CSA week of Sept. 20 - No Fail Pesto

Jammin' - Blackberry and Nectarine Jam

When you live on San Juan Island you eat blackberries at summer's end. You go to your secret bushes (everybody has one) and pick. It is just what you do. You freeze them. You make cobblers, crisps and pies.    A friend of mine has a ritual with her kids; if they pick enough for a pie, she will make one for them. I love that. We usually freeze 5-6 gallon bags full and we aren't quite there just yet. 

This year, since I am exploring the world of jam, I decided to attempt to replicate a jam I bought more than my share of at $7 a jar last summer: Blackberry~Nectarine Jam. I think I did it. One batch was low sugar and the second was almost without sugar all together. Tart and tasty. This will surely bring the taste of summer to our warm, homemade french loaves this winter. My pie making friend that I mentioned before, she is a bread making goddess and she is a constant source of inspiration. Check out her latest goal to see why I am so lucky to be her friend.


So, jam. I used Ball's recipe with their no / low sugar pectin. Good stuff. On their site, they have a wonderful "Pectin Calculator" that has specific measurements for the number of jars you want to make.
Here is the recipe I used. I split the fruit between the berries and the nectarines. On the container it says you can mix, on here it doesn't mention it. Also, they only refer to peaches on here, however, every site I went to said to treat nectarines just like peaches with the exception that you do not have to skin them. In addition, after I brought the mixture to it's initial boil, I used my handmixer 5-6 times to smooth it out a bit. Easy peasy. 

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Making Freezer Jam

Note: This method does not kill E Coli. Please make sure you wash your hands thoroughly when working with food. I am posting this due to an outbreak from a single farm in Oregon made the news. Cooking / canning methods kill these bacteria if they are present. 

The berries are here! We have been taking full advantage of berry season whether it is at the grocery store snatching up a 1/2 flat of Skagit Valley berries or at the Farmer's Market eating up Sweet Earth Farm's delicious Tri-star strawberries that we just can't seem to get enough of into the mouth of a certain 4 year old. 


In years past, I have grabbed blackberries from our "berry orchard" (read: wild berries) at the end of our driveway and frozen a few gallon bags for over the winter. We are such berry lovers that they are always gone by mid-December and I am always promising myself we will gather more "next year". 


Throughout the years, I have always been envious of the families that had fresh berry preserves the whole year through while I was buying jar after jar at the store. Growing up in Orange County didn't really include spending summer days making jam, so I never had it in my repertoire of skills and figured it was beyond me...same with vegetable gardening. Since I tackled the later, I figured I could dive into jam (doesn't that sound fabulous?). My one reservation was dealing with a huge boiling pot of water and hot jars while I have a curious 4 year old and a VERY squirmy 8 month old who, um, interact a lot these days.

Last summer, one of my dear friends was raving about freezer jam. "It is SOOOOO easy". She is sooooo right! Here is the recipe I used and Cole could help! No heat! I imagine this would be wonderful for those of you who live in places where the temps are soaring as well.

Just a note about the recipe. As I looked at various recipes online and in my 4 preserving books (yes, I have them and read them. I just haven't dove into the process yet, but I am getting there). I liked this recipe because it had considerably less sugar in it. This is the recipe on the  Ball Real Pectin container. It is a keeper.

Also, make sure your jars and lids are CLEAN. I like to throw mine in the dishwasher on the "sterilize" cycle right before I use them. 



BERRY FREEZER JAM - makes 6 - 8oz jars of jam


Supplies:
Potato masher or hand mixer (the hand mixer is GREAT for the blueberries)
Flat bottomed bowl for mashing / mixing fruit
6 - 8 oz clean straight-sided jam jars with lids
5 cups of crushed fruit (single berry variety or mix & match)
2 cups of granulated sugar
6 tablespoons of Ball Real Fruit Pectin Instant Pectin


Procedure:

1) Wash fruit and prep. This means remove stems, hull strawberries, if you want to get technical. Make those berries look pretty.

 2) Place berries into flat bottomed bowl, one layer at a time and mash, mix, practice a little anger management. Pulverize that fruit using your potato masher or hand mixer.


3) In a separate bowl, mix sugar and pectin.


4) Add fruit mash to pectin / sugar mixture and stir for 3 minutes.


5) Ladle into clean 8 oz jam jars and cover. When filling jars, leave 1/2 inch headspace to allow for food expansion during freezing. Let stand for 30 minutes and use immediately or freeze.

THAT IS IT!!! DONE! JAM!! It is good for 3 weeks in your refrigerator or up to a year in your freezer. Really, that is it. Can you believe it?


Now for the taste test....

EASY PEASY!!! Now it is your turn. Try it out. Seriously, you can do this!

Now you can do this with Strawberries, Peaches or Pears, Raspberries, Blackberries, or Blueberries and Cherries. If you use peaches, add 3 tablespoons of lemon juice.


To be honest...I am giving mine a round in a pressure cooker. I will keep you posted on the results.

Processing Zucchini / Summer Squash - Part II: Grating & Freezing

This time we are going to look at another method for keeping all of that delicious summer squash into the winter. It is so straightforward, you will be shocked. Grating and freezing. This method is great for storing up squash to use in baked goods, soups, casseroles and more. In addition, this is a great way to use your zucchini that have mysteriously turned into baseball bats overnight. While they aren't the best for grilling and eating fresh, they are a great source of summer produce over the winter months.


Method Two - Grating and Freezing


Supplies needed:

• Zucchini
• Sharp kitchen knife
• Cutting Board
• Ziploc freezer bags
• Plastic Straw
• Sharpie
• Cookie sheet

Procedure:

1) Harvest those larger than large zucchini and rinse them with clean water.

 2) Slice the zucchini in half from top to bottom and then across the center.

 3) IMPORTANT!! Those big bad boy zukes have some tough and nasty seeds in them which is why we don't just slice them up and grill them. Using a tablespoon, scoop out the large seeds and dispose of them.

  

 
4) Using a food processor (mine just went KAPUT...do you see a theme here?) or grater, grate your zucchini into a large pile of wet mess.

Side note:  If you leave your cutting board level, you will end up with a puddle of zucchini juice somewhere around your board and then on your floor. If you place a folded washcloth under the board on the counter side and lean the opposite side over your sink, it will all run into your sink. Guess who remembered this a little too late.

 5) Measure out appropriate amount of squash for your favorite recipes. My favorite zucchini bread recipe requires 1 cup of zucchini, so I made each of my bags 1 cup full.

6) Spread the zucchini out so it is in a smooth layer in the baggie. Zip the baggie closed with the exception of a small opening at the end. Place a straw at least 3 inches into the baggie and suck the air out. Zip 'er shut!! Removing the air will reduce the chance of freezer burn.

7) Place bags onto a cookie sheet and freeze. I like to put these smaller bags into a larger freezer bag once they are frozen for organization sake in our freezer. I label the large bag and place it on top of the cookie sheet when I put it in the freezer. You know, in case life happens and I don't get back to the freezer to process everything until I need my cookie sheet (which right now could be forever since our oven is KAPUT).

 8) Mission completed! When you defrost your zucchini, drain all of the excess liquid before using it. This can easily be done by trimming a small hole in a bottom corner of the baggie and squeezing out the water.

If you haven't seen my post on Blanching and Freezing your zucchini / summer squash, check it out!

Spinach, Cookbooks and Spinach Ricotta Pie

This is the spinach that grew to enormous proportions, as large as my hand to be exact. What is one  to do with all of this gigantic spinach? Well, I harvested it all into a large paper bag and shoved and shoved it full until no more could fit. Then it was time to process the booty. Rinse, take off the stems, second rinse, steam for five minutes, blanche, squeeze out the extra water and bag for the freezer. It sounds easy, until you realize that your first 3 batches have taken almost an hour to complete and you have barely made a dent in the harvest. Is it possible that it is multiplying in the dark recesses of the bag? I have to take a break, so the whole thing goes into the fridge. In the meantime, anyone who stops by, leaves with a bag of spinach. After sending off our second bag, it hits me. Spinach Ricotta Pie.

Before I get ahead of myself, one of my genius girlfriends came up with the concept of a blog group. Every two months, we choose a cookbook to explore and we blog about it. What recipes were wonderful? Which recipes were wonderful after we tweaked them? How did we tweak them?

At the end, we will gather with a potluck to share the best of our best from the cookbook.  Our blogsite is http://cookbookclubsanjuan.blogspot.com/.

I was given the honor of choosing our very first book. This is a tremendous amount of pressure to start this process, but given the bounty we will see from our gardens in the upcoming months, I had to choose the "Moosewood Cookbook" by Mollie Katzen. I just love it and I am looking forward to exploring the book beyond the Spinach Ricotta Pie (click here for a link to Mollie's website with the recipe). Now that isn't the only recipe I have tried, but in the two years that I have owned this cookbook, it is the recipe I make over and over and over again. It's addictive.

So now, with my large quantities of spinach I will make Spinach Ricotta Pie. I will also turn over my garden to more spinach seeds to grow more delicious spinach for salads and other dishes, but I am on a mission now to make sure I have at least 20 bags of frozen spinach for the winter to insure I can make Mollie's pie.

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