Jam and Dreaming of a Long Walk

The sapling and I tackled our first canning project of the season this morning.

Last Wednesday we'd gone to a local pick-your-own strawberry patch with my aunt and I came home with 15 pounds of sweet berries for $18. Such a deal, when the picking is so much fun, too! To these I added the harvest of our own tiny but productive strawberry patch, and a bit of rhubarb.

I always use Pomona's Universal Pectin to make jam, because it requires no added sweetener to jell. It is citrus pectin that it is activated by calcium. There is one extra step involved in using this kind of pectin, but this effort yields fruit preserves that are just that- preserved fruit. I usually add a bit of honey, but nothing close to the amount in typical strawberry jam recipes. One recipe in an old cookbook of mine calls for 2 quarts of strawberries and 7 cups of sugar! If I'm canning, I like to go big. Pomona's works with doubling or tripling recipes - or as I did today, sextupling! Other types of pectin advise against this because they are activated by citric acid, and the ratio varies if you attempt to multiply amounts.
You can also make your own pectin by boiling green apples and lemons in water.

While Birch naps I'm washing a shelf-ful of empty jars in preparation for refilling them. I'm thinking about the rhubarb victoria sauce recipe from the Ball Blue book. Canning begets more canning.

That's a pattern with me... one activity inspires me to do more of the same. I've been getting a lot of reading in these past few days, too... it is so stinkin' hot outside! Yesterday I finshed Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Parts of it could be considered some of Birch's first readalouds! It is an autobiographical account of a summer-long hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada along the peaks of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges. I loved it. I am inspired anew... I will do one of those long hikes one day. Around Lake Superior, the Appalachian Trail, the Ice Age Trail, the English Lake District... somewhere. I'm not one for Bucket Lists, but that's a definite goal of mine.