Busy, busy, busy

The picture at top, bottom left clockwise: blackberry jam, spiced cucumber rings, salsa, sweet pickles, green tomato pickles and elderberry jelly.

Wow! It's been a full last few days. I finally found some dried elderberries to make my mother-in-law some jelly. We went to a wine making supply store and found them. It wasn't as cheap as going out and hunting them, which we won't be able to do until late summer, but I wanted to see if it would be worth trekking through God's country and dodging snakes, chiggers and scorpions for a little taste of 60 years ago.


The berries came in an 8 oz. package which was measured by weight instead of volume. I picked through them to get the sticks and stems out and measured them...it was about 2 cups of dried berries. I poured 4 cups of water over them and put them in a pan to boil for a few minutes. I set them aside and covered the pot. About an hour later, they had plumped and swollen so I crushed them with a potato masher. I put them back on the heat to simmer for 15 minutes. They were then placed in 3 layers of damp cheesecloth, hung over the kitchen faucet and allowed to drain over a bowl. When they were done dripping, I carefully measured the juice I had collected, and bingo...I had the three cups called for in the recipe.

Now the smell. My husband and I conferred and decided it was borderline good, kind of raisiny, and borderline bad, kind of dirty sockish. The raisiny side won out and I proceeded to make the jelly.

The recipe called for 3 cups of juice, 4 and 1/2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice, 1/2 tsp. butter and 1 box powdered pectin. The juice, lemon juice, butter and pectin were mixed and cooked until a rolling boil that couldn't be stirred down settled in. The sugar was poured in all at once, and once again returned to a rolling boil, then timed for 1 minute. All of this was done while stirring like a demon. I poured the mixture into a large measuring pitcher and filled my clean sterilized jars, capped them and turned them upside down for 5 minutes. Hubby and I licked the pan and he pronounced it very good. It has a tart, fruity taste but is very different from the blackberry jam I make. I can see why mom-in-law remembers it fondly. The recipe makes 5 half pint jars with a little left over for sampling. They are a very pretty dark purple color.

I'm very curious to see if the taste is very different from using fresh berries.

We never did have our corn and ham chowder...pizza for lunch left us both full until bed time and we just snacked for supper. Last night was chicken livers with cream gravy and a baked potato which cost us less than $3.00. One package of liver yielded more than enough for the two of us. They were drained, dredged in seasoned flour, drenched in a milk and egg mixture and semi-deep fried. They were yummy if you like chicken livers.

My turtles are looking like turtles - maybe I can get them finished this week.