Fresh Fruit to Eat All Year – Making life Affordable

Fruit trees are great to have but it is hard to eat all that fresh fruit when it is rip. We love having canned fruit in our storage room. I go grocery shopping every other week not only does this save on over spending but I also have to plan carefully for two weeks with of meals As fresh fruit prices go up in the winter months I buy enough for a week maybe longer and then we eat canned fruit until the next shopping trip. I pack my kids lunches every day as well and canned fruit works great to put in small containers for them to use.

There are several recipes out there with recommendations of what to use. Fruits are a basic sugar water syrup added to the fruit in the hot jars. It’s called raw packing.

This is our process:

1. Wash our fruit
2. Peel the skin off
3. Cut out any bad spots
4. Core it and cut it into slices
5. Place in a lemon water solution (1 gallon water with ¾ cup lemon juice)
6. Make a syrup
7. Heat jars and pack them
8. Add hot syrup to jars leaving 1 inch of head space
9. Wipe clean
10. Process for 20 minutes in a water bath

Syrup Recipes

There are different recipes for syrups you have to find the right combination for what you are looking for. I have found that we like medium to heavy syrup for just eating the fruit and not making anything in it. Here are two different ones that we have used as a starting point.

• Very Thin or Very Light Syrup: Dissolve 1 cup sugar with 4 cups water to yield 4 cups syrup. Use this for already sweet fruits or to cut down on sugar.
• Thin or Light Syrup: Dissolve 1⅔ cups sugar with 4 cups water to yield 4¼ cups syrup.
• Medium Syrup: Use 2⅔ cups sugar and 4 cups water to yield 4⅔ cups syrup.
• Heavy Syrup: Use 4 cups sugar and 4 cups water to yield 5¾ cups syrup.