Jamming

August means many things to many people. In foody land in the Northwest, it means blueberries. Blueberry handfuls, blueberry shortcake, blueberry pancakes, blueberry muffins... Fresh, ripe blueberries are such a treat. They are here for such a short time, and then, alas, they are gone. This year, to make the blueberry love last just a bit longer, we jammed it.

For the uninitiated, jamming is so fast and easy it is amazing we haven't all been jamming all our lives. Seriously, from "let's make jam" to "wow, that was easy!" is only about 45 minutes. It is faster than watching CSI. And the result tastes so much better on toast. Or homemade bagels. (For a more detailed description of the jamming process, check out http://www.pickyourown.org/jam.htm )

Blueberries are everywhere in the NW right now. We got pints and pints from our CSA this week.
To make blueberry jam, we used the low sugar Sure-Jell, 5 pints of berries, and 4 1/2 cups sugar. We use the recipe inside the Sure-Jell box. It says you will make 9 1-cup jars, but it made 10 for us.
After washing and mashing the berries, they are cooked briefly with the sugar and pectin (Sure-Jell). Then the cooked berries are poured into jars. Seal the jars and boil them for 10 minutes.
This is the finished jam, ready to be stored up to a year in the pantry. Now any time we start missing that beatiful summer fresh blueberry experience, we can pull out a jar of our very own jam and smear it on toast, bagels, ice cream, plain yogurt...