Blackberry Blitz

In the Pacific Northwest, Blackberries are a weed, a scourge, a thorny enemy, and – briefly, in the fall when the berries are ripe – a delight. We have way too many blackberries. The vines stretch through the fences. They blanket old stumps. They sneak into the vegetable garden and fling themselves into the pumpkin patch and try to barricade the corn. We cut them back, dig them up, try to destroy them. This doesn’t work, blackberries are tough, they come back year after year.

But in the fall, we have a truce. The thorny vines dangle their lovely ripe berries over the fences and I -carefully- pick them. I pick a couple colanders full every day. Some of the berries I process right away into cordials or bake into cakes or simple eat fresh by the handful. Most of the berries go into the freezer to be made into jams and syrups during a less busy time of the year. I try to remove the seeds from most of the berries. The seeds are just the right size to get stuck in molars or between teeth. That distracts from the lovely, summery flavors of the jams.

Usually a friend brings over her vintage Squeezo Strainer and we process bags of thawed berries. It is a day of jam making and conversation. But she moved away and I had to come up with another solution. I tried a Norpro SauceMaster with a berry screen. It did remove the seeds, but it had a habit of splurting out the resulting pulp. I moved the whole operation outdoors where I could rinse off my work area with a hose afterwards. Despite the mess, the jam turned out to be wonderful.

Blackberries, blue berries, berries for jam! I used to make jam in the summer with berries just picked. They went from the picking bowl to the jam kettle. But there is so much to do in the summer: gardens to weed and water, horses to ride, and that afternoon wind can send a sailboat flying across Puget Sound. Nowdays those just picked berries go into the freezer, after all the associated insects have had a few moments to consider their fate and let go of the berries. Protein is a good thing in one’s diet, but I do try to avoid deep freezing members of the insect world. It doesn’t take long for the freezer to fill up with casually labeled bags, “Mixed Berries, 2008.” Then in the fall when the rain starts and the wind blows and gray is the predominant color in the sky, we create the fragrances of summer. The berries are poured into a big pot on the stove. We search the basement for the canning jars and sometimes run to the store for more canning lids, jars and pectin. The jars are scrubbed and set out to dry all over the kitchen. The old black enamaled canner is hunted down, filled with water, and sits regally on the stovetop steaming and ready for the jars. Once again we go through the tradition of ‘putting food by’. The berries of summer became jams to grace muffins and scones baked in the cold winter months. Yes, we could buy jam in the stores, but it would be so predictable. When we make it, it may be jam or it may be syrup. We always try cutting back the sugar, so sometimes our jam doesn’t set. If it remains fairly liquid, we simply change the label and give our friends jars of gleaming red or purple syrups to serve over morning pancakes. We have the freedom to combine various fruits and berries, raspberries and cherries go very well together. And many years we made Autumn Sauce with apples, pears, and small purple plums. Maybe this year, I’ll make a Summer/Autumn Sauce, a hybrid of summer berries and fall fruit. That could be a fine tasting blend…