I’m a project person. It’s a little bit of a problem.
And with the world on semi-lockdown, I’m spending a lot of time at home by myself. So naturally, I’m looking for things to keep these hands and this brain busy when I’m not working. If I have a project in mind and don’t get to it over the weekend, it’s a curse. Because then I have to do it after work.
Mind you, I don’t have to—but it stays gently nestled in that persistent part of me that drives me to complete tasks. Do you see why this is a problem? I hate it and love it at the same time.
And that was the case with the many pounds of apricots that had been sitting in my fridge since I pulled them off the trees in my front yard to save them from the squirrels. Those demon rodents were pulling them off the trees for the pits and depositing all of that beautiful flesh on the ground, half-eaten. We could probably work out a deal if they spoke English. I could take the fruit and give them the pits. But that’s not how life works.
So I whisked the fruit into the fridge before I was ready, giving about a third of the haul to my parents.
I eventually decided I wanted three things out of this fruit—apricot preserves, barbecue sauce, and a tart or pie of some sort. Just a couple of problems: I didn’t have any canning equipment, and I didn’t have anyone to teach me how. Luckily my mom just happened to have a water-bath canner in the garage that had been collecting dust for 20 years. And there’s also this thing called the internet.
The last time we wrote about canning was a few years ago for our annual Last Minute Gift Guide. A very angry woman wrote us a letter about how irresponsible we were for making canning sound so easy and not dangerous at all. She went on and on about how we could be responsible for putting the public in danger.
So here’s my public service announcement: I could very well give myself botulism, which is pretty rare, if I’m not careful. I could be putting my friends and family in danger if I don’t can this stuff correctly. I don’t know what I’m doing and you don’t either. Don’t try this at home, kids.
However, I often don’t listen to my own advice (yes, I’m that kind of annoying person) and I absolutely tried it at home.
Cue after-work canning adventure and internet deep dive.
For about a week, I looked up apricot preserves recipes. I wanted something with a twist, because I also have a ton of basil in my garden and I only wanted so much pesto in my fridge. Some included canning instructions, some didn’t. Most included a ton of sugar. A ton. One-to-one ratios. Why do we use so much sugar in American cooking? It’s gross.
I kept coming back to one recipe over and over again, which included canning instructions and came from a pickling website. It called for less sugar than your average recipe, basil, lemon juice, pectin, and apricots. Simple. So I started it right after work on a Monday, and I was up until midnight!
The beauty of most fruit is that it’s acidic enough to be “safe” for canning, according to almost every website I found. Apparently, acidic environments are inhospitable places for the bacteria that makes botulism. Preserves are good for canning beginners because most recipes also call for lemon juice, which is acidic, and sugar, which is a preservative. Veggies, however, are a little more complicated.
Turns out that getting the water boiling in a giant water-bath canner takes forever, and after you pull the jars out of the sterilizing phase, you have to keep that water boiling and add more so there is at least an inch or two of water above the jarred preserves so they can heat evenly. This was definitely trial by fire. But I could hear the lids of my cans pinging their little seals shut as I drifted off to sleep—so I’m calling it a success!
Next up: barbecue sauce.
I was reticent with this one, and ended up freezing it because I couldn’t find a recipe that was specifically for canning apricot barbecue sauce, and I totally tweaked the recipe I did find. Barbecue sauce is hard. It’s a combination of many things: tomatoes, sugar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, onions, garlic, vinegar, pepper … the list could go on and on.
I made it once before (without apricots), and although I followed a recipe, I didn’t like the finished product. So, me being me, I messed with it and messed with it until the sauce tasted the way I wanted it to. The same thing happened here. It took me two after-work sessions to get it to taste how I wanted it to.
I also added fresh onions, garlic, and serrano pepper—which are apparently no-nos with a water-bath canner, according to the folks out there who want to put the fear of God into beginners. That’s me. I chickened out and froze the barbecue sauce, leaving enough space at the top of the jars for them not to crack. Fear of the unknown won out on this round.
The final dish I coveted was a beautiful, creamy, almond-flavored tart with fresh apricots plopped on top before it went in the oven. I found it on epicurious.com, and it was supposed to be the dessert for a dinner with friends over the weekend. But that ever-present pandemic won out and there was a change of plans for my friends due to a change of plans with reopening and closing due to the recent surge in COVID-19 cases.
No biggie, I made it anyway.
The crust had more sugar than the actual filling, which was perfect. And the filling had just enough sugar to balance out the tartness of the apricots. I put a little Baileys in my coffee on Sunday morning and ate the tart for breakfast.
That’s the sort of move that makes being an adult totally worth it.
Editor Camillia Lanham is in pandemic project heaven/hell. Send food tips to clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 23-30, 2020.