Fruit for later

This has been a slow growing season due to lack of sunshine and heat, and excess moisture, and I've also been slow to preserve this year: usually, I'm hot out of the gates with rhubarb and strawberries (asparagus is something I prefer to eat fresh). In any case, this year there still remained bags of last year's rhubarb and a half dozen containers of strawberry freezer jam, which seemed like enough, so we just ate and enjoyed the fruit raw. We've done the same with cherries, absolutely gorging on the fresh and sweet, choosing not to pit and put any of these away either. But here we have the first real preserving effort ... and what ease it was, the fruit purchased at Nina's buying club, carted home in the stroller, and put up after supper: four litres of blueberries (minus those snacked upon), measured out in two-cup amounts, and a pile of apricots, pitted and thrown into bags, now lining the floor of our freezer.

Last winter, I regretted not putting away a few blueberries for smoothies and general snacking and muffin-additions; and I greatly appreciated the few bags of apricots, frozen in exactly the same simple manner (raw; no sugar added), which were preserved without forethought only because I'd bought too many and they were going bad on the counter. Who could have guessed they would taste so amazingly tart and tangy stewed up and served over hot breakfast cereal? CJ loved them too.

Everything I plan to put up this year follows this theme: easy, and wanted.