Miscellaneous Canning Projects

It turns out that I prefer store-bought spaghetti sauce over my homemade stuff. I'm not sure what it is, but my homemade sauce tastes really acidic and sometimes it gives me heartburn. I've been offloading as much of it on my parents as possible (they seem to like it), but I don't know if I'll ever go to the bother of canning sauce again. Unfortunately, I planted more paste tomato plants this year than I know what to do with. Here's a small portion of this years harvest:

I thought I'd try canning whole tomatoes and see if I like the flavor better. It doesn't take that long to turn whole tomatoes into sauce on the stovetop. I used the hot-pack method, which means you don't have to process the jars as long. Unfortunately, by the time I heated my peeled tomatoes up, they turned into mush. So instead of whole tomatoes, I basically canned extremely watery sauce. Oh well, I can drain out the water and use it anyway.

I also finally got around to making red raspberry jam. I've been working for a lab all summer scouting for insects in a high-tunnel raspberry production system. One of the perks of the job is that I got to pick and keep as many raspberries as I want. I had never made red raspberry jam before because the berries are pretty pricey, so now was my chance to do it with free fruit!

I think I like it more than the black raspberry jam I make each year (from foraged berries). The flavor of the red jam is a bit cleaner and brighter than the black jam.

Jam Session

I don't really have time to go into my recent jam making sessions in depth, but I thought I'd at least post some pictures of the process.

I picked between 9 and 10 pounds of black raspberries over the course of two trips to the woods and a few trips to my small backyard berry patch.

My lovely Roma food strainer. I don't own the screen that is meant for processing berries, but I used the apple/tomato screen with success (I just had to dismantle the whole thing halfway through and unclog the seeds from the screen). 

The first run through the strainer I didn't get much pulp and I was a little worried!

I ran the waste material back through the strainer three or four times and got a lot more of the pulp out.

By the end, the waste product was almost entirely seeds.

I put the pulp in the fridge until canning time and I was surprised to see that it had completely jelled on its own. I still followed the jam recipe and added pectin though.

I can't actually remember if this photo shows raspberry jam or black cherry jam. I also ran my pitted black cherries through the food strainer. Cherries have such a high water content that the strained product was very thin, so I ended up making cherry jelly instead of jam.

Counter chaos full of canning supplies.

Keeping Up With My Speed-Of-Light Life

I've been up to all kinds of gardening and cooking-related mischief late last week and over this weekend! Hopefully I'll have time to write about it all soon.

In the meantime, here's a quick rundown of what I've been doing and making:

• Acted as a tomato matchmaker (I can't wait to share this with you)
• Foraged for about 9 pounds of wild black raspberries (and I have the scratches to prove it)
• Scouted out some potential wild grape foraging locations
• Pitted cherries (I don't even want to know how many more pounds I have done)
• Made both black-raspberry and black-cherry vinegar
• Made both black-raspberry and black-cherry shrub
• Made both black-raspberry and black-cherry jam
• Made both black-raspberry apple and black-cherry apple crumble (can you guess what I'm overloaded with?)
• Made a yummy garden cucumber salad
• Collected an egg that I highly suspect to be a double-yolker (we'll see)
• Started hand pollinating my hard-shelled gourds (it's a nightly ritual)
• Ate the first fava bean of my life (and I don't appear to suffer from favism)
• Got a great idea for a new blog (that may or may not come to fruition)

Battle Wounds

Every year around the Fourth of July, wild black raspberries start to ripen in my area. I went picking for about 2 hours and came home with 2 and 2/3 pounds of berries and shredded arms! I never seem to notice how torn up my arms get while picking black raspberries until it is too late! These scratches aren't particularly painful, but they sure look bad. Last year I had two weddings to attend around July 4th, so I had to abstain from berry picking so my arms didn't look terrible in my fancy wedding garb.

And I know what you're thinking...why didn't I wear long sleeves? Well, unfortunately the day I choose to go berry picking was about 90 degrees. I wore long pants so I could easily bust through the brambles, but I wasn't willing to cook myself to death with long sleeves.

First Raspberry

I almost didn't notice this ripe raspberry because it was very close to the ground. I can't wait to get more!

Wild Black Raspberries

I have a few canes of wild black raspberry growing near my long-term compost pile. I've gotten some pretty good yields of of these plants the last two years considering I don't pay much attention to them.

This year I did pamper them a bit by clearing the brush and small trees from the area. Hopefully they'll get a bit more sun this year and produce even more fruit than before.

I was really excited to find wild black raspberries growing on my property!

These bluish-red canes are super easy to spot when walking in the woods (or even driving in a car). I've become a bit of a master at spotting wild raspberries while hiking.

If you are ever walking through the woods and spot a bramble patch, it's easy to distinguish between blackberries and raspberries (although I can't tell the difference between red and black raspberries by foliage alone). Use this mnemonic device: Blackberries stems are Blocky, while Raspberry stems are Round.

Are you a wild-berry hunter?

My Raspberry Patch

I got five raspberry plants from another grad student a couple years ago. The first year I got a few berries. The second year the plants were completely engulfed by weeds to the point where I couldn't even see the plants and forgot about them. This year (year three) I've made the effort to weed (and eventually mulch) the area.  Hopefully these will make a nice contribution to my fruit garden. Since last year, the plants have sent out runners and now there are baby plants everywhere! Hopefully they aren't too crowded and will still produce well. I plan on potting up some of the babies to give to friends.

Unexpected baby raspberry plant

Swarms of baby raspberry plants in a (relatively) weed free bed.

One of the few plants with second-year growth that didn't get mowed down by bunnies. I'm still a little confused about whether these raspberries will fruit on first-year or second-year wood, so I'm not going to do any pruning. I've also forgotten what varieties these canes are...and the fruiting is different in different varieties.

Fruit Gardening (a.k.a Pie Gardening)

I'm planning on planting a variety of fruit crops this year including strawberry (first time), raspberry, black raspberry, blackberry (a first), and rhubarb (another first).  I've cleared out the majority of the oval bed that was my cut flower garden last year to make space for a fruit garden. I have a feeling that I'm going to have to make another new bed for the space-consuming rhubarb. I'm really excited to expand my pie and jam repertoire this summer!

The oval bed will become the fruit garden (assuming I can work around the existing perennial flowers).

Are you trying any new fruit crops this year?