Canning season is upon us (and jerky making)

The family has spent the last week or so berry picking. We've got a few nice patches on our property and we found a few nice patches elsewhere.

This weekend I dusted off one of the pressure canners and got busy.  But first, I got a new kitchen gadget.  An OXO food mill.  I couldn't wait to try it out. I kept the blackberries and raspberries in the fridge and kept my fingers crossed that the food mill would arrive on Saturday. Thankfully it did because I'm not sure the berries would have lasted much longer. 

Long story short, I really like the food mill.  I can't believe I waited as long as I did get to get one.

Anywho, I had two VERY FULL gallon-sized buckets of berries in the fridge and I got to work on them.  

iPod photo of before-milled and after-milled blackberries.

Canning jam was a bit of an adventure this year.  For whatever reason my jam wasn't setting up at all.  The jam looked like I hadn't added any pectin to it.  But a rebatching (or two) took care of the problem.  My Tattler lids really saved the day since I could just rewash them and use them again.  I use a mixture of Tattlers and single use lids.

 

My son counted all the jars that had processed and the final number of all the jars of jam I've done this year was in the 70s.   I have never made that much jam in one season.  I think I got a little crazy with the "free berries".  This picture doesn't have all the jars showing.

 Isn't it pretty?  I just love the jewel tones that jam has.

In other news.  I talked to my husband about making beef jerky.  He was intrigued by the idea and started doing a bit of research online.

We have a smoker (or two, ... maybe three. Okay at one time, it was four) and he put seasoned meat on the smoker for one or two hours, to get that wonderful, yummy, delicious *drool* smoked flavor and he finished it off by drying it out on the grill.

For making jerky for the first time, he hit a home run with the flavoring.  Oh! It is wonderful. He already got a request from someone to make more.

There is a local place that has a meat counter that includes smoked foods.  Their jerky is nothing compared to what my DH made this weekend. 

This weekend after the jerky was made my son ended up eating about 1.5 lbs of it. Which is amazing to me.