When you start canning stuff, you also start looking for ways to use them up! A few years ago, I started canning figs. Fortunately, when I expressed interest to my mother and mother-in-law, they both became a great source for fresh figs.
One year, my mother’s friend had a bumper crop of figs. They had run out of room to store them in, and also run out of people who wanted them.
Lucky me.
My mom brought them to father-in-law’s, who placed them single layer on cookie sheets and then placed them in the freezer. The next weekend, I went over there and transferred all the figs to ziploc bags, placed them in an ice chest, and returned home with about 7 fully stuffed gallon bags of individually frozen figs. Each bag weighed right at 4 pounds, a good weight for making small batches of fig preserves.
Here is one great way to use up an 8- or 16-ounce jar of whole fig preserves or fig jam.
To make the Blue Cheese Spread, you will need:
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8 ounces of cream cheese, at room temperature
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1 tablespoon finely minced white or red onion
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4 to 6 ounces blue cheese, crumbled