Our Backyard Homestead

Four Berry Jam

Our family has voted this our favorite jam to come out of the kitchen thus far!  I used frozen, organic berries for everything but the blackberries of course.  I am thinking about experimenting with rhubarb instead of the blueberries on the next batch.  Does anyone have a good multi fruit with rhubarb jam recipe?

Four Berry Jam - 265149 - Recipezaar.

Four Berry Jam

Recipe #265149 | 1½ hours | 30 min prep |

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By: Halcyon Eve

Nov 13, 2007

This is one of my favorite jams, especially since I can make it any time of the year using frozen fruit. It's really delicious! The mixture of fruits tastes so summery! I've been making it for years; I think I got it from Taste of Home magazine, but I can't remember now for sure. Prep time includes estimated time to cook jam and ladle into jars, cook time is time to sit and seal.

7 -8 half-pint jars (change servings and units)

Change to: half-pint jars US Metric

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Ingredients

• 1 cup fresh blackberries (or frozen unsweetened, thawed and undrained)
• 1 cup fresh blueberries (or frozen unsweetened, thawed and undrained)
• 1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries (or frozen unsweetened, thawed and undrained)
• 1 1/2 cups fresh raspberries (or frozen unsweetened, thawed and undrained)
• 1 (1 3/4 ounce) box pectin (not low-sugar or no-sugar varieties)
• 7 cups sugar

Directions

1. Prepare your jars in advance--sterilize them and keep the jars, lids, and rings warm while preparing the jam. Have all tools ready and handy (ladle, towel, wet cloth, canning jar funnel, etc).
2. Crush berries in a large, non-reactive (such as stainless steel) saucepot. Stir in pectin until dissolved.
3. Bring to a full, rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly to avoid scorching (reduce heat to medium-high if needed).
4. Stir in sugar. Return to a full, rolling boil and boil for exactly 1 minute (starting from when you can no longer stir the bubbles down).
5. Remove from heat and quickly skim off any foam. You must move quickly at this point to prevent the jam from cooling off too much.
6. Quickly ladle hot jam into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.
7. Wipe rims with a clean, warm, damp cloth to ensure a good seal. Place lids on jars and screw rings on snugly but not too tight. Flip jars upside down. Let stand upside down for 5 minutes, then turn right-side up again. Let sit for one hour.
8. After one hour, check seals. If any lids are still popped up (there is a bump in the center of the lid that should be down if the jar is sealed, and up if not), then refrigerate and use immediately, or process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.
9. Store jars in a cool, dark place until ready to use; use within 1 year.

Stephanie notes ~ Because I am in the "better safe than sorry" camp when it comes to canning, I did not follow step #7.  I went ahead and processed in a 10 minute hot water bath.  I also recommend chopping up the blue berries.  They do not smash well and I don't like the big chunks of blackberry skin that float to the top of the jars.  Otherwise it is the perfect jam and hopefully chopping should fix the issue!

Good things come to those who wait

Every day is a learning experience in the garden.  Most of the time I feel completely clueless and shocked when we actually have something that grows from a tiny seed to a beautiful fruit or vegetable that we can eat.  My lesson this week is that maybe picking berries every day wasn't the best plan.  On Friday morning I had to get the van in for service so we skipped even checking on the garden all day.  I was amazed Saturday morning when I went out there and saw an abundance of ripe berries and tomatoes!  I must have picked five pounds of berries as well as a basketful of tomatoes.  I also discovered that it is best to only pick the berries that easily separate from the stem.  There are many that we have picked that looked ripe, only to discover they were still a bit red in the center and therefore lacking in the juicy, sweetness one expects from a blackberry.

I am completely amazed by this tomato plant.  It was a volunteer from last year's tomatoes so I have no idea what kind it is.  It is at least twice as big and much healthier than any other tomato in the garden.  The tomatoes are only slightly bigger than a cherry tomato.  I have found that with our long, hot summers in Texas, growing smaller fruited tomato varieties is my preference.  The smaller the tomato, the more likely it is to continue setting fruit thought the hot summer days in my experience.  As much as I would love to successfully grow some of the yummy heirlooms I have read about and sampled when visiting my sister in Oregon, my heirloom experiment last summer was not very productive. 

This year, I grew small fruited heirloom varieties from seed.  I was a few weeks late in starting the plants, so I have yet to get an tomatoes from them, but I am hopeful that this might be the Texas solution.  The great thing about heirlooms, beyond the AMAZING flavor, is that you can save the seed for planting the next year.  With hybrids it is not recommended that you save the seed.  I will definitely be saving seed from my volunteer plant this year.  Though back in March when tomato seedlings had taken over my dining room, I vowed that I would not grow tomatoes from seed again!  

The berry plants on Saturday. We have eaten plenty, made a blackberry pie, berry cheesecake and LOTS of berry jam.  Wow, I just did the math and realized I have made almost 3 GALLONS of jam so far!!  Still one batch to go, but I ran out of sterilized jars last night.  Today we officially moved on to operation freeze the rest of the berries.

Below, a volunteer cantaloupe plant.  We discovered two nearly ripe fruits hiding under all of the leaves!

Whole Wheat Pancakes

When we began transitioning to using whole grains, we started with blender batter waffles.  Here is a link to the step by step process and recipe we used the first time.  You will find lots of great info on this website!  We were shocked that the waffles tasted nothing like my previous experience of cooking with whole wheat flour purchased from the grocery store.  These were light, fluffy and some of the best waffles we had ever eaten!  However, the recipes we tried never worked quite so well for pancakes.

Recently, my mom made the pancake recipe I grew up on with my kids.  The Garden Girl came home with her very own recipe card and I began switching it up, exchanging pastry wheat for white flour and honey for the white sugar.  The recipe calls for buttermilk, however, I didn't have any on hand.  Today I added the last bit of The Greek Gods traditional plain Greek yogurt and then a few spoonfuls of Kefir Cheese Lebni by the same company, along with milk.  The outcome was the best ever pancakes that have come out of my kitchen since our transition to whole foods began!!

Here is the recipe:

Gigi's Pancakes

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk (or a combo of whole milk with yogurt, sour cream or kefir)

2 Tbsp melted butter or coconut oil

1 Tbsp honey

1 cup pastry whole wheat

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Add all ingredients except soda, baking powder and salt to blender.  Blend until well mixed.  Add soda, baking powder and salt all at once and blend only for a few seconds. 

I have not experimented with this recipe with soaking the night before, but the waffles are much better when started the night before as discussed on Sue Gregg's website linked above.  I expect that these will also benefit from soaking overnight.  The benefit of just a little bit of planning ahead is that making a pancake breakfast for your family only takes minutes the next morning!

Our journey to change over to whole foods has been very gradual and is not yet complete.  If there is a place I would recommend starting, blender waffles is the place.  You can find whole grains in the bulk bins at Whole Foods or Sprouts.  I guarantee that if you have ever baked with whole wheat flour, baking with freshly ground whole wheat is an entirely different ballgame!

Real Food is Dirty

Buying grocery store onions, I don't think I ever gave thought to the fact that onions grow in the dirt.  I harvested the remainder of the onions this week.   I didn't count the total number we ended up with but it should keep me from buying any onions for much of the summer!  I planted onions last year, but maybe I was too late because all we ended up with were a handful of tiny, pitiful onions.  I have no idea what I did right this year, but they were so easy to grow and are incredibly sweet and yummy.  Even the kids like them~cooked that is!

I hope to plant seed in the fall, I believe that is when you have to plant for a spring/early summer harvest.  I need to read up a little as I haven't ever planted from seed.  Though a portion of the pile in the picture above must have self-planted from the previous year pitiful harvest.   Most of our harvest was from little transplants I bought from the feed store and planted this spring.  However, the beauties that were as tall as The Tornado all came back in the bed I had planted in the year before.

Assuming that my success rate this year was normal and last year was due to late planting, I plan to plant twice as many next year in addition to the fall seed I hope to get in the ground.   It was so rewarding to pull up a fat onion and even more rewarding to saute it up and enjoy it!  I also appreciate the things that I have been able to give little thought to planting and tending to, yet end up with a bountiful harvest.  This year, the blackberries and onions have provided that gardening pleasure.

Lastly, I was amazed by the beauty of the flowering onion, so of course I had to take lots of pictures.  They began blooming the end of April and only this week did the flowers begin to die and seed pods emerge.

 

Choices

Am I the only nut that finds reading the comments on news articles quite fascinating?  Typically, I only read the first few comments, but if they are especially entertaining or insightful I might read more.  Of course, I had to check to see if there were any comments on our story on WFAA.  Maybe I have a twisted sense of humor, but I found the following comment hilarious:

morepopups said on June 22, 2010 at 2:37 PM

carrieg just grow some weed and smoke it. that will calm you down!

Carrieg was the first to comment in response to our story:

carrieg said on June 22, 2010 at 10:02 AM

Whose got the time or the money to tend to a full garden and raise chickens? I'd love to be able to do that. By the time I get off work at 5:00, go to the gym til 6:00, get home prepare dinner by 7:00 or 7:30, clean up by 8:30... I have about 1 1/2 hrs to relax and unwind before bed. If I spent that time in the garden, I'd be charged up till midnight every night and suffering other health issues from not getting enough sleep... A vicious cycle, indeed.

Now, in no way do I condone the idea of growing weed, or smoking it for that matter.  But I certainly never expected to read such a comment in relation to our backyard revolution!  My immediate thought after reading Carrieg's comment was to wonder if she realized that scheduling gardening beginning at 8:30 PM would leave her gardening in the dark?

We all make choices with how we spend our time.  Back in the med. school days, we learned to put a great price on family time.  We also made the choice that once we had kids, Lord willing, I would stay home with them.  When the Chicken Whisperer was born at the beginning of Matt's third year of med school, we faced taking out a much larger loan than we had planned.  Choices.  We are still paying on that debt today, but I wouldn't do it any other way if I had it to do over.  I am certainly not trying to imply that Carrieg should not work or that being a stay at home mom is the right choice for everyone.  It was the choice we made, and while it has not been without financial consequences, it has been a huge blessing.

Another choice we have made is to free our home from the bondage of television.  I am sure this will be a theme we will discuss on this blog from time to time because of what a positive change it has been for our family.  Just like our food revolution, we did it with baby steps, first by cutting cable, and then kicking out the tv set altogether!  We still have access to nearly anything we might want to watch online, but our choices are then very intentional.  We still have DVDs that can be watched on the computers, though Matt and I find that we are not nearly as entertained by movies now as we might have once been.  Choices.  May not be right for all, but have you considered lately how much time the television robs from your life?  I am certain my photography hobby and gardening would never have happened if they were competing for my time with the television.

I can assure you that the only pot you will find around here is of the terra cotta variety.  But this little exchange in the WFAA comments got me thinking about how we all make choices every single day.  Our garden may not be the right choice at some point in the future, but for today it has been a wonderful opportunity for our family to learn, grow, play and eat together.

Blackberry Jam made with Honey

After two years with the blackberries providing lots chigger bites and little fruit, our blackberries have redeemed themselves this year!  We have had a bumper crop that has multiplied every day since we picked our first ripe berry on June 1.  It appears that they peaked over the weekend, but they remain filled with quite a bit of fruit yet to ripen.  We have two varieties, Apache, planted as nothing more than twigs from a mail order nursery and another variety bought locally at Home Depot. 

Today, the kids and I made our first batch of jam of the summer!  I am fortunate to have a mom that canned when I was young, so making jam is something I have been doing for many years.  I was a bit rusty since I didn't get around to making any last summer and forgot all about the need for pectin.  The only pectin I had on hand I meant to try last summer was a brand that allows you to use honey rather than sugar.  So today was my opportunity to experiment. 

For anyone that may not have attempted your own, I took some step by step pictures.  I believe it is one of those things that seems intimidating, but is really an easy thing to make.

Here is the brand of Pectin we used today, available at Whole Foods and probably Sprouts:

 

First we washed up the berries, making sure to pick out all bits of leaves and twigs:

Then the kids each took turns mashing them up:

And sampling berries while mashing:

 

Then add the four cups of mashed berries to pan and bring to boil:

Once the berries come to a boil, this recipe has you stir in the honey and pectin mixed together.  Then return to a rolling boil and remove from heat.

Prior to beginning the process, we loaded our jars into the dishwasher and ran them through a full cycle to sterilize.  If timed correctly, the dry cycle (don't use the energy saver, you want them dry and hot) will be finishing up just as your jam is boiling.

While the jam is heating, I have another pan boiling up the lids.  Right at the end, I add my clean tools to make sure they are good and germ free as well.

A few years ago, I picked up this handy box of tools.  Most definitely worth the $10 investment!  I believe I found it at Market Street, but Amazon has it available if you can't find it locally.

Using the wide mouth funnel from my set, I ladle the jam in the warm jars, taking them out of the dishwasher one at a time so that they don't cool as I am filling another.  I put a lid on each jar as I fill it and then go on to the next.

I usually make some small 1/2 pint jars to have on hand to give away, but when I am making a supply for our family, I prefer to use pint size jars.  Using the larger jars speeds up the process.

The final step is to boil the jars in a water bath.  I believe there is some debate over whether or not this is necessary, but I am of the opinion of better safe than sorry.  My first few attempts at canning, I did not have the big canning pot.  I do not recommend trying to skip this important tool!  I bought mine for $20 at Walmart.

 

The pan comes with a little rack that holds the jars and then lets you lower them into the water at once.  You want the jars to be covered by at least an inch of water.  This is before I lowered them in for their little bath.
 

Five minutes later, I have 4 jars of jam!  It is so rewarding to listen for the little ping of the lids popping into place for the next few hours.

 

The verdict is still out on this recipe with honey.  I plan to pick up some more pectin and make up a batch with organic cane sugar as well.  This recipe did not make as the recipe I have used in the past.  We have cut way back on sugars at our house and cook with honey when we can, but I suspect that homemade jam might just be one of those things that will always be best with sugar!

If you need recipes, extremely detailed canning instructions, locations of pick your own farms, pickyourown.org is an amazing resource.

Learning to Blog

After our story on WFAA aired on Monday, we have both had several requests for a blog.  I spent the evening reading up on the ins and outs of Blogger vs. Wordpress vs. Typepad vs. iWeb, we found a domain name and here we are.  It will probably take a few days to get this down, but it is my hope to have somewhat of  journal of our crazy adventures living on a little over an acre in the land of suburbia, not too far from Dallas.  I found the gardening journal I published on iWeb mostly for myself back in 2008, and will begin by moving those posts over here.  Our first year in the garden and full of learning curves!

Our plan is that Matt will join me in posting to the blog with his two cents as a family physician about healthy eating/living.  He has his first assignment, so look to hear from him soon!

We will get to work on a summary of how this all got started, but unless you want verbose and rambling, that will take a few days.  In the meantime, enjoy the 2008 archives as I get them moved in.

Our 90 Seconds of "Fame"

The video of our interview on WFAA has been pulled from their website, however, the print form is still available.  We were interviewed by Janet St. James in June 2010 about our personal food revolution and the impact that it has had on Matt as a physician.

Little did we know that the news clip would be picked up by other stations around the country and lead to two additional newspaper interviews, one with the AP and one with the Dallas Morning News.  Matt was also contacted by Jamie Oliver following the WFAA interview!

Click here if you are interesed in seeing the original interview.