Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Pantry Challenge.....finally!

I mentioned earlier that I had deviated from the original replacement plan which was to make mushroom soup. When our neighbor gave us access to ALL his grapefruit, I just had to go with it.


And since the BIG freezer is still on our 'wish list', I decided to can the juice.

I found a couple recipes in the Ball Home Preserving book for canned juice. One was for a 'Four Fruit Nectar' that combined grapefruit, orange, and pineapple juices with peach puree. We happen to have some frozen peaches left from last summer but no other citrus handy, so I improvised.







I had frozen the peaches whole with the skin on....which makes them SO easy to peal when you need to use them. Just wash under warm water and the peelings slip right off....yea!








Then I sliced them up and pureed the fruit in the food processor.

The kids helped me juice all the grapefruits....not enthusiastically, but they got the job done :)


I mixed the peach puree and the juice in a large pot, heated it thru and filled the hot jars....

...leaving a quarter inch of head space.

I processed the jars in a water bath for 20minutes....

....and ta da! 7 quarts of grapefruit peach and 4 quarts of grapefruit berry.

The berry juice was the second batch I made. We have such a small freezer and it was overflowing at this point so I decided to use up all the 'smoothie' fruit (since we really only drink smoothies in the summer anyway). After looking thru the fruit juice recipe section, I decided to try a rendition of 'Strawberry Lemonade'. I used a combination of strawberry, blackberry and raspberries with the grapefruit juice. The grapefruits are almost as tart as lemons so it came out pretty yummy (with very little added sugar).

My little kitchen helper :)

We drink ALOT of grapefruit juice in the summer. It's great added to sparkling mineral water, on ice, especially when the temps creep up to the 110 mark. It'll be so nice this summer to open up our very own homemade juice drinks....yea!

9 comments:

warren said...

Excellent! We love to can stuff but I hate that we seem to do nothing through the winter. Your juices look great! Iused to drink grapefruit pop but never had plain juice...I suppose mixing it with bubbly water would be like th epop I used to drink...

Annie's Mom said...

This is awesome Maureen!! I'm hoping to tackle my project this weekend!

RazorFamilyFarms.com said...

Very cool! I can up fruit juice too! I even made my own V-8 last year.

I'm going to see if I can mimic the V-8 Splash this year. Yummo!

Blessings!
Lacy

Nancy Winningham said...

This looks delish! Im a big fan of grapefruit as well.

Maureen said...

thanks all! I'm getting addicted to canning....I just love looking at my pantry as the jars start to fill up :)

Lacy - I will be waiting to see the results of your V-8 slash experiment...ditto on the YUM!

jodymom said...

Oh your juices look lush, know where I can come for a refreshing drink. I so admire you and Steve at what you are trying. Can't wait for our bsck yard garden. Joyce

Maureen said...

Me too Joyce....as much as we need the rain, I'm hoping for a dry week after this coming storm so we can start digging!!!

Julie said...

I love that sweet kitty picture! How long did it take you to do all this? I think it's fabulous! :)

Maureen said...

It was probably about 3 hours from the start of juicing to having the jars cooling on the countertop (and another hour cleaning up the kitchen:)