I have friends in Edom, Texas who run Blueberry Hill Farms and
they offer people the opportunity to pick their own blueberries and blackberries. I just noticed that they open for picking
at the end of May. Nothing tastes quite as perfect as fresh fruit that you pick
yourself. It’s good to get up close and
personal to the source of your food and understand how it is grown and
harvested. Blueberries are typically in season throughout June, depending on where you live. Strawberries follow in July. I lived in New England for a number of years and I loved to pick my
own strawberries, blueberries and apples. For a fraction of what you’d pay at the grocery store, you can pick as
much as you can carry and make pies, jam, apple butter and freeze your berries
for future recipes when they’re out of season. The first summer we lived in New Hampshire, we went blueberry picking
and I put several large bags of berries in the freezer. In the dead of winter
when the snow was so deep we couldn't even open the backdoor, I was making
blueberry pancakes that tasted like the middle of summer. It was a glorious
thing.
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| High bush blueberries |
After a wonderful summer morning of picking seven pounds of
plump, sweet blueberries at a local New Hampshire farm, I ran through recipes in
my head like Bubba Blue in Forest Gump. "There's blueberry pie, blueberry
buckle, blueberry jam, blueberry muffins, blueberry ice cream......."
until my husband Jason gave me a choice between knocking it off or walking home.
If you pick enough berries, you can prepare
them in a variety of ways. For long-term
storage in the freezer, rinse your berries well and spread them out on sheet
pans in a single layer. Put the sheet
pans in the freezer for about an hour, then transfer the frozen berries to
freezer bags and their juicy ripeness is captured in time. They’ll keep for about 6 months in the
freezer.
You can also make fabulous berry jam. This is kind of a production and you’ll need
to procure the right supplies, such as jars, lids, a wide mouth funnel and
plastic or rubber tongs. You’ll also
need a truckload of sugar and pectin, which you can typically find in the spice
aisle of the grocery store. I wish I
could say that making jam was a challenging task, but all the advice I got when
I started doing it myself was the same - follow the directions in the package
of pectin and it will come out perfect. So that's what I do and by god, it’s great! If
you decide to make your own jam, here are some of the tips I found helpful.
You absolutely MUST get a wide mouth funnel. I have no idea how
anyone makes jam without one. It is an essential kitchen tool for this task as
it allows you to drop large amounts of scalding hot, chunky jam into the jars without
slopping it everywhere. Seriously, get a wide mouth funnel and you won’t regret
the decision. Also, rather than boiling the jars, lids and funnel first, I fill
my sink with boiling hot water and submerge everything before I start cooking
the jam. Then I can pull out what I
need as I go along. This makes the whole process so much easier.
Don’t be afraid of the ridiculous amount of sugar called for in
the recipe. For six cups of crushed berries, the recipe calls for four cups of
sugar. It seems like a vulgar amount of sugar, but the sugar acts as an extra
preservative and the jam tastes way too tart if the amount of sugar is cut. A little bit of lemon juice is nice to balance
the sweetness and I also add lemon or orange zest for excellent flavor and
perfume in the final product. I have
also added a very small amount of finely chopped rosemary to the jam, but be
very careful when adding any kind of savory herb. A little goes a long
way.
Air is the enemy of canned and jarred foods. The jars need to be
sealed tightly when the jam is hot and they need to be submerged in boiling
water to finalize the canning process. I seal my jars of jam in the same sink
of boiling water where I sterilized the jars. I put a kitchen towel on the
bottom of the sink, carefully place the jars of jam in there and pour boiling
water over the top until it comes about two inches over the top of the jars.
The jars must be submerged in the water for them to seal properly. Every 10 minutes or so, I’ll add more boiling water, just to make sure the water stays hot
enough to seal the jars. They need to sit in the water for at least 20 minutes to make sure they are sealed properly. Sometimes you will hear the lids pop and you'll know the seal is air tight. You can also boil the jars of jam the old fashioned
way, but make sure they never touch the bottom of the pot. The jam needs to set
up for 24 hours and I like to cool mine upside down, just to make sure no air can
get in under the lid. If can you push down on the lid and it still has some flexibility, your jam is not sealed. It'll keep in the fridge, but not in the pantry. Best to chill that jam and eat is as soon as possible.
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