Fruit Slinger

The other day after I made strawberry-rhubarb preserves, I canned whole strawberries.

Yesterday, I made strawberry preserves. I also made strawberry-raspberry preserves with balsamic vinegar and black pepper. This is ridiculous, but: It was the first time I've combined fruits in a preserve. And the first time I'd added other flavors and spices.

As you can see, it's really off the hook around here.

At any rate, normally I'd wait until late autumn before I tried the strawberry-raspberry preserves with balsamic vinegar and black pepper. But this morning I found that a jar hadn't sealed properly. It's not a big deal. It happens occasionally, though I think I went the whole season without it happening last year.

I could have reprocessed the jar and sealed it. If it were anything but the S-RPWBVABP, probably I would have just done that.

But I didn't.

I buttered my cast-iron frying pan and toasted some bread in it. The toasted bread was drizzled with olive oil. Over this went a few dollops of strawberry-raspberry preserves with balsamic vinegar and black pepper.

The ruby-red berries sat on a golden sheen of olive oil.

So far this season, I'm up to eight half-pint jars of preserves and three pint jars of whole berries. After breakfast, I labeled the jars.

I like the strawberry-raspberry preserves with balsamic vinegar and black pepper.

But if the name were any longer I'd have to write "continued on next jar."

* * *

It would make me the happiest fruit blogger in the world if Fruit Slinger inspired someone to make and can preserves for the first time.

You do need mason jars with sealable lids . You don't need a lot of special equipment. Yes, there are things you can buy that will make your life easier. But if you have the jars and a few pots — one of them large enough to hold the mason jars with an inch or so of boiling water above it — then you are ready to go.

You'll need a way to lift the hot jars in and out of the water, too, so a jar-grabber is a good idea. But I managed without one for a while. So it can be done.

Beyond that, you'll need a recipe. The Ball book is a good place to start. It gives you step-by-step instructions.

My goal is to make you so sick and tired of hearing me talk about canning that you do it yourself in a desperate attempt to shut me up.

I mean, it won't work. But I'm just saying.

I already had the rhubarb. I had to buy the berries.

I showed up at the market Sunday to meet the guy coming in from Michigan with more fruit. And I helped him unload blueberries. And I helped him unload raspberries. And I helped him unload fraises des bois.

But there were no strawberries.

It's coming to the end of the season, but we were hoping to have more.

Specifically, I was hoping to have more. For me. To turn into jam on my day off. I had visions of strawberry-rhubarb preserves. But I needed the strawberries.

So I walked over to another stand and paid for fruit.

They were gorgeous berries.

Now all I needed was a recipe.

I settled on honey-sweetened strawberry-rhubarb preserves, from Preserving Summer's Bounty.

[And when I say I settled on it, I'm leaving out a whole uninteresting block of text wherein I describe how I twittered about looking for a recipe, and then got a helpful response from @floriole, but then discovered that the book she recommended — Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber  — was not available at the library, so I put it on hold for later. And then I wrote a friend about which recipe I should use — because he's at home with a baby and thus has plenty of time to just research my fruit queries — and exchanged emails with him about it. Did I say I was leaving this all out? I lied.]

I'll warn you: This is going to take all day. Not all day in the slaving-constantly-over-a-hot-stove sort of way, but all day in the start-at-9am-and-finish-by-3pm sort of way — mostly because you have to let the berries and the honey sit together for a while, to draw out the juices.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 cup honey
• 4 cups of washed, stemmed and thickly sliced strawberries
• 4 cups of washed, diced and unpeeled rhubarb
• 3 Tablespoons of lemon juice

Directions:

Drizzle 1/3 cup of the honey over the berries and let stand in a cool place for three to four hours.

Combine the strawberries, their juice, the rhubarb, the lemon juice and the remaining honey in a medium enamel of stainless steel saucepan. (Using aluminum for this may give a metallic taste to the finished product.)

Bring slowly to a boil, stirring occasionally.

[Instant message exchange during the writing of this post: "How long does it take you to write a blog entry?" "Between 5 minutes and forever. This one is tending toward the latter."]

Cook at a low boil for 15 to 20 minutes, until the syrup has thickened. Stir frequently to prevent sticking.

Remove from the heat and skim off the foam. (I always set the foam aside, refrigerate it, and stir it into yogurt.)

To can:

Pour into hot, scalded half-pint jars, leaving 1/4-inch of headspace. Seal and process for 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath.

* * *

With this recipe, I filled four half-pint jars, with a few tablespoons left over.

With the jars boiling away, I reached into the drawer for a spoon.

The soft-pink preserves are lightly sweet and tangy.