Quinces

Sometime around the end of March, Gayle and the boys went to pick plums from a tree at an old house on the property a friend lives on. There was a quince tree nearby, and they picked a few quinces. Those quinces sat in our windowsill for a week or two before I got around to cooking them. I just put them in a pot with some water and brought them to a boil, and over the next two or three days brought them to a boil again so they wouldn’t spoil. Finally I had time to peel them and take out the cores, and then they sat in the fridge for another week till finally one day I put them on the table at lunch because I knew they wouldn’t keep much longer! To my surprise, the children loved them. I had not cooked them with any sugar or even stevia, but they were sweet enough to be good, and with cream on top they were absolutely delicious! We decided we wanted to can some quinces this year, so went back to pick a banana boxful off the tree. By this time, a month had passed since the first ones were picked, and they were now quite ripe. I washed and trimmed a dishpanful and cooked them the same way as the half dozen a month before, but they went to mush! So, I took the cores out by hand and froze the mush to make into jam when we have jars to put it in. The next batch, I peeled, trimmed, and chunked before cooking them, and canned them with stevia (I use NOW brand Better Stevia, 1 teaspoon to two quarts of water). We decided to make sauce from the rest, so I cooked them to mush and then picked out the cores and canned it as I do applesauce, with a bit of stevia because it was rather tart. Quinces are a distinctive flavor; I think they taste like flowers smell. With cream, they are quite a treat, and nowhere near as sour as I used to think they were. If you have access to this old-fashioned fruit, give them a try!

Above-the boxful of quinces I worked up. Below-some finished jars of quince chunks and one of sauce to enjoy this winter.