Wanderlust: Skagit River Valley for berries and dairy, making jam and butter!

[Update 7-29-10] : There's also an update at the bottom of this post - my raspberry jams came out perfectly as well! But the main thing I wanted to say was how all of this seemed so overwhelming at first ... sourcing fresh berries from a farm, getting some cream from the dairy farm, boiling down the fruit, adding pectin, testing thickness of the jam, sterilizing. Then I realized one huge thing: normal, everyday people have been doing this stuff for hundreds of years. When you put it into that perspective, you become much more confident in yourself and all of this becomes much less overwhelming. Knowing where your food comes from and exactly how its made is so incredibly fulfilling and rewarding - please give it a try (or anything on this blog, for that matter - like growing your own veggies) and don't hesitate to call me/email/skype/facebook if you have any questions at all.

Wow, what an eventful day! Our friend Molly picked us up and we drove up to the Skagit River Valley (just south of Bellingham, WA and the Canadian border) to get some delicious berries directly from the farms. We were also looking for raw milk (unpasteurized) for Molly since she wanted to make cheeses.

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We drove along country roads and stopped at tons of different berry farms, tasting each kind of berry and getting some zucchini, green beans, carrots, and other things for home ... why pass up the chance to get the freshest produce possible? My zucchini were still leaking sap because they were cut that same morning! Here's a view of Skagit River Valley:

Beautiful snow-covered Mount Baker

Stopping at the berry farms along dirt roads

Yellow pencil zucchini growing in the fields

Molly's haul (left) and ours (right) ... half flat of strawberries, half flat of raspberries, two zucchini so far. We got great deals since we bought the day-old berries which are a little "tired", but perfectly great for jam making! Just imagine ... if just one day old berries are the "tired" ones on sale at the farms here, how old are those berries you buy at the grocery store?

Molly's Subaru took us over the dirt roads with tons of stickers on the windows!

Ian grabbing some Tayberries at another farm (tayberries are a cross between raspberry and blackberry ... delicious!)

Peaceful

Stopped at Golden Glen Creamery (a dairy farm) to get some heavy cream for butter making, and some chocolate milk for the road! Molly was looking for raw milk for cheese making

Cheese tasting on the side of the road

Ten year old cheeses up in the top left, but I love the fresh farmer's cow cheese with chives the best

After stopping at the Skagit Co-op Market where Molly was able to find her raw milk and cheese cultures, we headed home to start making the jam.

Before I go into the steps, I must mention I learned the oven method to jam making ... most people may be familiar with the water bath method which requires putting the jars into a big pot with a water bath to seal the jars. The oven method I learned is easier (I imagine), but mainly I learned this way because that's how Molly learned it.

First, get some jam jars ... you can find these in grocery stores or even Walmart. We got the half-pint size jars since I wanted to make smaller jams. You'll also need at least 5 or 6 lemons, a box of pectin (the natural plant fiber additive from citrus peels that makes the jam syrup thick) and 5 or so cups of sugar ... or basically half the amount of the berries (5 cup berries = 2.5 cups sugar). For this first strawberry jam, we decided to make it sweet.

Half-pint jam jars, regular mouth

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees F. Wash the jam jars very well and let dry completely. When dry, place jars, rings, and lids onto a clean baking sheet and throw it all in the 250 degree oven. This will sterilize everything. It is incredibly important that you sterilize everything extremely well since we are canning food. If you seal in bacteria during jam making or canning, you can get really sick. Don't be scared though ... there's no more chance of you getting sick doing this properly than there is of you getting sick from eating at a restaurant.

While the jars, lids, and rings are sterilizing in the oven, prep your fruit. For strawberries, remove the stem and cut the larger strawberries in half. You will want about 5 pounds of berries (I got 7 jars of jam from a half-flat of strawberries):

Next, toss four (4) spoons into the freezer. These will be used later to test the thickness of your jam during cooking. Throw the berries into a large, non-reactive pot (I used a stainless steel stockpot) with 5 cups of sugar (I reduced this from the originally recommended 7 cups ... you can reduce even more to 4 cups sugar if you want less sweet). Also, add 1/2 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, making sure there are no seeds or pulp. Ian squeezed the lemon juice for me using a cheesecloth as a filter. 5 or 6 lemons will yield 1/2 cup lemon juice:

5 cups sugar (could've used less since berries were so sweet), half flat of strawberries stemmed/halved, and 1/2 cup lemon juice in the pot

Turn the heat on high and use your hands to mash up the berries and sugar while mixing everything together well. You can stop mashing when you reach the texture of jam you like ... I wanted a "chunkier" jam with some strawberry bits in it, so I didn't mash too much. When warm and starting to simmer, add one package of pectin (check recipe on the pectin box) slowly by sprinkling and mixing to prevent clumping:

When mashed berry mix looks like (above) and is simmering, add pectin slowly (below)

Boil on a strong boil, and stir occasionally to prevent sticking on the bottom of the pan and/or burning. You will keep this on a strong boil for about 40 mins or so? I lost track of time during this part since we were making butter at the same time (haha). Be careful when stirring, as the jam syrup will splatter - don't burn yourself!

When you start noticing that the jam is thickening and darkening in certain spots (thicker clumps in certain spots than others), start skimming the foam/bubbles off of the top. Try to get rid of as much foam as possible. Molly said you can add some butter to prevent foaming, but she's never done it ... so neither did I:

Jam thickening (dark red center area) and foam around (light pink bubbles). Skim the foam off while it's still on a strong boil. Keep the jam on a strong boil the whole jam making process - turn down just enough to prevent splattering everywhere

Jam testing

Once you notice the jam thickening a lot, take one of those frozen spoons you threw into the freezer at the start, and dip it into the jam. The frozen spoon will thicken the hot jam almost immediately, and will show you what kind of texture your jam will be if you put it into the jars at that point:

Testing jam consistency with frozen spoon

If after the frozen spoon thickens your tiny amount of dipped jam and you thick it's still too watery, just keep boiling the mixture and test in a while with another frozen spoon ... you can keep boiling and testing so don't be afraid to make it how you like! Here we were testing the heat of the jars from the oven, as well as re-boiling the jam since it was too watery:

When your testing is satisfactory, pull out the jars, rings, and lids from the oven and spoon the jam mix into these jars (I used a jam funnel that came with my $6 jam making tool set). Before putting the lids and rings on, wipe the mouth of the jar with a clean cloth to clean off any spilled jam. This is crucial since any "mess" on the jar lip will prevent the jar from sealing properly.

After filling the jam jars, put the lids on top and tighten the rings around the jam ... but not too tight or they will blow up in the oven! Put all these closed jars back onto the baking sheet and put back into the oven which should still be at 250 degrees F. After 10 minutes, turn the oven off, but leave everything inside:

I did this at night so I just turned the oven off after 10 mins and then went to bed, but if you're doing this during the day you may eventually hear the jars "popping" (i.e. sealing themselves) as the temperature slowly cools down inside the oven.

Pull them out once they're done sealing (make sure the safety button is 'in' and not popped up, or your jams didn't seal properly):

This morning, jams all sealed!

Don't worry ... if your jams didn't seal properly, you can still eat them ... just be sure to put them in the fridge and try to eat them within the month. If they did seal properly (the jar lid button is sucked in and doesn't pop up), they will be good for up to one year!

All the while I was making the jam last night, Molly was also teaching Ian how to make fresh butter from the cream that we bought directly from the dairy farm in Skagit ...

Just agitate the heavy cream ... we used a hand blender in a mixing bowl

The cream will eventually turn into a cottage-cheese looking butter after 5 minutes of constant blending/mixing

After that whipped butter texture is reached, strain the buttermilk (this is buttermilk!! I never knew that!) into a separate bowl/cup .. you can use the buttermilk to make delicious bread which Molly will teach me another day. Next, she plopped the strained whipped butter into a pot of ice water and then squeezed the excess liquid out. Getting the liquid out is important since the liquid is what will make the butter rancid. We added some fresh Oregano from the balcony to make a delicious herbed butter.

Finally this morning after the butter had solidified in the fridge and the jam had sealed itself in the jars, we opened both up to eat with some bread for breakfast....

Fresh, homemade herbed butter with oregano from our balcony garden! Is that not the most beautiful butter you've ever seen?!

Couldn't help but have some of each ... herbed butter and strawberry jam - the fruits of our labor last night!

Now I'm going to make raspberry jam and grab a coffee before starting on the second to last week of summer class. Maybe tomorrow Molly will teach me how to make bread with the buttermilk we saved, as well as some fresh cheeses! For now, I'll let you drool over the jam and butter ;-)

Huge thanks to Molly for teaching me all of this :-) I never would have thought it would be so easy ... and visiting the farms to see exactly where our food comes from was such a fun all-day event.

[ UPDATE ] : The raspberry jams I made the next day came out perfectly. I used much less sugar and the slight tartness of the raspberry jam is equally delicious! :