{"id":114,"date":"2012-08-06T16:03:16","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T22:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/?p=114"},"modified":"2013-01-10T14:26:11","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T21:26:11","slug":"bottling-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/archives\/114","title":{"rendered":"Bottling Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOTTLING SUMMER: MAKING WILD BERRY JAM<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Our years of ranching in the arid Sand Hills of Saskatchewan gave me a deep appreciation for the scant wild fruits of summer\u2014Saskatoon berries for pie, chokecherries for jelly\u2014and taught me how to prepare for the onslaught of winter. It\u2019s a pioneer skill lost to today\u2019s city populace and a habit carried along when we moved to our present home. Our Alberta acreage on a creek bottom flourishes with bushes of native berries and currants.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Preserving fruit is an Elkink family affair; together we belt on buckets and pick the bushes bare. This month it was gooseberries\u2014heavy and purple-black and bursting with juice. Sorting through and discarding leaves and twigs left us with 16 cups of sun-warmed fruit (and innumerable gouges from the nasty thorns).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We divided the berries in half and dumped 8 cups into a copper pot with 2 cups of water and brought to a boil, uncovered, then simmered for about 15 minutes till soft. We measured the pulp (5 cups) and slowly added a cup of sugar for each cup of pulp, as well as 1 box of Certo (though gooseberries have enough natural pectin on their own that we might well have left it off).<\/p>\n

We returned the pot to the heat and boiled till thick (about 8 minutes), then carefully poured the preserves into hot, sterilized jars (which I\u2019d just run through the dishwasher). We wiped the rims of the jars to ensure a good seal, then placed hot (but not boiled) self-sealing lids onto the half-pint jars\u201419 in total, between the two batches\u2014screwing on the cap rings and setting them carefully on a tea-towel to cool, each one snapping loudly as the vacuum formed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I can\u2019t wait to pop open a jar when winter comes, and slather jam atop crusty bread warm from the oven.\u00a0Leave a comment\u00a0if you want my\u00a0whole wheat bread recipe!<\/p>\n

\"Gooseberry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOTTLING SUMMER: MAKING WILD BERRY JAM Our years of ranching in the arid Sand Hills of Saskatchewan gave me a deep appreciation for the scant wild fruits of summer\u2014Saskatoon berries for pie, chokecherries for jelly\u2014and taught me how to prepare for the onslaught of winter. It\u2019s a pioneer skill lost to today\u2019s city populace and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}