Blackberry Jam

When I was a small child, my mother and father would take me on a drive up to Portola Valley each summer, to buy flats of fresh, juicy berries at Webb Ranch. I remember sitting at the kitchen counter, watching my parents sweat over huge canning pots, bubbling with blackberries and sugar. Glass Ball jars sat boiling in anticipation of piping hot jam, and gradually, it felt like we had opened every window in the house. After the jars were filled and sealed with a satisfactory "pop!", they were left out to cool and then eventually hand-labeled with my mom's pretty handwriting. My parents made enough jam to enjoy for the rest of the year, and even as an adult, I still have a deep seated love for peanut butter and blackberry jelly sandwiches.

Fastforward to the summer of 2010, and my favorite part of this season is still the fresh fruit. Mike and I joined the Abundant Harvest Organics CSA program at the beginning of the year, and our weekly box of organic produce includes seasonal fruit. I was reminded of how I really needed to learn how to make jam myself. I just spent a wonderful weekend with my mother, in our same old kitchen, learning to make jam. The canning pots, although large, didn't feel quite as enormous as I had remembered, but the heat of the kitchen was the same! We made 22 jars of blackberry jelly and 7 jars of strawberry jam, the latter of which has the sweetest flavor with a tangy end note. And since my handwriting has improved considerably since the age of 5, I got to make the labels. :-)