A SURPRISE FROM WORK

Thursday, we received an unexpected e-mail from the bosses: the stores were going to be closed on the 3rd and the 4th! There were lots of hurrahs from everyone. For me, that meant a very welcome 4-day weekend!

Saturday morning, I invited a friend to go to the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market with me. I came home with a basket full of stuff – most prominently, a gallon of blackberries from Lineberger’s Farm. When I saw all those blackberries at the market, I realized I hadn’t made blackberry jam for 10 years. Well, another decade, another batch.

Jam is relatively quick and easy to make. Freezer jam is the easiest method, but I wanted shelf-stable jam, so I processed it in the water bath canner.

The blackberries were nice and clean so there wasn’t much prep work in that regard.

For jam, the berries need to be crushed. I wanted to reduce the number of seeds in my jam though, so I ran them through the food mill. That was the most tedious part of the process.

It took one whole 2-quart box to make the 4 cups of crushed blackberries required for a batch of jam. After bringing that to a boil, I added 7 cups of sugar and brought it back to a boil. When it was ready, I ladled the jam into the jars and put them in the canner.

I relished the fact that this was the first time I could use water straight from the faucet in my canner now that the magnesium/iron is filtered out.

After processing for 10 minutes, I have six jars of jam for the shelf. There was a small bowl full of jam left that I put in in the fridge for immediate use.

The other 2-quart box will be packaged in smaller portions and put in the freezer. I have visions of muffins and cobbler in my future!