Homework

What has it got in its bucketses?  Let’s take a look!

Why, it’s a big bucket of scratch-and-dent stone fruits!  Nectarines, white peaches, yellow peaches, and Shiro yellow plums.

I didn’t think to start taking pictures until we were more than halfway done processing the fruit, but the bucket was originally almost full.  The fruit came from a friend who is a local business owner… it’s all locally grown fruit, but due to bruises, mold, and spots of rot, not stuff that our friend can sell.  She offered me a bucket of the stuff that would otherwise go on the compost heap if I thought I had a use for it.  I leapt at the chance.

Why?  Why would I want a huge bucket full of fruit that no one else would buy?  Fruit that lots of people I know would consider rather revolting, honestly, and discard as inedible?

Because even fruit that looks like it’s way over the hill is often well worth your time.  That’s why.  Not only is it frugal to just cut away the bad bits and use what’s still good, not only does it respect the fruit and the people whose effort went into growing it, but if I’m honest, it’s some of the best-tasting, most fully ripe fruit you’ll ever put in your mouth.  The Belovedary and I snuck an awful lot of tastes while we were converting that bucket of fruit into nearly 18 cups of peeled, pared chunks, and oh man was it delicious.

Besides, for a great many cooking applications, there is no need whatsoever that the fruit be cosmetically perfect or even close.  It’s probably my inner Midwesterner showing, but every time I encounter a recipe for jelly, jam, or chutney that begins with the instruction to “choose ripe, firm, unblemished fruit” I want to scream a little.  If you’re chunking the fruit up into small pieces anyway, cooking it into a puree–or even more pertinently, turning it into clarified juice for a jelly–there is not going to be anything left that will tell you whether the fruit was unblemished or not when you began.  It simply does not matter. Same goes if you’re making cobbler, crisp, fool, clafoutis, slump, brown betty, turnovers, strudel, pudding, fruit soup, or pie, for crying out loud.  So give your poor fruit growers a break.  Give yourself a break.  Use up what’s good, regardless of what it looks like or whether you have to cut away some mushy bits or cope with a bit of rot or mold.  It won’t hurt you.

I mean, just look at that gorgeous fruit.  I won’t lie, we were a little tempted to just grab spoons and dive in, but we thought nearly 18 cups of fruit might be a little much even for us, so instead…

It was time for the Old Black Rum.  I added a cup of spiced black rum, and a little bit of water, and put the fruit into my ginormous off-brand slow-cooker (slow cookers are your friend when it’s hot, as it can do low/slow cooking without heating up the house).

In due time, this will all collapse into a puree… and eventually, by dint of cooking it forever with the lid off at a low temperature, into a rich, delicious, lightly spiced, nicely thick fruit butter.  Which at some point later in the week, when the weather (I hope and pray) breaks a little, I will pack into jars and seal in a hot-water bath.

Then, this winter, when memories are all we have of fresh stone fruit, we can bust out the Scratch And Dent Stone Fruit Butter, and eat and be happy.  Not bad, for a bucket of throwaway fruit.