20 lbs of apricots!

In case you’re wondering about the different appearance, the left-hand apricots are Blenheim variety, the right-hand ones Pattersons.  I was going to buy all Pattersons because they have such a wonderful flowery flavor, but the farmer/vendor made such an impassioned plea regarding the superiority of Blenheims for jam that I decided to try both.  I plan to make one batch of each using a honey apricot jam recipe I’m very fond of – if I have enough honey.  If not, I may wind up going to a different farmer’s market again tomorrow to get the right honey.  I’m extremely fussy about the quality of my honey, and there’s a vendor there who sells wonderful orange blossom honey.  (I hope the quality of honey is good this year – a rainy spring can make for very poor quality honey, and we had oodles of rain this spring.)

At any rate, not content with getting myself into 20 lbs of apricot jam-making, I cruised on over to another vendor, who had such huge, beautiful Bing cherries that I just had to have another 5 lbs.  These will become candied sweet cherries and go into another batch of fruitcake:

Pitted sweet cherries, ready to be candied

Between those two and the fact that Mike and I are having a 4th of July BBQ next weekend and need to clean the house up, I think I’ve got my work cut out for me this weekend. 

I had intended to thread up the loom and wind a bunch of yarn for dye samples, but it appears that I’ll be waiting for the new yarn to come in before doing the samples for my study group.  Also, Mike and I have ordered more powerful fans for my compudobby box, and I don’t want to use the compudobby extensively until we’ve had a chance to switch out the fans.  They should arrive Monday or Tuesday of next week, so I can start threading then.

So, the only fiber-related thing currently on the agenda is winding enough skeins for a 30-color gradient weft, and dyeing samples for that color gradient.  I think I’ll tackle that tomorrow, along with some cleaning.

Off to make apricot jam!

Anyway, the result is a rich, spicy cinnamon flavor – like cinnamon red-hots, only smoother and with subtle undertones from the other spices in the mix.  I should make more of it, now that I think of it!

Anyway, these are not like the yearly chocolate production run – very simple, and rolled in cocoa rather than dipped in tempered chocolate.  Nonetheless they should be yummy and I can’t wait to try one of the finished ones!  They have been piped into truffle shapes and are firming up; after that I’ll roll them into ball shapes and dip them in cocoa powder.  I may add a bit of cinnamon to the cocoa powder, if the native cinnamon flavor isn’t strong enough; haven’t decided yet.

And my compudobby is coming back today!  I had sent it back to AVL for repairs.  They discovered that my solenoid woes had been entirely due to heat buildup in the dobby box.  I suspect the small filter that I installed over the fans of having impeded enough airflow to fry the dobby components.  I put it there because the box was filling with lint, but apparently I should either have used a smaller air filter or replaced the fans with stronger fans.  I’m going to do both now, and Mike has offered to install a temperature monitor inside the box so we can monitor the temperature to prevent future frying.

Regardless, I’ll be glad to have my dobby box back, as it means I can resume threading.  My goal for this weekend is to get the warp threaded, wind the yarn for the dye study group from hanks to cones (so they can be re-wound into smaller skeins), and dye the first set of samples for the red to yellow gradient.  Next week I hope to finish sampling for the red to yellow gradient, and dye the skeins themselves!

Finally, our wedding photographer has put up a couple of our photos (with permission) on her blog.  Some of them are very nice, so check them out!

Anyway, we decided that, while it didn’t hold a candle to the chocolates, it tasted good enough for the Tien imprimatur, so we wrapped up seven of the ten fruitcakes and have brought them along to give to family.  The remaining three we intend to eat ourselves over the course of the next year – they’re too tasty to “donate” to coworkers.

At any rate, the fruitcake was a success, and I intend to make some more next July-August (giving them enough time to age magnificently).  This time I may change around the recipe somewhat, and try one batch with whisky, one with rum, and one with Southern Comfort/Amaretto.  I may also swap around the citrus.

For it is almost time for exotic citrus!  The Buddha’s Hands (also known as fingered citron) have been in the farmer’s markets, as well as the football-shaped traditional citron.  I left a batch of yuzu (Japanese lemon-like citrus) candying in the fridge, and another batch of candied Meyer lemon peel.  And soon I will be making another pilgrimage to the Alemany Farmer’s Market in San Francisco, to find the exotic citrus vendor who has so many yummy varieties – Seville oranges, bergamot, Palestine lime, and lots of others!  I plan to put up at least five or six kinds of candied citrus peels over the course of this winter.  They’re delicious to nibble on and make great fruitcakes, too.

(I missed my calling.  Between the weaving, preserving, baking, etc. I should have been a medieval farmwife!  Although, I don’t think they did much chocolatiering…)

Tomorrow we are doing Christmas lunch with my dad and then going to my mother’s open house Xmas for dinner.  I will be bringing fruitcake to both events! and of course the assorted Xmas presents as well.

Wishing a very happy holiday to all!

So chocolate season is over for the year – there are maybe four or five pounds left, which I will feed to my coworkers.  And that is IT!  I am much relieved.  I think next year I’ll scale down a little more – even 65 lbs was a stretch for me, probably because I tried doing too many flavors of truffles.  (The ganache-centered bonbons have to be made in the three days before Thanksgiving, the others can be done a week or two before.)  I think I’m also going to change the size of the candy box I use to something that will fit inside a flat-rate Priority Mail box – which could save me 50% of packing and shipping costs, and require less shipping material to boot!  But other than that, I’m satisfied with this year’s efforts.

Yesterday was mostly recovering from several 12-to-14 hour days of obsessive chocolatiering, and cleaning up the worst of the chocolate carnage.  The rest of this week will likely be at least partly cleaning, and then I’ll turn my attention to weaving.  (I haven’t yet received the patterns from Sharon, my sewing coach, so I can’t work on muslins just yet.)  I have the 27-yard warp (that’s 21.5 MILES of fine silk thread!) beamed on and ready to thread, just need to thread it, sley it, tie on, and get on to WEAVING!

I still have a lot of prep work to do before the packing crew arrives, so I won’t write more right now – gotta run and get these inserts printed!!