My Life as a Mom

It's Fruit Season!

One of the things I love most about summer is that fresh fruit is blooming and ready to harvest, whether you grow it yourself or pick it up at the local farmer's market, there is something fantastic about fresh fruit that has ripened on the vine and has that sweet and delicious taste! I don't have space in my current house to grow a garden and I only have a few tomato plants in pots, but I'm not letting that stop me from eating and canning some beautiful food this summer! Moving to Calgary has it's pros and cons, but one thing I've been really enjoying are the farmer's markets here in the city. Last week, I went on my own, but this week I took my boy with me and he LOVED it! He had so much fun looking at all the fruits and vegetables as well the amazing work from local artisans. It was a great day. In the end, we came home with blackberries and blueberries to can. Add that to the strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and cherries I bought last week, and we have an amazing cornocopia of fruit to work with! So here's what I did with my fruit over the last few weeks.

Ready to put in the freezer

There are lots of different ways that I like to use fruit in my house, so because of that, there are several different ways that I like to preserve it. The first thing that I do, and the easiest, is to freeze my fruit. I use to just wash my fruit and put it directly into bags to freeze, but then I found my fruit was always in a massive clump and when I wanted to pull some out for a smoothie (the most common way I use my frozen fruit). I found a better way to freeze my fruit that is still easy, but just takes a bit longer. I wash all my fruit, let it dry, then lay it out on cookie sheets, being sure not to crowd it too much, and then put it in the freezer for about 12 hours. From there I can put it into bags to use as much or as little as I want without freezer burn and without anything sticking in clumps.

Frozen on the tray

Frozen in bags ready to go back in the freezer

I actually really like how the fruit looks when it comes out of the freezer as well, there's something pretty about all the ice crystals on it.

We've already eaten 2 jars!

While my fruit is freezing, I start canning the rest of the fruit. I like to process some of my fruit in a light syrup. I use this fruit for adding to oatmeal, eating out of a bowl either as is or with a bit of milk. This is my kids favourite way to eat peaches and pears, it's my favourite way to eat cherries. In order to process fruit this way, I wash and prep the fruit, removing pits and slicing larger fruit in order to fit more in the jar and make the pieces manageable to eat. Then I prepare a light syrup by mixing three cups water to one cup sugar. Ideally, I would prefer a syrup that is even a bit lighter than this, but I find that if it's too light, the fruit gets mushy, so the three to one ratio is my happy medium, but feel free to play with yours and find what you like. I use the same syrup for peaches, pears, cherries and blueberries. Just be careful not to do it with soft fruits (raspberries, blackberries, etc) because they will just fall apart and you'll end up with pancake syrup (which might taste good, but it would be pretty runny!)

I love how the lime zest looks in the blueberries

And the last way I preserve my fruit, which just might be my favourite, is as jam. I am a huge fan of homemade jam and I refuse to buy jam from the store because I just really don't like the flavour. Over the years I have tried a bunch of different recipes over the years and have some I have loved and some I'm not crazy about.

The biggest thing that I have found is that I prefer recipes that are low in sugar and pectin free. There are a few reasons for this:

1. I like to keep things as simple as possible, the fewer ingredients and more natural, the better. This just means fewer things I need to have on hand, and fewer things I'm putting in my body.

2. Low sugar is obviously better health wise, but lets be real, jam is high in sugar regardless of how low the sugar is. That being said, the biggest reason to have high sugar jam is that it jells faster (so less boiling) and it gives a higher yield. However, that means your jam is really sweet, and I don't like super sweet jam.

3. I like to taste the fruit in my jam. I want it to taste like I'm spreading fruit on my toast, not sugar. So I like fruit forward jams that have the fruit pulp and occasional chunks of fruit. (For those who don't like chunks, just be sure to blend your fruits thoroughly before boiling, all the flavour, no chunks!)

I made several different jams this week, and my favourite are the jams that use citrus as well. So here are the recipes that I used, I found all of them required a longer boiling time, more like 60 minutes instead of 20, but I live at a high elevation and I'm sure that's a factor.

The process is basically the same for all of the jams, for soft fruits like raspberries and blackberries, I just pour them straight in the pot after washing, add the sugar and lemon or lime and start to boil. For harder fruits like strawberries and blueberries, be sure to blend the fruit first. As I mentioned, I like my jam a bit chunkier so I don't always blend my fruit all the way. With my strawberry jam, I use a potato masher to mash up the fruit, but I didn't find it worked very well and ended up using my blender anyway because it was too chunky even for me.

I used the plate in the freezer technique to check when the jam was jelled, but I also found you can tell it's ready because it starts to form a film on top and starts to spit drops all over the stove!

Once it's set, pour the jam into hot jars, wipe the rim and apply hot lids. One note, you don't actually want to boil your lids before applying them to the jar, over-softening the rubber can ruin it and cause an incomplete seal. Place a ring on the jar, but don't over tighten it.

Process the jars in a water canner for 15-20 min depending on your elevation. Then sit back and listen to the lovely popping sound as the jars seal!

Recipes for jam don't produce much at a time, and the more you double the batch, the longer it will take to gel. However, most recipes can be multiplied 2 or three times without issue, just know that it will take longer to boil.