I have finished my fruit preserves. I have 30 pints of peach preserves at a cost of about $1.50 per pint; I also saved peaches for four pies. I also have 27 pints of strawberry preserves at a cost of about $1.25 per pint. These are all low-sugar preserves. All this took me over two weeks of steady work, first prepping the fruit and storing it in the freezer, then steadily canning it batch by batch. Some of this will be given away as gifts, the rest will keep me going until next spring. I use preserves almost every day. I may have overdone it a little bit this year but I do make good use of them. When I give them away, I counsel my friends to not open the jar right away but to wait for a cold winter's day to brighten things up.
I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...

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