Sunday, August 02, 2009

The Bounty of Summer Begins

Yesterday, I canned 10 half pints of raspberry jam, put up 3 quarts of dilled green beans and dried a lot of my homegrown herbs. It is very satifying to preserve food for the winter. It will be so nice to open one of those jars and taste the summer sunshine in a glistening spoonful of raspberry jam. It is particularly important to me because I can control the amount of sugar - this jam is made primarily with light agave syrup and a bit of organic cane sugar. The agave syrup is much lower on the glycemic index scale and better for you than a big blast of refined sugar. I put some of the jam in a small container to use now and it is good.

When my children were small I did a lot of summer canning. This year, I made a personal pledge to preserve as much local food as I can for the winter ahead.

The Farmer's Market and my own little container garden are bursting with summer's bounty. I had so much fun yesterday - I am bitten by the bug.

2 comments:

  1. Mmmmmm... I'll take a pint and a quart!

    I used to make jams and soup stocks. I should do that again. There is nothing so satisfying and nothing so delicious.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I understand you so well:
    Harvesting from your own garden.
    We are simply addicted. It's a must.

    But we freeze the berries as is, and eat them as is. 30 minutes out from the freezer, and we are back in our Summer Garden.

    Suzann I hope you are well and that you have a great time with V. That's an important step to a new life.

    btw. We arrived from 4000 miles on European roads Tuesday evening.
    What happened that Night?
    Ruben wished me welcome home. It was a very vivid dream. When I wake up I simply could not understand it was a dream;(

    ReplyDelete