Sunday, August 9, 2009

Epic Jam-Making Adventure!


Today I made jam! It was pretty epic. First, I went to Jackson Park and picked (up) mulberries. I got a lot of funny looks while I was squatting in the dirt and hanging on tree limbs but I pretended I was a botanist. I also found several patches of tiny wild strawberries (one went into the jam) and tiny crabapples and strange spiky green fruits, as seen above. Then Claire & Mark came over with free blackberries and peaches from the farmers market where they work. After several super-sweaty hours, lots of splashing boiling water, a quick run to the grocery store for more sugar, and a big sticky peachy mess, we had three batches of peach jam and one of blueberry-mulberry-blackberry-and-one-tiny-wild-strawberry jam. Above you can see how much berry jam I made, so multiply that times four and that's how much we made altogether. They also left me one of their jars of peach jam. We used ALL of my much-maligned, carefully-hoarded collection of glass jars, which I knew would have a good purpose some day. We also felt like pioneers. And all the fruit we used was free!Ha! This is half of Jess in the kitchen. Note the messy counter. Please mentally multiply the mess throughout a house, and that's why I've been so stressed out and spacy recently.

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