Juicy

 Or: how we steam juice and can fruit. All summer long.

We´ve been on the hunt those last weeks, and this post is long overdue.

We hunt for cheap cherries,

...or for people who´ve got apple trees they don´t want to harvest, or any other fruits.

And that´s because I want to bottle summer.

 I´m trying to catch the smell and the color and the taste and put it in tiny bottles and glasses, so I can survive winter.
Okay, maybe Im overdramatic. Maybe I´m just taking pleasure in rediscovering the old art of canning and preserving food. Anyway, this summers big, really big topic is canning and juicemaking.
Especially Ronnie is very fascinated, she awaits me every morning eagerly, if I brought new friut from the market, and she helps picking as much as she can.

She even completely made her own batch of cherry jam. She patiently gets the stones out of every fruit, mashes them, adds sugar, and all I do is helping her fill the glasses with the boiling jam and close the lid.

And then I got this juicemaker for my birthday. My polish hostfamily used to have one, and I´ve always loved it. It´s super simple, it works with steam and especially well with berries (apples not so much).
Basically, you have a pot with water in the lowest level,

...on which you put this upside-down funnel thing, to let the steam rise properly:

and on there, you put this mesh filled with fruit.

Close the lid. Heat the whole tower of pots. Prepare bottles, and then go and do something fun. I prefer to make more jam. Or go out, read a chapter and smoke a cigarette. When you come back,

There you have your strawberries. You sucked all life out of them, like a vampire, so now fill it in bottles:

Look, I´m playing housewife :)

And since, over the course of the last months, Ronja and I´ve not only been cooking with cherries and straberries, but with apples and peaches and watermelon and red currants and white currants and yellow plums and blue plums and all other sorts, our little shelf in the basement now looks like this:

Ronja eagerly draws the labels. And yes, we´ve even tried our hand at pickling cucumbers. Works well, so far. So, now we´ve learned about preserving food, are havng a ton of fun and mother-daughter bonding, get a full pantry and have a bunch of creative Christmas presents? Now, what´s not to like about that?
Music:

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.