preservation
We made the year's first batch of blueberry jam today. Our timing is perfect in one regard: the final jar of last year's production is open in the fridge, so we need to restock. On the other hand, it's hard to do all that boiling when it's already too hot and humid to live. We managed to get our strawberry jam made in wonderful cool weather this year (which is not always the case!) but blueberry season is pretty much prime time for heat. I'm excited about canning tomatoes later this year, but they have the same problem. At least this evening we were able to escape our steamy house for a wonderful dinner out at our friends' house in luxurious South Boston.
If you're interested in keeping track of our preserving efforts, I'm recording them online this year—or trying to at least. Just now I notice that, while I actually made two batches of strawberry-rhubarb jam this year, I only wrote down one. That will be corrected as soon as I can figure out when I made the second batch.
One problem with the canning this year is that, aside from the blueberry discussed above, we didn't finish any of last year's supplies. Strawberry jam, grape jelly, a couple kinds of pickles, relish, applesauce, pickled peppers: some examples of all those things, and more, remain from the 2011 preserving season. We have to do better at giving things away! Not only is last year's bounty clogging up all the room on the shelves, unless we empty out some of those jars we're going to have to go out and buy some more!