Canning weekend

I love canning and I think it's so under valued these days.  I grew up with my mom canning in the summers.  She was mostly a jam maker, and never missed making at least enough strawberry and raspberry jam for our family for the rest of the year.  I clearly remember going off to college and having store bought jam for the first time, realizing how lucky I was to have enjoyed my mother's jam all those years (actually I thought, "This stuff is garbage").  Now I know that was cafeteria grade jam, but there is just no comparison in my mind between store bought and homemade.  As long as you use good fresh fruits, homemade jam is far and away superior to my tastes and you can control how much sugar you are adding.  My mom also made the occasional pickles and sweet pepper relish, as well as a sweet chili sauce that I have never been able to find a store bought replacement for.

I made a big batch of strawberry jam back in June when the local berries were at their peak, and I was lucky enough to have my Mom make it with me while she visiting.  This past weekend our family went blueberry picking and came home with 12 pounds of berries.  So blueberry jam was on deck, as well as some new recipes for blueberry syrup and blueberry butter.  The jam came out perfect and now I have 9 jars to enjoy for the rest of the year.

The "Blueberry Bonanza" recipe that yielded the syrup and butter was less of a success but still pretty good.  The recipe cooked down the berries for a few minutes, then separated the juice from the solids.  The juice was used to make a syrup, for pancakes or ice cream.  The syrup actually jelled up a little, instead of remaining syrupy, so that was less than perfect, but the taste is good.  I cut down on the sugar in the recipe by about 15%, and I think next time I'd cut out more because it turned out a little too sweet for my taste.  It will definitely get eaten at home, but won't be gifted to anyone.  On the other hand, I love the Blueberry Butter results!  The solids (and some juice that doesn't completely drain by gravity)are cooked down with some lemon zest, cinnamon and nutmeg until it's a spreadable consistency.  I can't wait spread some on my morning toast... just waiting to finish up the open jars of jam first!

Also on this past weekend's canning list were some Dilled Beans.

I had an over abundance of green beans from our CSA this past week so I decided to add in some yellow wax beans and try out another new recipe for dilled beans.  Pretty much a dill pickle on the green beans.   Fingers crossed for a good result, I'm letting them pickle awhile before I open a jar.

Hoping to get raspberry and blackberry jam put away before the end of the summer, and for those I can pick from our own raspberry bushes and the "wild" blackberries that grow all over around here!  I also would like to make some straight up dill pickles.  I saw some pickling cukes last week when I was picking our CSA... so I may have to get those this week and do some more canning this weekend!