Unripe grapes are sour and make a very special mild vinegar substitute called verjus.The bottom grapes on a cluster of red or white grapes are the last to ripen, and one and the same cluster quite often holds sweet grapes on top and sour grapes on the bottom.You can press these sour grapes into grape juice. You can make a wonderful vinegar substitute with this tart, sour, grape juice. We use it to make Dijon mustard.To buy sour grapes in the store, taste the bottom grape, buy the cluster, and separate the sour grapes from the sweet ones, usually a dozen or so. You can also ask your friendly farmers market seller to bring you 2 pounds of unripe grapes to make a pint of verjus.

This bread is featured on a medieval painting by Jan Steen, (1626-1679). Our family farm recipe still prescribes equal weights of dough and raisins. My dad would complain if my mom was too frugal with the raisins.

This is a foolproof farm method to make green as well as black preserved olives, not salty, from the same fresh green local Sevillano olives, grown right here. We make five buckets of five lbs. each, taste one olive once a month till they develop their flavor over the time span of a year till next October harvest. You can use tall plastic food containers with lids, keep the proportions the same, to make smaller quantities.

We make wine and jam from our own grapes: spanish tempranillo, french mourvedre, and french grenache noir grapes. Lots of seeds. I make one quart jar of jam from 4 pounds of grapes, add agave syrup nectar. Here is how we remove the seeds, which reduces the jam to 3 cups of jam from 4 pounds of grape clusters. Year round summer sweetness for sandwiches.

Run Golden Delicious or Granny Smith apple peels, cores, quartered, blemished and dropped apples in three pound batches through the tabletop press. Three lbs. of apples make a pint of juice. The left over mash is a special treat for the horses. Ten pounds of apples make one pound of apple syrup. Apple syrup is used to make Sauerbraten dishes.

Apples ripen all at about the same time, a blessing but also a dilemma, one good backyard apple tree produces easily over 100 apples. The 20 best and largest ones are for hand eating, half a pound each or more. The next 20 to make 4 apple pies. Another 20 to make 5 quarts of apple sauce for freezing. From your 20 most blemished apples, as well as the peels, cores, and ends from the other apples, you make pints of apple cider. The remaining apples can be sliced and sundried, eaten as a snack or used to make tea. Here is how.

Holiday dessert. It takes a whole bottle of red wine to poach eight pears. The wine thickens and turns to syrup.

Simple ingredients that turn sweet when baked and go well together, easy and quick to prepare, an hour and a half in the oven, and you can serve a delicious, tender meal that does not cost a fortune.

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

You can make delicious white sparkling cooking wine from store bought fresh grape juice. This recipe makes champagne bottle size cooking wine for $1.30 per bottle. The wine stays fresh and delicious for five years.Note: Do not reuse wine bottles with screwtops. My October 2023 wine spoiled in them after five months. Corked bottles, or bottles with reuseable champagne tops stay fresh for five years.

Easy family recipe, donuts served warm covered with powdered sugar. These are very fluffy, made from thin batter and dropped in hot oil from a large spoon, so they dont look like donuts, they look more like large donut holes.

A big ripe California watermelon, called Calsweet, the one with green stripes and red flesh, makes a gallon of sweet watermelon juice or wine. Fresh cooked and cooled juice from this recipe is delicious, can also be made into wine that is refreshing and enjoyed long after the watermelon season is over.To test if the watermelon is ripe, tap your knuckle on the spot where the watermelon was attached to the vine. If it sounds like you are knocking on a front door, it is ripe. If you want a sweeter watermelon wine, you can backfill the wine you made in the bottle later, with a tablespoon of simple syrup made from granulated sugar. So fill your bottle almost to the top, leave head space for a tablespoon simple syrup back fill.#GlobalApron