Blackberry Memories

Well, this is my first post in LiveWriter - we will see how it goes --

It’s a little past blackberry picking time but I was thinking about how we used to go blackberry picking and how we would come home with buckets full of blackberries to be canned or made into jam or jelly. The canned blackberries would be used for making blackberry cobblers in the winter. There’s nothing better than a warm blackberry cobbler on a cold snowy day in the middle of January. It makes you remember the hard work that went into picking those berries but that cobbler tastes so good you can’t wait for berry picking time again.

Sometimes we would make jam or jelly from the blackberries. Here’s an old fashioned easy way to make blackberry jelly.

You wash your berries and put berries in a very large pot and just cover with cold water. Boil for approximately 1 to 1 and 1/2 hours. You should now have a wonderfully purple colored water. Strain berries through a seive or cheesecloth into a separate large pot. Discard strained berries.For every 6 cups of juice, add 6 cups of white sugar.(or if you get 12 cups juice, add 12 cups of water...keep ratio the same for the number of cups of juice you get.) Boil this mixture until you can no longer stir the foam down. Then boil for about 7 minutes longer. Test on a spoon for jell. It's ready when it adheres to the spoon. Pour hot jell into clean canning jars, wipe the rim with a damp cloth, seal with lid and turn upside down immediately on clean folded towels until cool. Turn upright. When you do this and touch the center of the lid, the center should depress and stay there. If it doesn't, better eat this jelly right away. Otherwise, take the jelly jars to the can house until you’re ready for that next jelly biscuit.

That's it for today!