Sunday, December 21, 2014

Persimmons and Home Canning Basics

I have the pleasure of working with the Portland Fruit TreeProject throughout the year. They are a great organization, which organizes harvest parties for the large amount of fruit trees in Portland. Groups of volunteers harvest ripe fruit and a portion is donated to the Oregon Food Bank. Volunteers also take home a portion of the fruit, as does the owner of the property/fruit trees. On top of the harvest parties, they also organize canning and cooking classes to help people with ideas on what to do with… we’ll say 30+ pounds of Persimmons, for instance.

Persimmons!

Enter Heather and Jason! We joined with the PFTP to teach a Persimmon Preservation class. We did a demo of one of my favorite persimmon recipes, Persimmon Chutney. It makes a great addition to a holiday gift basket and goes well on all sort of things. Jason prefers it on pork while I prefer it on a nice curry… or a spoon.

To help with the class, I put together a handout. Who doesn’t like a good handout? It includes three persimmon recipes as well as a basic guide to home canning. Credit where it is due, the basic guide came directly from My Pantry Shelf. It is incredibly well written and a great guide.

The three recipes are:
Persimmon Chutney
Persimmon Jam
Persimmon Cookies

Granted, persimmon cookies aren’t a canning thing, but it you have persimmons, you should 100% make these cookies. They are soft and chewy. On top of that, the bizarre science experiment that is persimmon and baking soda brings me a weird level of joy.


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