Friday 26 August 2022

Blanched Almond

Thank you everyone for the kind words about our new grandson and our anniversary. You're always so generous with your comments,  and it's lovely to have so many friends out there to share our happiness with. 

I remember years ago saying that if we had a daughter, we could never call her Blanche DuBois because she'd be Blanche D. Almond on the register at school. Blanche was a popular girls' name a century ago, meaning white or pure. 

Blanching in the cooking sense, means to plunge briefly into boiling water. With almonds, it enables the removal of the dark tough skin, leaving the nuts white and more suitable for cooking - with fruit and vegetables, this process is helpful in preparing produce for freezing.

I don't have almonds- but we did pick 7kg of pears from our tree last weekend. I find it hard to judge the right moment to pick

- ideally between when they are just too hard, and when they are soft and woolly. They have been arrayed along the windowsill to finish ripening there. But I had a load of bramley apples.

So I peeled and chunked the apples, and quartered the pears, and blanched them - then plunged them into boiling water, followed by rapid cooling in iced water. Fortuitously, there was a large bag of ice cubes in the freezer - so I hoicked that out to make my iced water [and leave space for the boxes of fruit]

Six boxes neatly labelled into the freezer. Now I just need to go brambling and get some black-berries as well. Please don't ask how long I've been working through that stash of tractor-feed labels, we seem to have had them forever, and I don't think we've had a T-F printer since the 80's!!



16 comments:

  1. I have a box of 1000 labels which are like yours. I bought them for 99 cents at Noz, and have been working through them for ages. I can use them on my computer,(they are on slightly bigger than A4 perforated sheets) with a bit of judicious trimming and very careful placement, but it takes a long time to work out. You sound very industrious with all you fruit freezing.

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    1. These ones are used for handwritten labels. My computer ones came from Staples when it closed down - thrifty as ever

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  2. Thought I'd left congratulations for the new grandson - but it must have not published.
    I'd forgotten that we were both married in the same year and of course another co-incidence is now we both have Grandsons called Jacob!

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    1. Thanks Sue - Jacob is a great name. Didn't see a comment from you (I blame Blogger!)

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  3. Glad to see someone else using tractor feed labels - amazingly ours are still sticky in spite of being over twenty-five years old. I’m catching up on blog reading and send double congratulations on your anniversary and new grandson.

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    1. Thank you Sue. Yes ours are still remarkably sticky (even surviving the freezer)

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  4. Sadly we have no pears this year, disappointing. Your 7 kg is very good. I always feel one has about a ten minute window with pears, from rock hard to soft!

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  5. You've had better luck with old sticky labels than me. Mine are no longer very sticky. But then some are close to thirty-five years old. Shouldn't be surprised. :)
    Mary

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    1. I had some ancient double sided tape which was only sticky on one side

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  6. How nice to have apples and pears ready in the freezer for when you need them. I hope you get lots of blackberries, too. Ours are not the same variety as the variety you find in England. But they are still welcome even if they are not as juicy.

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    1. Finding time to pick blackberries is proving difficult

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  7. I had a whole load of labels from Grandad's house- should actually use some labels to label things in the freezer- at the moment- the freezer is rammed with very. old. stuff. MUST throw some things out but feel bad about it (there are prawns in there that came from our old house!!!)x

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  8. That's a good harvest of pears and apples! Freezing them for later is a good idea!

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    1. We certainly can't eat them all at once. I've given some away

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