We Be Jammin'

I ♥ summer. I really do. The warm sunshine, all of the fun things to do, and most especially this week, fresh apricots! There's nothing quite like a perfectly ripe apricot, so fresh that it is still warm from the sunshine. mmmmmm....

Problem is, I don't have an apricot tree from which to partake of their deliciousness. Luckily, I'm fairly shameless when it comes to asking for things that I want, so when I drove past a house last Friday that had a huge apricot tree in their backyard that was just loaded down with little orange morsels of goodness, I decided that I would swing by the next morning and ask them if they would mind me picking some, with the idea that I would either pay them for what I took, or just do some extra picking for them so they wouldn't have to do quite so much themselves. So I packed my handy-dandy ladder into my little car and headed on over. The people were super nice, especially considering that they had every right to have considered it a bit rude for me to have invited myself to their house. I picked one grocery sack full, and grandma took it inside to start making some jam, and I picked steadily from about 10 to noon, being joined at different times by the lady of the house, her husband, and her sister. I did leave more that I had picked for them, but I ended up taking about 4 plastic grocery bags full of apricots home.

So many apricots! I've already dehydrated some, have munched on a lot, will be canning some of them whole, but I'm going to jam a most of them I think. I got through two batches of jam last night! I have some extra jam I didn't have room to process in the canner, so I may have to make some little tartlet shells to put it in!