Tag Archives: Canning

A Sticky Subject

The better part of yesterday afternoon was spent getting my floor so sticky that you can’t stand in any one place very long for fear of being ‘stuck’ there for good. The end result was 5 pints of blackberry pancake syrup and 6 pints of blackberry jelly.

I started out with about 15 cups of blackberry juice that was not easy task obtaining. One hint. Don’t bother trying to use an electric juicer to extract blackberry juice. What you end up with is a rather pale thick purple pulpy mess that I ended up not using. After many layers of cheese cloth and a sieve I ended up with enough juice for the projects. Next year I am probably going to invest in a steam juicer. I feel like I ended up wasting a lot of juice the way I did it.

I went with blackberry jelly over jam because of the seed issue. Most of the berries were ones I had grown this year but I did add some wild berries I had in the freezer. They are loaded with seeds, too many for my taste. I went with the jelly recipe from the pectin box but used the following recipe for the syrup.

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Blackberry Pancake Syrup

Blackberry Juice
Sugar
Lemon Juice

For each cup of blackberry juice add 2/3 cup of sugar and 1 tsp of lemon juice. Bring to a rolling boil and boil for 8-10 minutes, remove from heat. Once it settles down skim off the foam with a metal spoon if there is any and pour into hot pint jars. Seal in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes.

This will take a while to thicken and will seem quite thin when you remove from the canner. I’ve had it take a couple of weeks to thicken up before but if prepared properly it should thicken up fine.

I haven’t tried it but will try using raspberries with this recipe too perhaps adjusting the sugar a little as they aren’t nearly as tart as the blackberries.
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I gathered some raspberries this morning and will work up a batch of raspberry jam this afternoon. Stay tuned…

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Dilly Beans

You can’t tell but there are 4 rows of green beans here. The far left row of Top Crop beans was just planted 4 days ago and the other three were planted on (Roma II) June 20, (TopCrop) May 26, and (Roma II) May 10

I picked a bunch of beans, mostly from the row of TopCrop beans I planted the end of May. (In case you didn’t know it there are 4 messes to a bunch and 4 bunches to a s*** load) A mess of beans would be enough for one meal so the ‘bunch’ I picked should be enough for several meals. I plan to make some of my Favorite Beans and possibly get a couple of pint jars of Dilly Beans canned.

My mom used to rave about Dilly Beans but strangely we never had them while I was at home. I wasn’t exactly excited about the prospect of pickled green beans so I never sought them out. Mom didn’t can but her mother had and that was where she had them as a kid. Since Grandma had quit canning long before I was born, I was never exposed to Dilly Beans. Last year while looking for things to do with the bags of beans I was picking that didn’t include plain old canned green beans (had plenty of those) I happened upon a recipe for Dilly Beans. I immediatly thought of mom who had passed in 96 and decided I just had to try these things. I made a small batch of 6 pints, adding a clove of home grown garlic, and home grown dill seed in each jar. They were so pretty with the beans all standing up in the jar like little soldiers. The recipe called for waiting several weeks before trying them. Finally it was the moment of truth. I opened the jar and tried one and I LOVE THEM. I can sit down and eat a whole jar myself. This year I swore to make more as those 6 jars didn’t last long.

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Dilly Beans

2 lbs green beans
1/4 cup of canning salt
2 1/2 cups of vinegar
2 1/2 cups of water
4-6 cloves of garlic
4-6 tsp of dill seed

I use long straight beans before the seed has a chance to form. The variety TopCrop is one example. Trim the ends off the beans. Combine salt, vinegar and water in a large pot and bring to a simmer. Pack beans lengthwise into hot jars, leaving 1/4″ headspace. Add the clove of garlic and dill seed and fill the jars with the liquid. Remove air bubbles and process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath canner. Yield 4-6 pints.

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