YAY! Jamming season is here!
Today I drove across the county in the rain to buy a well-priced flat of strawberries from a farm I’ve picked at/bought from before. I am a strawberry obsessive and I like to think I have an eye for good berries, but these were among the best I’ve ever purchased. In eight quarts, I might have found 4 berries that were bruised at all, the flavor and ripeness of the berries were both outstanding, and the size was pretty uniform, which is very unusual.
Anyway, tonight I began making two batches of Christine Ferber’s strawberry jam, one plain and one that will have black pepper and mint.
After strawberry season, I’ll make small batches of raspberry and blackberry (the de-seeding is so incredibly tedious and mom won’t eat either flavor, so a few jars will do,) then a LOT of peach, a bit of apricot (the harvest around here is not consistent, so it’s always a toss-up if I’ll be able to make any), some tomato jam from my homegrown tomatoes, and finally plum. I spent years making sour cherry jam and not convincing anyone else to eat any, so I’ll funnel my cherry energy into pie, crumbles, cake, etc.
Last year I also canned peaches in syrup for the first time in my canning career. Canned peaches were something my mother made when I was a kid, so it was mostly a little exercise in nostalgia. I didn’t expect to be gobsmacked by the peaches when I opened the first jar in the middle of winter, but I was. They were canned plain, but had developed a luscious, honeyed flavor that just knocked me out.
Other things I can: chopped tomatoes, homemade applesauce, and pear butter. All water bath - I’ve never pressure-canned, but I really should.
