Much Ripe Fruit & One Freezer Down

There is something inspirational about the perfume of very ripe strawberries. The kitchen is full of this lovely smell, and I'm frantically trying to get them into the freezer, until I can devise some new ways to use them. The problem is that we've just lost one of our fridges, and I couldn't pass up the overripe peaches, either. Ah, the joys of summer produce!! My niece is coming for the weekend, and I can't see an overripe peach without recalling the first time I offered her peaches and cream. She wasn't any more than 7 or 8, but she managed to put away several kid-sized bowls. What a wonderful, old-fashioned, summer ritual. Of course, telling her, as I set it in front of her, that my grandmother used to make it for me, didn't do much to dampen her enthusiasm!

But now I'm facing a counter full of extremely ripe strawberries, a batch of jam's worth of overripe peaches, plus the frozen meat that survived the freezer meltdown. (The latter is now distributed among the two remaining freezers, one of which I'd been meaning to clean out anyway, but my ultimate goal for the meat all along has been to can it, and I want to get it done asap. Found a terrific recipe for sloppy joes online...) There is also some meat that thawed, that needs to be cooked & dehydrated for the dogs.

The Ball book has some good recipes for the fruit, a few of which I've already tried. I think I'll try strawberry pie filling next. Seems a quick & easy way to put up a fair few of them at once. In fact, I'm ready now to branch out from jam to canning fruit in syrup or as pie filling. And I'm not even opposed to adding a bit of food coloring (gasp!!), or even candy flavoring, if it'll make the end product more appealing. My time (and shelf space!) is far too valuable to me to invest, if all I'll end up with is a mediocre end product.

The death of the fridge/freezer underscores another reason I'm glad I'm a canner. My ultimate goal is to arrange our food storage so that it can all be stored at room temperature, because we just don't know what might "come down the pike" for us. It could be as simple as an appliance on the fritz (as so clearly illustrated by my current situation), or as major as a local or regional disaster. In any case, I want to be able to feed the people I love, even if it's just cold meat, jar bread and canned fruit from the pantry. So I'm working very hard to obtain things (fruits & veggies, at this time of year, with the odd bit of meat thrown in, along with some wheat & other grain) in quantity, at the best possible price, then break them into smaller portions and can or dry them.