Friday, August 03, 2007

Soft Irish rain

Friday, 3 August

Twas a lovely soft rain this morning. Good for the garden, good for the soul. Had to chase some spiders off the rain bike, though, before I could ride to work. And the cat was not amused.

Hats: None made in a month, although I have identified my next victim--I mean, giftee.

Garden: Berries about done, beans (green, purple, yellow) harvested daily, a few tomatoes every week, but the potatoes don't much like hot weather (how do they grow in Idaho?). Made a batch each of raspberry (from my garden) and apricot jam.

Tandems: I have not raced on my road bike in a month! But lots on the tandem. Next up: 40K at Peoria on Sunday. Sal and I will see if we can beat our time from a year ago...and will we beat the course record that O.A.D. and I set on 7/7?

3 comments:

JT said...

Hey Martha,

Do you have any yummy jam recipes you'd like to share? I'm headed out Blueberry picking this weekend and would love to make some jam for the winter... Thanks!

Jen

UltraMick said...

I use pectin to make jam, so I just follow the recipe that comes inside the box--except that I reduce the sugar by about 25% and then increase the cooking time by 25-50%. I've never made blueberry jam or jelly, so I don't know how well it jells on its own (without pectin). Then you have to decide how you're going to seal the jars so it doesn't get moldy on the shelf...or make freezer jam. All on the recipe sheet inside the pectin box.

Argentius said...

I just did exactly what the box said to do, and went the cheap way and made freezer jam so I could just use those cheapie ziploc containers. Worked fine.

This was with blackberries, FWIW.