Posts Tagged ‘canning jam’
Plum Jam
The volunteer wild American Plum trees growing in a bramble along our property line and along the edge of the compost area have been showing good fruit this year but have been ripening at different rates. Yesterday, we decided to take the plunge and collect a batch for making plum jam.
I suggested we bring out a sheet to capture fruit that falls when shaking the tree. Cyndie handed me the sheet and sent me into the bramble to spread it beneath the branches. Easier said than done.
One reason we didn’t want the plums to fall to the ground is that Asher has shown an interest in eating them and can get to the fruit faster than we are able to pick them up.
The sheet worked well enough, despite the plums falling from a wider area than it covered. That was probably a good thing that kept us from trying to process more than what we had time to deal with yesterday.
Cyndie spotted a lone plum that had landed in the crook of a bare branch.
I got my hands messy helping to pit the plums and did my best to support Cyndie during the cooking and pouring into jars.
The plums aren’t overly sweet but Cyndie succeeded in mixing in less sugar than the recipe called for and taste tests had us both agreeing the flavor was good; not too tart.
The telltale “ping” of lids popping during dinner indicated the cooling jars of jam were sealing as hoped.
Since our harvest of wild black raspberries was lighter than usual this summer, it feels good to be able to take advantage of a different free crop that nature has provided. We ended up filling 18 jars of varying sizes with homemade plum jam.
The flavor stands no chance of competing with my passion for Cyndie’s wild blackcap raspberry jam, but I intend to enjoy the plum jam plenty since the fruit is from our property and was canned with the same loving care as all the goodies prepared in Cyndie’s kitchen.
Also, because we spread it on toast, and toast is just about one of my favorite morning treats. Toasted bagels, brown bread, honey wheat, or the all-time greatest, toasted homemade bread of any type (including Gramma Betty buns).
Guess what I want for breakfast this morning.
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Beyond Mowing
The time of mowing is upon us in multiple ways. Beyond the usual routine of cutting our lawn grass, the big tractors are finally hitting the local fields to cut hay. The neighbors who are renting our fields knocked down the tall grass in opposite corners of our property recently, leaving a very noticeable line of uncut growth along the fenceline that Cyndie tackled with our power trimmer.
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Despite all the mowing going on, Cyndie continues to pull off a heroic amount of raspberry picking which naturally led to canning jam. Since she was going to be in that canning mode, she also made a trip to a local strawberry grower to pick a bulk of that jam favorite, as well as a stop at the grocery store for a couple of bags of cherries.
Even though canning jam deserves to be a single focus task, Cyndie chose to merge it with preparations to drive to Northfield, MN, for a mini-reunion with visiting Hays relatives. There, we uncovered a treasure trove in my sister Mary’s files of family newsletters from the days before the internet took over communication.
I don’t remember writing all those annual reports detailing our children’s school years, but reading back over those missives now gives me the impression I have been writing the equivalent of this daily blog for longer than just the ten years I’ve been posting here on Relative Something. In fact, the old family newsletter was called, “Relatively Speakin’.”
Seems to be a certain congruency there, no?
Who knows what lies ahead for this relative crew? It won’t surprise me if it ends up involving less mowing, but I doubt I will ever stop writing about whatever is happening in all of our lives.
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Star Spangled
Cyndie cooked up some star-spangled black cap jam yesterday! It all started with some pre-canning berry picking when Elysa and Ande arrived to join in the fun. Made from real fresh berries.
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Then the cooking magic in the kitchen commenced, using more sugar than I am allowed to be in the same room with, leading to jars upon jars of the precious dark jam.
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And a filled kitchen sink.
Just to top off the busy afternoon over the stove, Cyndie baked two loaves of bread so we could test out the jam while it was still warm. The flavor treat set off fireworks in my taste buds!
Speaking of fireworks, one of my trusted news sources (who shall go unnamed to protect their reputation) let me down royally with a timely story offering four tips to help dog owners ease the stress of frightened pets during the sunset hours of exploding ordinance this time of year.
One: Don’t take your pet to the fireworks show.
Really?
Two: Keep your pet safe at home.
Isn’t that the same thing as not taking them to the show?
Three: Try over the counter remedies.
Oh, why didn’t I think of that before?
Four: Make sure your pet is microchipped.
July 4 is the number one day dogs and cats get lost, it says.
Well, that is not a tip that will ease my dog’s stress, so that was only three morsels of expert advice.
Color me thoroughly disappointed in that “helpful” tidbit of intrepid journalistic expertise.
We ushered Delilah into her “den” for the night, and she was able to quietly ignore the repeating echoes of small arms fire sounds percolating well past my bedtime. Delilah sleeps in a crate with a cover draped over it, which seems to provide her with enough comfort that she will generally ignore most activity overnight.
Last night, I could have used a sound proof cover over my bed. Regardless, once I got to sleep, it was dreamy visions of star-spangled black cap jam dancing in my head all night long.
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Berry Bounty
‘Tis the time of year when raspberries suddenly appear in significant numbers, materializing magically against the dominant green backdrop in every direction we turn. Sometimes they surprise us by showing up in a cluster of growth that we didn’t even realize included raspberry canes.
Cyndie has tried pruning some of our wild berry patches in the past, hoping to make it a little easier to walk through for picking berries, but the vigorous bushes seem to grow themselves into a solid mass again as soon as we turn our backs.
Time to dig out the Ball jars with the two-piece metal lids in preparation of preserving the harvest.
As is clearly visible in the image, we are lucky to be getting Black Cap Raspberries. I am not clever enough to successfully describe the flavor distinction between a red raspberry and a black cap, but after developing a taste for the unique flavor of the black caps, I have truly become a snob about the black cap supremacy.
One of my absolute favorite treats is well-toasted New England Brown Bread spread with a layer of cream cheese and topped with Cyndie’s home-canned black cap jam. It’s an explosion of texture and unparalleled flavor that is pure culinary bliss.
The first year she canned berries here, we gave the majority of jars away to friends and family before we realized the distinct difference of the black cap flavor. It was a minor disaster when we discovered there were no more jars of the preferred black cap jam left in the house for us.
Now we know to hoard a secret stash of our own, separate from the stock that gets shared.
Honestly, of all the different ways we have considered monetizing our activities here, Cyndie’s black cap jam is probably the most valuable. Too bad we aren’t willing to part with enough of that black gold to make that idea worthwhile.
The yield looks bountiful this year. Something tells me I should be stocking up on loaves of brown bread, too.
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Relative Something 