Practicing for Canning Season

More berries. Fresh picked on Sunday although I was not happy about the price. Local food is great and I don't mind paying a bit more, but 2-3x in price what I can get at a local grocery, a 30 minute drive, not organic, and pick it yourself. Humpf.

I got out my brand new Roma tomato/apple strainer. I bought a berries attachment as well. I didn't really think I'd use the grape (Wisconsin not really being grape country), salsa (Dean likes bigger chunks), or pumpkin (we don't eat that much pumpkin pie and the seeds are not difficult to separate out) attachments so I bought it solo. The price for the whole set was very reasonable.

I have a few thoughts about this strainer. It wasn't too hard to put together but I found that there is a space in front of the screw which accumulates several ounces of fruit. While I don't think this matters much in a big batch it can get annoying when you only have a quart or two.

Boys had a great time turning the crank and poking it down the hole. We ran the seeds through 6-8 times to get all the juice out. Then my berry-loving 3rd son ate a bunch of the leftover seed blob. Oldest son was non-plussed.

Certain people are looking forward to making chicken broth and raspberry jam today.

I'm going to follow a similar recipe to the strawberry jam (which everyone loves), only this time I'm going to boil down the sauce after adding the apple juice, THEN add the pectin.