Links: Honey Sweetened Preserves, Apricots, and a Winner

Last Sunday, I picked up a half bushel of apricots and a flat of sour cherries and then proceeded to spend every spare minute throughout the rest of the week trying to turn them into an array of jams, butters, sauces, and preserves. I lost a few of the very ripest apricots, but by sheer determination, managed to get everything else put up before time irreparably took its toll. I’m heading to Portland in just a week for a little family vacation, so I’m avoiding large fruit purchases and focusing on getting ahead in my freelancing work and blogging, in the hopes that I can focus on my parents, sister and nephew. Fingers crossed that the plan works! Now, to the links!

• A riff on the cantaloupe jam with vanilla bean that’s in my cookbook! 
• I am always looking for easy salads for quick summer lunches and this one with white beans and parsley looks like it would fit the bill (though I’d probably fancy it up with some slivered grape tomatoes and some minced red onion).
• A very large batch of strawberry jam, sweetened with honey and set with Pomona’s Pectin.
• Looking for more honey-sweetened preserves? This one for blueberry butter sounds awfully good.
• Just one more! Sour cherry jam sweetened with honey.
• Spicy lacto-fermented mustard. Just the thing for a soft pretzel!
• These roasted vegetables sound incredible.
• Another Russian preserve, this time apricot halves in syrup.
• Speaking of apricots, these bars look like they deserve a place in my baking roster very, very soon.
• This post made me wish fervently that I could somehow get my hands on some black currants.

Now, a few links either by me or about me…

• On the FN Dish front, these roasted apricots with mascarpone are easy and ridiculous good and this green panzanella is one of my new favorite things. 
• Over at Table Matters, I made a few more things from Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles (those jasmine pickled peaches!) and whipped up some burgers.
• I wrote a bunch of easy, kid-friendly canning recipes for Parents Magazine last winter and now they are live!
• The July edition of the Mrs. Wages newsletter is up and it features some of my favorite tomato recipes.
• Finally, there’s a new canning podcast out there and I was a guest. Tune in to hear me talk about good starter recipes and my favorite canning tricks.

Big thanks to everyone who took the time to enter the OXO berry pack giveaway last week (thanks are also due to OXO, for sponsoring the giveaway. They are too nice over there). It was so fun to read about all your favorite OXO products. The winner is #730, Rachel C. She said, “My favorite is actually my OXO can opener. The grippy handles are absolutely AMAZING for getting the screw tops off of bottles with sticky contents that sit too long in my fridge.”

Make sure to check back in on Monday, because I’ll have another fun giveaway up that I think you guys are going to like!

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