Go to your local farmers market to find the juiciest peaches available, donut peaches and white peaches are the choice here in California. Peach syrup is a great way to add fresh peach flavor to breakfasts, desserts and for baking in winter. The high sugar content prevents the syrup from turning hard in the freezer, handy to use.#GlobalCookpadGames2024

This dish is called “Farmers Daughters”, probably because the fruit makes a smooth and mild tasting dessert, but the liquid develops more alcohol from airborne wild yeasts on the dried fruits.A small piece of brandied apricot is served on special family occasions over ice cream to all eligible younger family members.The flavor of the apricots transfers to the sap over a few months and is then fortified with sugar and brewers yeast, becomes an adults only liqueur, 20% alcohol, 40 proof.

We have an authentic old Italian food grade tabletop wine press, stainless steel, from Francesco Palumbo, two quart/liter capacity, and a matching capacity sauerkraut crock pot with airlock.You can use a hand lemon press if you dont have a table press and punch a hole in a mason jar lid to put an airlock in. We make wine and fruit liqueurs and other fermented drinks and foods with those two. This recipe is for one quart of peach beer. I make two batches. You can also liquify the peaches in your food processor. Use with a strainer cheesecloth bag and a quart mason jar with an airlock ( amazon, $4 ). Same recipe.

Plums are ripe. We left our Santa Rosa plums on the tree till they fall off in the blankets we put under the tree. Then they are perfectly sweet and ripe to make plum wine.We make plum wine from the whole fruits. We mash the whole plums, ferment the plum juice, syphon off the fermented juice, discard the pits and skins.This Amish plum wine making recipe is excellent for beginners. No tools needed. 12% to 15% alcohol. This wine will be ready next year June/July when you make next year’s plum wine.#CA2025

Greengage plums are the sweetest plums grown here in the California Valley. They are hard and green when ripe around Labor Day, surprisingly juicy and sweet. A special liqueur treat, ready by the end of year.

Six large ripe peaches, Forty-Niner California yellow peaches or White Lady white peaches are my favorite, not too sweet, mixed with a navel orange and some cherries make enough golden peach jam for the year, three pint jars.

Our plums are starting to ripen, and all at once. Here is how we process the ones we dont eat directly from the tree or give away. We added a Japanese plum wine recipe here and published a separate recipe for Amish plum wine.You can grow plum trees from ripe pits: scrub the pits, put in bowl of water, discard the floating ones, plant three pits in one planter hole in a large cloth planter pot with handles or in a planter bed in a sunny location.Plant in fall, they need winter cold to germinate. They will sprout in spring. Select the most vigorous one, remove other two.Drag planter pot around till you find a sunny location where the young plum tree flourishes.#GlobalApron

Our White Lady white peaches are ripe, and huge this year, over 350 grams each. The three biggest ones are selected for their pits, to grow a new tree. White peach trees only last eight years here, and take five years to produce, so we plant 3 sprouted pits in a planter pot every year for our mini orchyard. The pits take half a year in the fridge to sprout.An easy way to process the ripe fruits is to bake the whole fruit, unpeeled, unpitted, in the air fryer oven for 45 minutes at 400 F degrees, and puree it. They also taste great fresh and make a great marmelade, see our Golden Jam recipe in here.The puree is served as a topping, one Tablespoon at a time, over grilled chicken or pork, like apple sauce. After a few days in the fridge, we freeze any leftover puree in ice cube trays for winter use over grilled chicken, pork, on yoghurt and in cakes.

Once alcoholic drinks are 80 proof, 40% alcohol, or higher, they are excellent preservation agents for fruits, herbs and vegetables. Different kinds of alcoholic beverages add different flavors to different fruits, and preserve them for years to come.Bing cherries will be ripe soon. They are fun to preserve whole in inexpensive California Brandy, with the stems attached, or halved and pitted, to be served over ice cream. An old large gallon size glass pickle jar with lid does the thrick, no cooking needed.

The Santa Rosa and Japanese plums are ripe! Never been as sweet as this year, they contain 10+ percent sugar. They make a delicious plum drink for the winter holidays.We remove the pits because they contain hydrogen cyanide, a poison, we dont want that to leech into this drink.

When people buy new harvest fruits or veggies in quantity, or harvest themselves, these are the family recipes we provide to preserve the produce till next harvest.

We always make two different Liqueurs with the new cherry harvest. A big 5 pound jar with late, ripe, sweet, pitted Bing cherries and cinnamon to serve as winter after dinner drink and a 3 pound jar with early whole Red crisp cherries on the stem and clove spice that taste like Maraschino cherries to serve over icecream.