Apricots galore!

It’s apricot season and I’ve been picking lots! It’s unusual to get apricots here in Santa Fe (about every 7 years for me) as usually a late freeze comes in spring and freezes all the blossoms, but not this year!

I have a wonderful apricot jam recipe that has St. Germain’s liquor in it. St Germain’s is a liquor made out of elderberries and is delicious by itself but when added to apricot jam while cooking, it gives a wonderful floral nuance to the jam that is delicious. So I am excited to make more this year as I’m down to my last jar of apricot jam. The recipe can be found here.

Wow, what a fruit season it’s been so far-first mega strawberries, then thousands of cherries, now apricots and my neighbor has salmonberries now and coming up right behind will be raspberries and blackberries in another month and then apples in the fall.

AND we haven’t even gotten to the veggies being produced right now but that’s for another post!

 

Bumper crop of apricots this year in Santa Fe

Every 7-8 years, I get some apricots off my tree. This is year 8 and my second crop since moving here 16 years ago. Not a great success rate but usually here in Santa Fe, we have a freeze in late spring that freezes the apricot blossoms and hence no crop.

But this year, it’s been exciting as I’ve seen apricots everywhere in town and out-of-town. What a bumper crop this year! So I made apricot jam, dried some and the other day I got ambitious and made an apricot tart from one of Juliet Child’s books that my friend John gave me! I gotta say, it was good. Really good.

Wow! First apricots in 10 years!

Apricots in 2010!

We don’t get many apricots in Santa Fe because of the freezes we experience in Spring usually right as the apricots are blossoming but this year is the first time in ten years that I have gotten a few apricots! I didn’t get many (there are a few more on the tree) but just the fact that I got any was a miracle as we had many freezes this spring but I guess the apricots missed the freezes. I had to pick them a little early cause the birds  pick them apart. Aren’t they beautiful?!