My daughter gave me this book for my birthday:
There are people who are chocoholics. There are people who love sugar in any form. There are dessert folks, cookie lovers, ice cream nuts. In small doses, I do like something sweet at the end of the day. But I'm not a sugar fiend. A chocolate nibble is very satisfying, but here, too, I'm not crazy greedy. Both Ed and I may like a jammy croissant for breakfast, but we rarely eat a full blown dessert in the course of a day.
Nonetheless, I love fruity, jammy baked goods. My girl did not realize (or maybe she did?) that she hit just the right note with this book: baking with preserves sounds about as delicious as desserts can get.
We are right now in my favorite weeks of fruits: berries, peaches, cherries, at peak flavor. Two weeks of June, two weeks of July. It does not get any better than this. Sure, we are spoiled rotten and eat berries all year long, but flavor-wise -- this is the month to really go wild.
You could say, therefore, that this is the worst time for me to travel. To be away. To miss out. Except that I don't miss out! Places that I go to are more or less in the same growing season as we are here, in south-central Wisconsin. What I can eat here, I can also eat there. Moreover, when I travel, I do tend to sample more desserts, just because I want to taste stuff baked by others and what better chance to do so than when away. It's where I learn, too, about different varieties of fruits -- of berries, for example. Sample, taste, bring home ideas. So yes, I'm going away next week, but I wont leave my favorite fruits by the wayside.
Okay, stormy morning, wet buggy walk to the barn, to the meadow. Pick flowers, hurry home.
Eat breakfast on the porch with Ed. We defrost a croissant so that we can taste some of the jam we made yesterday -- me with hardly enough strength to hold up a wooden spoon!
And we proclaim the jam to be absolutely delicious. More intense strawberry flavor than I have ever tasted in a jam. Fabulous.
But...
... it's just a bit too liquidy. I dont like pectin congealed jams. I like them to be on the loose side, but not too loose.
This is when I reach for my Jam Bake book.
It's not that I have never made jams before, it's just that I've rarely done it and haven't gone back to it in years. My long run of oatmeal/granola breakfasts meant that jams usually sat in the fridge until they sprouted mold. What's the point of making more of rarely eaten jams?
But, things are different now. Croissants are my BBFs (best breakfast friends), ever since I discovered that freezing them fresh does not take away from their awesomeness. And, secondly, Ed is into making jams with me.
I open up the book to a strawberry jam and note that their recipe isn't that much different than the one Ed found on line. Great minds think alike! And then I have to laugh. Camilla Wynne, the book's author writes: "Despite strawberry jam being one of the more difficult jams to master, it's often the first thing novice preservers try their hand at." Indeed! Because we all go to strawberry u-picks and come home with too many berries!
You probably know why strawberries are so hard to jam correctly: they are low in pectin and so they don't "congeal" unless you hit the sweet spot. Either with an addition of store bought pectin, or with a combination of lemon juice and cooking it just exactly the right amount of time: Not too long (this is where most jammers err) but not too short either.
You can't measure jam doneness with a thermometer. A berry picked after a rainy season will have more moisture than one picked after a sunny spell. The thermometer wont account for that. You have to use your senses: a ready strawberry jam looks, feels, smells right. And you do have added tricks at your disposal to make sure it's ready to go into a jar (the drip test, and the freeze it for two minutes test).
We begin work on our second batch of jams. [Ed: we have to use up the berries! Nina: I agree... Ed: should we try it with pectin? Nina: no! Let's learn to do it right, without the aid of pectin! Ed: are you sure? Who will eat all that jam? Nina: we will not worry about that. Let's work on getting it perfect!]
I'm greatly aided by having my sanity with me again. Still coughing, but I slept well and so I can now pause and think through all that I know and read about preserving. We go with the Jam Bake book suggestions, using her's and Ed's recipes, but using too all our senses that allow us to be smarter jam makers.
We wash the berries and leave them out to dry...
And then we go out for a bike ride before it gets too beastly hot.
(Ed: Want to split a small beer at Christie's? Nina: Sure!)
(like a swallow has learned to fly...)
Back to preserving. Berries go into the pot. Today I add the step of macerating them for a while with the sugar and lemon juice. Then I mash it all up with my bare hands and I set the pot to a boil. We test the jam on a frozen dish. Nope, not yet. Still running together. Boil a bit longer, then boom! We are done.
We now have way too much jam and here I am already scheming on how I can do some more. Blueberries next time maybe?
In the evening, the young family is here again for Sunday dinner. Both daughters along with families returned from their Mexican vacation (with other grandparents) late last night and we have very many stories to catch up on! Very many!
It's good to see them all happy and playful and full of that special joy you have after a good adventure, knowing too that you are now home again and with your old and familiar routines. I know that feeling well!
It is father's day of course.
Do you know a father out there? Maybe send him a greeting? Maybe think about all that life threw his way when he became a dad. Maybe smile a little at the thought. Maybe.
If you yourself are a father, I hope your day was happy!
with love...
