Granddaughter Michaela and her brother James are here for a few days, and yesterday Michaela and I got into jam-making. Strawberries and cherries are ripe, and I had a few currants so we made what I call Cherry Berry Jam. The cherries make this jam a beautiful bright red, and the currants give a nice zing to the strawberries.
The kids were intrigued by the hand-cranked cherry stoner and it certainly made our work easier.
We decided to try something else too: we had some bananas and we mashed up one of them and added it to one batch of the jam. Bananas have such a strong flavor that I didn't want to add too much for fear of overwhelming the berries. When we jarred it up the jam was still pretty runny.
"No problem," said Michaela. "We'll have syrup!" But by this morning all the jam had set beautifully. We tried the Berry Banana this morning on pancakes. It's delicious! We could taste the banana but it was nicely balanced with the other flavors. The consistency was beautiful, too, thick but not too firm, just right.
More berry-picking today, along with some fishing for the guys and painting and summer program practice for me and Michaela.
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Do you ever plant the stones to see what comes up?
ReplyDeleteI have Warren, and have two young trees growing in my flower beds. I am anxious to see what they produce.
ReplyDeleteGreat project to do with the kids and then breakfast, yummy!
ReplyDelete