On that note, if anyone reading this (if, indeed, anyone is reading this) has ever WWOOFed before, I want to hear about it. Or if anyone has friends with an organic farm in the northeast, California, or for heaven's sake, New Zealand, and would take a willing worker, I want to hear about that too.
Back to the original note: berry-pickin' season is happening. There is an overwhelming, unruly, sprawling patch of raspberries taking over part of Ben's yard. Every other day I find myself lost in the raspberries, filling tupperware after tupperware, looking up only to find that I haven't made a dent in all there are to pick. I've become a master of wading through the bushes, squashing the prickly thistles with my flip flops and creeping past the poking willows.
This year I finally did something I've always said I would do but had never done: made jam during berry-pickin' season. Here's a visual taste of how it went:
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| These are the ones that survived my gorging-while-picking. |
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| Oh yeah, the huckleberries are going off too. Why not throw 'em in? Step 1: Chopping the berries in a food processor. |
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| That's a lot o berries. Step 2: Boil the berries. |
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| Step 3: Add pectin. Stir it up. Add sugar. Stir it more. (To the makers of Sure-Jell: the name of your product is incredibly unappetizing. Other than that it works fine, even for first-time jammers like me). |
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| Step 3: Pour the jam into a clean jar with a seal-tight lid and place the jar in a something-or-other that is tall enough to have boiling water rise over the top of the lid. I didn't have one of those something-or-others that Sure-Jell referred to, which worried me. But I've never been afraid to improvise in the kitchen (for better or for worse). So here's my jam sitting in hot water in the sink. After about 12 hours my concoction turned into JAM! (FYI: Boil if the jam is going to sit in the fridge for a while. It kills bacteria on the lid.) |
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| It's about time to make another jar. |
