Boating, Blueberries and Homemade Jam

Some dear friends of ours took pity on us and took us out for a couple of hours on their boat this past weekend.  Wait, let me get this story straight, we sat in the boat, at the dock for 1.5 hours, then we were on the water for about 1.5 hours.  It was loads of  fun to be on Lake Champlain, in a boat, with Rick. I haven’t been on a boat in FOREVER.  These friends even brought their picnic baskets, loaded with gourmet cheeses and crackers, kielbasa, grapes, cherries, sushi ::: be still my beating heart ::: and some other delish food. And there was no way I was going to divulge the fact that we had just eaten dinner in the car, on our way there.  Rick and I were all about MORE FOOD, especially this kind!  We headed out on the lake right after the sun set.

Rick making boating look fun, and we haven’t even left the dock at this point.

Meh, it’s me…trying to look cool while the wind was blowing in my face.  It was pitch black on the lake, and the sky was clear as day (but it was night…you know what I mean!)  The stars were out and it was awesome!.  There is this rumor that Lake Champlain has a lake monster, called “Champ” and that there have been “Champ” sightings dating back to  the 1970’s and such.  I gotta admit…cruising along these black glassy waters drew a little bit concern and curiosity for me.   For all I knew, Champ was going to pop up right in front of our boat and gobble us up in one bite!

Enough about boating, on Saturday, Rick and I visited a local farm for some of these beauties:

We stopped by a local Blueberry farm and had at it!  I thought I had died and gone to blueberry heaven! At ONLY $2.25/lb, we picked 6 or 7 pounds of these sweet, succulent, fully ripe berries.  Why that many?  Because we could.  I couldn’t stop picking.  Knowing that 4 oz of blueberries cost upwards of $3.99  at the local market,  I couldn’t help myself. “MORE BERRIES, Rick, MORE BERRIES!”  “Babe, I think we have enough!”  “NO, MORE! Just 5 more minutes!”

Rick was surprised to learn how blueberries grew. He had never seen them in their natural state: on a bush.  I think he thought they grew like strawberries grow; on soft little plants, but they grow on stiff bushes.

So, what’s a girl to do with 6.5lbs of Blueberries?  I am glad you asked!  JAM, and lots of it.  I have never made blueberry jam, but I wanted to have a go at it.  I am bewitched by blueberries, in any and all forms.   We picked up some crystal glass jam jars, a few boxes of pectin and went to town in our kitchen.  Rick is the best kitchen helper/assistant/whateveryoumakeneedatanytimewhileinthekitchen kind of guy.  We pulled our sleeves back and started our Jam making process:

LOW-SUGAR BLUEBERRY JAM: Yeilds 8 pint size jars.

Step 1: Rinse and sift through 9 cups of blueberries in a large bowl of water. Pull out any stems and rotten berries.

Step 2: Wash your jars, lids and rings in hot soapy water.   Then sterilize  them on the stove in a large pot of boiling water or in the dishwasher on the “sterilize cycle” and keep them hot until you are ready to use them.

Step 3: Add about 9-10 cups of blueberries to your food processor with the slicer attachment (if you are lazy and like everything uniform, like me) or gently mash them  with a potato masher.  You should end up with 6.5 cups of fruit.

Step 4: In a small dish, combine 1/4 cup of sugar with a package/box/packet of LOW SUGAR pectin. Add your chopped berries to a large sauce pan or stock pot.  Add  sugar/pectin mixture.  Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1/2 water.

Turn on full blast heat, stirring constantly, until it starts to boil.  Once the berry pectin mixture  is boiling, quickly add 4 1/4 cups of sugar to this mixture and stir constantly until it boils again.  Once it reaches a boiling point, boil hard  for 60 seconds, stirring constantly.

Step 5: Pull the jars out of the hot water and fill them to within 1/4 inch of the top, wipe any spilled jam off the top and seat the lid and tighten the ring around the jars.  Use caution as the berry mixture is VERY HOT.  Use a FUNNEL too!

Step 6: Place the jars into the boiling water canner. Process the jars in the boiling water bath for 7-10 minutes.   I used a steam canner, which is awesome and allows you to handle the jars with greater ease.  I just used a hot pad to pull them off the rack and then place them on a towel, on the counter until they “POP” which means they are officially sealed.  Once they have cooled over night, or several hours, you can take the rings off and reuse them for MORE JAM!  YEAH for more jam!

That’s it, that’s all it is.  Start to finish, less then an hour, and that’s including cleanup!  If you want to simplify things, make freezer jam. All you do is add sugar and pectin to your raw fruit, and then freeze it.  You can’t go wrong, it really is that easy!