 

Just in case you're wondering why we would eat something with cyanide in it anyway... for th' same reasons we drink coffee, or whisky. It's really good. Exercise moderation. Don't over do it. Supposedly apple seeds contain cyanide too, but we eat loads of them as well, and have never felt th' worse for it.

Chokecherries are extremely astringent when under-ripe, even though they may've turned from red to black on th' tree weeks ago. When picking, just taste some, if they're very astringent, you probably want to wait a while. When they do ripen, they taste amazing, and there's nothing else like them. If' there's not bunches and bunches of trees however, you'll want to get 'em quick, or th' birds and bears will do it for you. 

We found a nifty fruit strainer at th' local hardware store, and that's what we used to strain the cherries that we didn't want pits in. 

making fruit leather

We also used it to strain th' plums, but we cooked them first, for about fifteen minutes to loosen 'em up a bit. That's a good time to add your crab apples.

Just mash 'em through th' strainer onto a tray, smooth it about a quarter of an inch thick, and place it in a sunny location. A couple of times it was too cloudy, so we dried it in our oven. That worked ok, but it turned out too dry, and we had to pay a lot more attention to it. Didn't quite taste as good either.

  Here's some of the trays drying out. 

And here's a batch with pits in it. Nobody shared that one with us. Oh well.

chokecherry fruit leather with crushed pits

flipped over and sliced.

And here's some for you.

Rocky Mountain Chokecherries

Here's some more good reading on Chokecherries. Enjoy!  

~Rico

Preserving Apples

Looking forward Looking Back-pt.3

Apples

apple tree dripping with fruit

Sometimes th' bounty of Autumn can make us forget th' barren-ness of Winter.

Oh, we know it, but we don't always feel it.

Never the less, it is good to put something aside, say, for that day in January when you're craving fruit leather. Not that our fruit leather lasted that long. But we gave it a shot.

fruit leather drying, crab-apple and choke cherry

We had so many apples and plums last fall we had to be creative with them. Eating fresh fruit is always first choice, but we simply couldn't even eat a dent into th' harvest. 

So Here's some pictures of what we found, as well as some ways to make 'em last. We'll start with some apples, and then move on to plums. Enjoy.

dat's one big apple

Most of last year's apples came from an old abandoned orchard. Yet more evidence that nature knows best how to raise her children. This place hasn't been taken care of in over 25 years, yet while most trees in town did OK, this old orchard produced unheard of amounts of apples and plums. This orchard also abounds in apple and plum wood, which is a favorite for cooking and smoking foods with.

Here's a shot showing th' ground literally covered in dropped apples

apples apples everywhere!

These apples was near as perfect as can be expected from th' grocery store, where they are constantly getting rid of the "lesser looking" ones.

And here's Bison eating on th' job

Bison eating an apple

This one fell off th' tree and literally impaled itself onto this sapling!

Once we got some home, we had to figure out creative ways to eat so many.

crab apples

The crab apples are really tart, and those are our favorites for eating fresh and baking with, though they seemed to be too sour for our friends. Oh well, more for us.

Here's a simple apple-bake dish, it's just chopped apples  topped with oats, a wee bit of flour, and maple syrup, then baked at 350 till it boils real good. That's Fynn's Archimedes screw next to it.

simple apple bake

Beth made a bunch of pies, and one unusual, though very tasty one was made with crab apples and ground cherries. We'll write more about them later

ground cherry-crab apple pie

Definitely a favorite way to preserve apples is to slice them real thin then smoke them over foraged apple wood. This is an addictive treat, fairly easy to make, and a great snack for road trips. 

apple wood smoked apples

Just soak your apple wood in some water for a few hours to get it good and wet, then get a good fire going, we used apple wood here too, then when you get some hot coals, top with th' wet wood. It'll smoke like crazy. Just be sure to keep your apples high enough from th' coals so they don't cook, just dry out. 

If you have a smoker, that would work even better than our ghetto-grill. This is also a good way to make some delicious crutons. Just put some of your favorite bread on there and smoke it till it dries. We like to do this for long trips, as it makes a great snack, just like the apples. Also, we use apple wood to cook nearly everything that we cook on th' grill. It adds a nice flavor to just about anything.

We also cooked some up a bit- with some plums, for about fifteen minutes, just long enough to soften th' plums, then mashed them through a fruit strainer to a nice pulp. Some of this we turned into fruit leather, like in the picture above, and some we canned into apple plum sauce. Again, th' crabs work best for this as their tartness really shines when cooked.  Here's a picture of some apple plum sauce, and some ground cherry salsa.

ground cherry salsa, and apple-plum sauce.

Went great with summer lunches.

Maybe next year we'll come up with more ideas.

Next post we'll write about th' plums. 

Enjoy.

Sumac and Honey Locust Spoons

Here's a set of spoons carved from foraged Sumac wood-

sumac spoons

This is really a nice looking wood, with brilliant golden hues just after burnishing and oiling, then mellowing into a darker copper color after prolonged use. 

If you've ever smelled or tasted Sumac berries, you know how yummy and citrusy they smell- well, carving green sumac wood smells like that. It's pretty soft and light wood, though not quite as light as apen, It's quite pleasing to work with.

Here's some close ups.

Th' first one is my everyday spoon. I eat breakfast with it everymorning and any other meal that requires a spoon.

close up of sumac spoon

 Here's a close up of a smaller stirring spoon.

carved tip

 I've got enough wood for about twenty more of these. If you'd like one (or more), just let me know. They'll sell for $15 a piece, and will be made to order, as all th' ones in th' pictures above are ours or sold already. 

I've also been making some larger Honey Locust spoons like th' ones below, these are cooking spoons, but i can make them any size. This wood is really dense, and hard to work, but looks real nice when finished. A large spoon of this will sell for $30-$50, and eating sized ones for around $20.

Honey Locust spoon (large)

back of same spoon

close up of back

close up of bowl

And here's one with a leather hanger

If you want to read about ways to make sumac-ade, a lovely summer drink, see our foraging blog here!     Enjoy!

~Rico