Thursday, September 2, 2010

Jam!

Last weekend, a booth at the farmers' market had blueberries on sale, 10 lbs for $25. Quite a deal for unsprayed berries, I dare say! The were, of course, a little past their prime, but they had a destiny far greater than the average blueberry.

It started last Friday. I had a hankering for some cookies, so I did a quick flip through my cookbooks, and settled on a recipe for Lavender Chocolate Chunk cookies. (From ExtraVeganZa, which is laden with lavender recipies, for those interested.) One bite, and my love affair with lavender was rekindled. How had I forgotten how delicious lavender was?! I mean, could you say no?


Didn't think so. Anyways, while I was on my lavender high, I was trying to conjure up other ways to use my lovely lavender stash. I knew lavender and blueberries went delicious together, and so it dawned on me: blueberry-lavender jam! A quick google search revealed that many people shared my dream. So, once I had happily acquired my 10 lbs of blueberries, I sterilized some jars and set to work.


I used this recipe, tripling it, which worked perfectly. This is honestly the best jam I have ever had. It is all things delicious. Tripling it gave me 19 250 ml jars, and we have already gone through a few, as well as traded some for apples, and just given some away to share the goodness!


If you have any blueberries hanging around in your neck of the woods, I urge you to make this! Easy! Delicious!

Speaking of those apples... what is your favorite way to preserve apples? Sauce? Butters? Pies? I need to do something with them quickly, and inspiration and ideas are more than welcome!

xo

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is probably a dumb question but where do you get lavender from?

Kristy said...

I asked the same question! So hard to find in these parts...

Alanna said...

Mmm, that jam sounds fantastic!

If you have a slow cooker, I had great success this year making some quite scrumptious apple butter using this recipe: http://veganyumyum.com/2008/11/homemade-apple-butter/. Only I used 2 cups of sugar per ~5 lbs of apples.

And my absolute favorite apple pie recipe is VT's upside down apple cinnamon pie. So. Good. http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10425