Jam class - learn how to make a great berry jam

I will be conducting a jam making class in Pennsylvania at Terrain at Styers - http://styers.shopterrain.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/calendar.month/month/8/year/2010
Maybe worth the trip to Pennsylvania - the class will be easy and delicious - and Terrain is a great store - an a new concept store for the home - an off-shoot of Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters. Beautiful stuff for the house and the garden and then there are the jams.

Blueberry Jam - pilgrimage to the source

Every year I visit my friend Nancy Harmon Jenkins in Maine to make, celebrate and wallow (figuratively mostly) in the annual arrival of the tiny Maine blueberries. This morning is one of those warm sparkly Maine mornings and the abundance of the little blueberries is apparent - now in a bowl at Nancy's table - later in Bonnie's Blueberry Jam and Bonnie's Black & Blue.

Here is the simple Blueberry jam recipe:

6 Lbs blueberries
3 lbs (or less to taste)sugar
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

Put all the ingredients in a pot - one with low side is best so the cooking steam evaporates- and cook until the mixture foams, subsides and then thickens slightly. Test the gelling point of the mixture in one of two ways: drop some from a spoon and two thick drops should form rather than run off the spoon in a stream or drop some on a chilled plate, wait a minute, then push it to see if it wrinkles.

Yum!

Sour Cherry preserves for Bonnie's Jams- finally!

Some years it seems as if summer will never arrive. And I only know the seasons by the fruits for jam and if sour cherries are in the market, I know the summer is launched! But pain often accompanies pleasure and cherries, like life, come with pits. I may be too philosophical here but try facing a large batch of cherries with pits. A task that looms gloomy, messy and large. The preserves have an alchemy about them - the cherries are light red not the deep red of the usual supermarket variety. After the pitting and the first stages of cooking the batch is deep red, inte- nse, slightly sweet but also a little bitter. Worth the work and the wait. Like life most of the time.