Tips Seniors Can Use To Preserve Fruits And Vegetables

By Zandrea Durham | June 6, 2023 | Comments Off on Tips Seniors Can Use To Preserve Fruits And Vegetables

June is Fruits And Vegetables Month and it’s a fantastic time for seniors to learn more about how to preserve and can those fruits and vegetables. Seniors can save a lot of money and enjoy much healthier produce if they can preserve the vegetables and fruits that are in season in the spring and summer. When seniors have in-home care services to help with the preparation and cleanup canning and preserving is easy.

In-Home Care Jeffersonville GA - Tips Seniors Can Use To Preserve Fruits And Vegetables
In-Home Care Jeffersonville GA – Tips Seniors Can Use To Preserve Fruits And Vegetables

Seniors may even be able to enjoy tomatoes, pickles, jams, and jellies they made themselves all through the winter. Preserves and homemade canned sauces are also fantastic gifts that seniors can give during the holiday season.

Making preserves and canning things isn’t as hard as people think. Most seniors who have in-home care can easily make preserves from fresh fruit or can some tomatoes or make pickles from cucumbers that they grow in the garden.

These tips and tricks can make it even easier:

Use Soft Fruit

Seniors can make jam with any fruit that is about to go bad. Soft ripe fruit is the best fruit to use to make jam. So instead of throwing out strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, oranges and lemons use them to make some quick preserves. Eating homemade jam made from fresh fruit is a good way for seniors to get the vitamins and nutrients in fruit without eating processed jam that has a lot of added sugar. Just wash the fruit well before using it to make preserves or jam.

Add Lemon Juice

Lemon juice will add flavor to homemade jams and preserves. But that’s not all it does. Lemon juice also acts as a preservative and it will give the fruit a great bright color. To make jams or preserves that have beautiful color that looks like jewels in jars add some lemon juice while boiling down the fruit until it’s soft.

Use Granulated Sugar

Granulated sugar is also sometimes called preserving sugar. Confection sugar, or powdered sugar, doesn’t work as effectively as granulated sugar for making preserves. Granulated sugar can also be used when making homemade sauces like tomato sauce to help preserve the tomatoes. Different types of fruit have different levels of natural sweetness so it’s a good idea to taste test the jam as it’s being made and only add enough sugar to make the jam or preserves sweet. There’s no need to add many cups of sugar. That will make the jam too sweet.

Skip The Pectin

A lot of canning and preserving recipes say that it’s essential to use pectin to thicken any kind of jam or preserves. Using pectin is recommended if the jam isn’t going to be stored in the fridge. But if seniors are making some fresh jam or marmalade just for their own use they don’t need to use pectin. Just boiling fruit, sugar, water, and lemon juice together will be enough to thicken and preserve the jam if it’s going to be kept in the fridge.

If you or an aging loved one are considering In-Home Care Services in Jeffersonville GA please contact the caring staff at Angels of Mercy Private Homecare Services, Inc. today at 478-745-5111.

Angels of Mercy Private Homecare Services is a Trusted Home Care Agency serving Macon, Warner Robins, Perry, Gray, Milledgeville, Forsyth, Cochran, Jeffersonville, Eastman, Fort Valley, and the surrounding areas.

Zandrea Durham
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