Our latest adventure this past week has been making jam, syrup and blackberry cobbler! Last Saturday we took a trip to Rouster’s Apple House in Milford. They have pick your own blueberries and blackberries as well as peaches and apples! (They don’t have this every day, so be sure to check out their website for their opening hours.) It was so much fun picking berries at the farm, and it’s a great way to get the kids involved and use up some of their energy out in the great outdoors!
We wanted to get the berries so we could try making our own jam. We ended up with 10 jars of blueberry jam and 10 jars of blackberry jam. Since we are trying to be sugar conscience with our food for the boys, we used Sure Jell in the pink box that uses 25% less sugar. With a regular box of Sure Jell you would normally have to use about 7 cups of sugar but we were able to cut back the sugar to only 4 cups. We hope by this time next year we will be able to use our stevia plant for an all natural sweetener, which is much healthier for you than the white refined sugar! We used a great website called Pick Your Own where you can find great information about canning ANYTHING! It gives you tips and tricks on the best ways to pick your own fruit, the easiest ways to can, and everything has step-by-step instructions with pictures! We have used this website for everything we’ve canned so far.
Since we had SO much fruit, we were also able to make blueberry & blackberry syrup which is made similar to jam except you don’t use the pectin (Sure Jell). Please see here for more details.
We also froze half of what we picked so we could have fresh berries through the winter. You could use them plain, in pancakes, muffins, smoothies etc.! The easiest way to we found to freeze the berries was to layer them in casserole dishes with foil in between, freeze overnight and then transfer them to freezer safe containers.
We had a few extra blackberries left over so we decided to make blackberry cobbler! Paired it with some ice cream and it was AWESOME!
After we made the syrup, we had left over blueberry and blackberry “pulp” that we put in ice cube trays so we can use them later in yogurt, as a spread on toast, drink flavoring, etc. We try the no waste approach! We have come to realize you can freeze just about anything in ice cube trays!!!
If you like the idea of having fresh, healthy food on hand you might want to try canning for your family! We were pretty intimidated at first but the more we’ve been doing, the easier it gets! There are plenty of great resources out there to help you and we would love to share tips! Here’s a few canning items that we use and love that could get you started!
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