As I mentioned earlier, over my holiday I had a chance to do some canning with my mom. We did a whole whack of strawberry jam, and another whack of stewed rhubarb, which my mother-in-law kindly and generously cut for me from her garden. Hooray for free food! The strawberries were not so free, but at the Sudbury Farmer’s Market they were only $20 for two 4-litre baskets. Yes, you read that right: $2.50 per litre, and I didn’t even have to pick them myself!
I love making jam and other jam-like things, so it was very exciting for me to find such cheap and plentiful berries to can. I’m getting a head-start on my Christmas gifts (so anyone on my xmas list, please forget you saw how little I paid for these berries!!!!). I also have a toddler who tends to go to bed rather late when we are visiting Grandma and Grandpa (Em and Papa), which meant we started around 10 pm and were just finishing up around 1 am. It was a late night, but I didn’t even look at the clock until the end.
As for the recipe, we just used the one on the pectin box, which called for a bunch of crushed strawberries, plus a bunch of sugar, some lemon juice, and the pectin. We did 2 batches, separately, which was a good thing because they wouldn’t have both fit in the pot!
Next up, I’m hoping to get enough blueberries on our next Sudbury visit to do a batch of blueberry jam. And then we should be into apple and crabapple season, and I’m hoping to do some crabapple jelly and crabapple butter. This will be part of my urban foraging series–I just can’t turn away from free food! Any advice from other crabapple gleaners, especially from the Ottawa area, would be much appreciated!
Over & out.
Frugal + Urban 