Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Strawberry Season

Today I went to a local farm and picked 20 pounds of strawberries. It is early in the season so it was hard work finding the ripe berries. Here's what is happening to all those berries.
  • I canned 9 half pints of Strawberry Jam.
  • I'm in in the process of making 7 or 8 more jars of Strawberry Preserves. They are plumping overnight before being canned tomorrow.
  • I set aside two quarts to make Strawberry Pie for a picnic on Friday.
  • I made the strawberry syrup to mix with cream for making a batch of Strawberry Gelato.
  • I put one cookie sheet full of strawberries in the freezer.
  • And I made a strawberry-mango cobbler for dinner tonight. ( I added a bit of cinnamon and cardamom to the recipe. If you like your cobbler sweet, add more sugar to the fruit).
There may be a few extras left for eating, but I may have to go pick some more next week for us to snack on.
Earlier this week we were perusing my favorite canning book, The Joy of Cooking: All About Canning & Preserving, and saw a recipe for Mango Preserves. When we went to the store on Sunday, mangos were on sale. So yesterday I started Mango Preserves and did the canning of them today.
Preserves take two days because first you let the fruit and sugar sit in a cool place for 4-8 hours, then you bring the fruit to a boil and to the jellying point. Then the fruit sits overnight to plump so it won't float in the jars. Finally you return the fruit to a boil before processing it in a boiling water bath.

The summer canning season is off to a good start!

1 comment:

Dan said...

Tis the season. I will be making a double batch of strawberry jelly very soon. Strawberries have been on for about a week here and last weeks heat has really got them going.

Does the canning book have a recipe for shelf safe salsa? I am looking for a recipe that I can convert to a cherry salsa that can be stored in the pantry.