Another Successful Bramblefest

The fourth annual Berry Weekend has come and gone.  This year we were only four: Emmy, my mom, and my friend KD, all others having weddings or school to attend.  This year, thanks to local Philly blogger and canner Marisa McClellan and her amazing book Food in Jars: Preserving in Small Batches Year Round, we really felt like we got into the swing of things are were finally comfortable with the entire process.

We were so comfortable in fact that we ended up making about 8 batches of jam, including peach lavender, peach spice, blueberry vanilla, and of course bramble jam, which was made using the juice from the wild berries that grow on Emmy's property.

It rained most of the weekend, but we still got a chance to do the things we like to do on Berry Weekend other than jam - go antiquing and shoot guns.  And after the rains, we were rewarded with this incredible sunset on Saturday night.

Enjoy the very end of summer, autumn is on its way!

- Erica

P.S. Posts from Bramblefest 2009, and 2010, I didn't document 2011 :(

My Precious

Bramblefest 2010 was a success! We made six different kinds of jam: Bramble, black and blueberry, blueberry lime, plum peach, peach cinnamon, and low sugar peach.



As predicted, the brambles were not very fruitful this year, though we insisted on venturing into the thorns anyway. We managed to collect about 2 lbs of berries, which we mashed and juiced to add to the bramble jam.



My parents also came prepared with these adorable picking buckets that we tied around our waists.



And this year we had a new family member to help us pick: Maybelle! She's a tiny rough and tumble love bug farm kitty.

Here are some pics from the process:









And here's the haul!



We made 51 jars of jam, mostly in 1/2 pints. Next year we vow to make more 4 oz. jars because then we'll have enough to give as gifts. As it is, I don't want to part with my precious share.

P.S. We managed to hit up the antique store in town as well (two of them, actually!) and I'll share my incredible findings from that in another post.

It's That Time Again

Time for purple-stained fingers and hours spent under a fruit tree. Or crouching in a strawberry patch. Over the last few weeks I have collected many yogurt containers full of mulberries, serviceberries, sour cherries, currants, and strawberries, and all of them have been foraged from street trees or the yard of my friend Katrina (sad news: Katrina and her husband decided to move out of their house on the corner and I will miss her so. Also, now I will have to beg and plead with the new owners to get access to the fruit trees and the strawberry patch!).





Most of the berries went straight into my belly and the belly of friends (I brought four pounds of fruit on the plane with me to St. Louis last weekend to share with Jaja). The rest I cut up, mixed with granulated sugar, and froze. It works quite well; the sugar keeps the berries from sticking together too much in the freezer and you can scoop them out to eat on top of yogurt or ice cream whenever you want!



I also made this incredibly simply biscuit recipe with the serviceberries. It was scrumptious, I suggest you try it out.

Serviceberry biscuits

• 2 c flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3-4 Tbs Crisco
• 1 c sugar
• 3/4 c milk
• 2 c berries

Mix together dry ingredients. Cut shortening into it with a fork, until course crumbs. Add milk, mix. Gently add berries, mix. Plop onto lightly greased baking sheet and bake at 450 degrees for 12 minutes.

Yum.

Ume update

Remember that Japanese plum wine I made last year? Umeshu, it's called. Well it's been almost a year and I finally cracked open the jar. Verdict? Delicious. Incredibly sweet, and slightly medicinal, but delicious. Here's the original post, and here's the youtube video with the recipe I used.

The time has also come to pick more plums and start another batch. I will do so, this time adding more alcohol and less sugar. Yikes!

Bramble Jam

Last weekend a few friends and I joined my parents and The Moo at my Aunt E and Uncle T's house out near Scranton. They have about 35 acres of woods and lawn, with wild berry bramble growing on the margins. My sister and I used to spend a week there each summer, so we're very familiar with the land and the berries. But last year E got the brilliant idea that she could pick the berries and make jam all summer, so this year we decided to join her for a Berry Pickin' Weekend.


***The path to The Bramble***


***The Bramble***


***Chloe in The Bramble***

E and T always had a menagerie of farm animals on their land, including (though not all at the same time) cows, horses, a goat, turkeys, a duck, chickens, dogs, and many many barn cats. Here are some of the animals we saw during Bramble Weekend.


***Teenage chickens***


***Polyphemus moth***


***The Moo***

We also partook in other activities during the weekend. I couldn't help myself and collected buckets and buckets of wildflowers for the house. And my Dad taught us how to shoot Uncle T's shotgun! We also found an incredible antique store in town that E didn't had never even been in. I'll post my findings from that another day, it was too exciting to take pictures.






***Katie with the "ladies gun"***

We ended up having enough berries for two batches of jam and one batch of jelly! We combined raspberries from The Bramble, blackberries from Bartram's Garden that I picked before we left, and blueberries that my mom brought from NJ.


***Mashing raspberries***


***Squeezing raspberries and blackberries through cheesecloth to make the jelly***


***Sterilization***


***The haul***

The weekend was ideal. The perfect mixture of friends, family, chickens, berries, shotguns and antiques.

Sharing with Katrina

Have I told you about my neighbor Katrina? She has the house on the corner of our block, with a big garden that you can see from the street. I used to walk by and salivate over what was growing in there (and over the house itself, there are 3 day rooms with full length windows!). When I was canvassing our area to gauge interest for the community garden I made sure to ring her doorbell, hoping to just catch a glimpse of the inside of the house. Much to my delight Katrina answered the door and said "Yes, I'm very interested in a new community garden, and won't you come in?" She sat me down and it took about 15 minutes for me to realize that we had a lot in common, despite our 30+ age difference (as we spoke she was cooking sweet and sour pork chops using her homemade sauerkraut, a recipe I had tried a mere week earlier with my own sauerkraut).

Since that meeting we have shared recipes, preserves, plants, and walks to the farmer's market. She shared some empty jars and pectin with me, and I shared some home-made strawberry jam with her. She gave me an extra half-dozen eggs from her CSA box, and I gave her some of the free plants I got for the community garden. It's quite the mutually-beneficial relationship. Most recently, she emailed me to tell me that her sour cherry and ume plum trees needed picking, and would I kindly come over and share the harvest? Yes ma'am, I most certainly will.



The result was about 4 pounds of cherries and 5 pounds of ume plums. I gave the red sour cherries to my coworker, who promptly made them into preserves. I only had a week to process the rest of the fruit before leaving for CA, so I did what Katrina suggested and preserved the sour cherries in simple syrup.



Just combine equal parts sugar and water, bring to a boil, add cherries, boil one minutes, jar and stick in fridge. I don't know how long they will last but probably a few months at least. It's basically like I'm infusing sugar water with cherry flavor so I can probably just boil down the sugar and make cherry syrup after I've finished eating the cherries.



Also acting on Katrina's advice, I made umeshu with the ume plums. They are a Japanese variety that is not used for eating but for making vinegar, syrup, and wine mostly. Umeshu is Japanese plum "wine," but it's really an infused liquor. I tried some of Katrina's that had been aged one year and it was delish.



I used this recipe (how strange is that video?!)





I love my neighborhood.