Lab Rats...

During my whole project Chris has been of invaluable help to me.  During the last two weeks his help in the lab has prevented me from despairing at the seemingly unending list of work!  He has kept me on track and provided lots of entertainment!

Last week we were working on blending all of my frozen peach fruit samples and getting them ready for Brix, pH TA analysis.  Essentially last week we were making peach smoothies, separating off the juice from the 'pulp' and freezing the juice.  This week we are taking that frozen juice and testing it with instruments to get an 'objective' understanding of the aspects of its flavor.  pH gives us the acidity, Brix an approximation of the sweetness and TA a slightly different understanding of the acidity.  This basically gives us numbers to the flavor differences between the fruit to help us see if the treatments we are using are have an effect (good or bad) on flavor.  This is the final in a long line of tests we have run this year on fruit quality - AND I AM SO EXCITED FOR IT TO BE FINISHED!!!!

As I said this all would have taken MUCH longer without my generous husband's help!