Raspberry Jam...

(to the tune of "strawberry wine")

Today I went raspberry picking with my three youngest. WOW! An ice-cream pail and a half of berries. That combined with the berries picked two days ago made 3 pails! These from our own front yard, off our wild untamed canes. Free food, free food...

I broke out the certo and discovered that the directions have no measurements for plain ole raspberry jam. Hmmm... remembered this problem from last year. Ah yes! I had found the recipe on their website and jotted it down and stuck it to the inside of the cupboard door along with other canning recipes. Ta! Da! 5 cups crushed berries, 7 cups sugar, 1 pkg. certo.

A lot of crushing and stirring and canning later we have 4 batches of jam, 20 pints in total!



Doing it in this marathon manner saves on power, water,and labour as the canner only needs to be filled heated once, and I don't wash the pot between batches. Scandalous I know but it works! Only one batch of dishes at the end too.

These plus the other types of jam to come will get us through the year. We pretty much never buy jam, no need really. I want to investigate making jam without commercial pectin though. And surely there is a better way than all that sugar! I did try the sugar free, low sugar pectin a few times but we just didn't like the texture of the jam.

The next pickings of raspberries will be for grandma and the Farmer's Market. The 3 little ones pick the berries and sell them by the cupful for ridiculous sums of money. Sell like hotcakes though, and they get to keep the money for themselves, no cut for dad on these!