Guest post: You Will Do Foolish Things, But Do Them With Enthusiasm by Ryan Cousineau
I have stolen the title of this post from Colette. I think it embodies a fair quantity of my own passions, which I notoriously take up, absorb deeply, and then set aside as I pass to the next thing.
So there is my general case for passion. I might have written a longer essay on the subject here, but I doubt you need one. Instead, because it’s seasonal, and because it’s something I have some love for and experience with, I’m going to tell you about sweet preserves.
I have been canning jams and jelly for about four years. My wife is sure I only do it because I’m cheap and because I’m crazy, and it’s hard to disagree. A typical sweet-preserve canning session involves several hours of fussy, messy labor, most of it inside a hot kitchen, and generally in August. You’d have to be insane to enjoy it, and the supplies are expensive enough that it’s difficult to justify the effort. Put an actual cost on your time, and anything short of an industrial batch of preserves is downright expensive, even if you get the fruit for free. Also, if you do it wrong, you run a small chance of poisoning yourself or others, so it has to be done well if it is to be done at all.
But I do it nonetheless.
My first love in this matter was blackberries. They’re ridiculously plentiful around town. It’s nearly impossible to not live within walking distance of some bushes, and since the most common local species is that unwanted foreigner, the Himalayan Blackberry, it is perfectly legitimate to not only pluck the fruit but also to cut back the canes with a hand pruner at the same time (which means fewer arms scratches and easier pickings). The native Pacific Blackberry is harder to find, but remains a treat for the connoisseur.
It’s easy to pick a large bucket of berries, far larger than most people could use fresh. From there, freezing is a legitimate option (especially for pies a few months later), but making jam (or, slightly exotically for blackberries, jelly) is charmingly old-school, not to mention good on toast and good for those with not much freezer space.
I won’t get into the details of jamming and canning here. Workable recipes come with every packet of pectin and are available at fine internets everywhere. The short version is that you heat the fruit, add an astounding amount of sugar, a bit of pectin, cook until it’s ready, and put it into carefully sterilised jars. Do follow the directions, though: this is food chemistry, not a fry-up.
I love blackberries, but I didn’t really love canning until I got to crab apples.
My church, which happens to be behind my house, has a lovely and prolific crab apple tree on its grounds. Like most of their ilk, the fruit is nearly inedible, or at least an acquired taste. The marvel is that this annoying fruit transforms into a ruby-red jelly. This colour is not hinted at by the pale flesh or mottled skin. Just as remarkable as the colour is the taste. It’s not obviously superior to any common fruit jam, but it is novel and tasty and entirely worthy of the trouble of making it.
Giving away a well-made jar of crab apple jelly to friends is a fine present, speaking as it does of hand-craft and the specialness of something you can’t buy at the local supermarket.
So, there’s plenty of other windfall fruits and berries coming to ripeness right now. Go find some, pick a whole bunch, and make yourself up a batch of jam or jelly. Make enough for friends: as long as you’re going to suffer, you at least ought to get some Christmas presents out of it.
Ryan Cousineau is a dear friend of mine who is a very sweet man (despite whatever his online presence may suggest, particularly on Twitter) with a wife who is just as sweet (The Lovely One). I consider both of the Cousineaus my good friends and I really appreciate and enjoy their company. Ryan has provided me with very sage advice even when our opinions have been diverging. Ryan blogs at Wired Cola which is, sadly, coded in Drupal.
This is Entry # 28 of 49
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Related posts:
- Eat! Vancouver 2011 Food and Cooking Festival (guest post by @DianneChow)
- Guest post: @HenryJue’s Ride to Conquer Cancer
- Guest post: To boldly go, by Andy Peatling
- My favorite job – Guest post by Jeffery Simpson
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July 25th, 2009 in
media event
Great story. That looks like fine jelly.
Keep up the good blogging Raul, my fellow Blogathoner.
Agree with Barb!
Love homemade anything really!
Onwards!
My mother is obsessed with canning. Not just jams though. Everything from chilli to salsa to pickles. I was in the house once when she was canning pickles. The entire building smelled repulsive. I assume canning jams is a nicer experience.
My grandmother would jar stuff, she made home made jams that were the best I’ve ever had… she’d jar the pears off the pear tree… she was the wicked-est at that stuff. I remember stirring the pots and filling the jars. Good memories.
I *love* blackberry jam with toast!
Li: jam and jelly-making, is, for chemical reasons, a bit easier than other preserves. The high acidity of the jams and jellies make it impossible for botulism to survive. Low-acidity preserves (most vegetable preserves, figs and tomatoes sometimes) have to be pressure-sterilized. Otherwise, you will kill your friends with botulism. It’s very embarrassing.
But yes, jams also smell really nice, though you’re still dealing with substances that are, at various times, staining, sticky, or boiling hot. Sometimes two of those.
Raul: blackberry season is nearly upon us. These days I usually do a less-sweet blackberry preserve that has to be refrigerated, but tastes great. I should be out picking within a week or two.
World: Raul just put that long disclaimer on his post because he’s jealous of Drupal, and because sometimes, after a long bout of being nice, I suddenly try to encourage pregnant women to drink, or something crazy like that.