We be jammin'

I did nothing at all toward the onion harvest this year except help Terry move the drying shelves into the garage. Hilda harvested the onions and Dad patiently put them into the knee-high nylons, separated by twist-ties and labeled on a string at the top to hang them from the ceiling. Here they are installed in the store room of the basement.

Shallots and onions hanging from the rafters

Hilda has made most of the jam in recent years. After all, she’s retired, and I’m not (but I’m not bitter, that’s the important thing). Over the weekend, however, I volunteered to make one more batch of red raspberry jam to clear out the backlog. One should never complain about too many red raspberries or too many tomatoes, but there is a point.

I should not have been surprised about how long it took me to make this jam. The hard part was preparing the berries, throwing the molding ones and picking off the bugs. I separated some of the seeds from the pulp in a cone-and-pestle food mill, humming Prince’s song, “Raspberry Puree.” Oh, wait, that was “Raspberry Beret,” wasn’t it?

I got the last pack of Sure-Jell from Hilda and read the directions. I measured 4.5 cups of puree, cleaning yet another pint of berries for that last half cup. I mixed the Sure-Jell with ¼ cup sugar and stirred it into the raspberries. Then there was this part of the directions about adding ½ teaspoon of butter to reduce the foaming. I didn’t remember ever doing that, nor did I remember foaming as being a particular problem. So I skipped the butter. And I skipped the part about skimming off the foam. That all went away in the canning process, didn’t it? Brought the raspberry juice to a boil, added the rest of the sugar, which increased the boiling point in an amazing way, brought it back to a full rolling boil for exactly one minute. Holy foam, Batman! It didn’t go away in the canning either.

Foamy raspberry jam. We'll get through it somehow

Later, I asked Hilda, “Do you skim off the foam?”

“No,” she replied. “Did you add the butter?”