JAM + HARVEST

The vibes: It’s late July, or early August and the warm weather makes you feel happy and content. Berries are ready for picking, garlic is ready to harvest, the bees are busy making honey. It’s glorious.

I love canning season and making jams, pickles and preserves, there is something so magical about preserving the season’s bounty.

Below I am sharing my very own Saskatoon Berry Jam recipe. I hope you try it out and enjoy. The best part? It’s made with honey instead of sugar! I started making all my preserves with honey years ago, it’s healthier, tastier and homier.

My Favourite Saskatoon Jam

Ingredients:

4 cups mashed Saskatoons
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup raw honey (more to taste if you want sweeter)
2 tsp Pamonas pectin (this is the low sugar pectin)
2 tsp calcium water (the powder to make this comes with the pectin)
1 vanilla bean sliced lengthwise - scrape out the seeds
*1 Tonka bean grated fine.
(Vanilla and Tonka are optional but a nice addition)

Method:

-Mash berries and add to a pot with a small amount of water, lemon juice, calcium water, vanilla and tonka bean.
-Bring berries to a boil and let cook.
-Mix pectin into the honey.
-Once fruit is boiling stir in your honey pectin mixture until fully combined (keep stirring for a few minutes so it dissolves)
-Bring fruit back to a boil.
-Sterilize jars, ladle hot jam into jars and water bath can for 13 minutes.

* Tonka beans are amazing! They are part of the pea family and have notes of almond, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. They pair perfectly with Saskatoon berries. Also delicious added to coffee.

Picking Berries!

You can wear gloves while picking the Saskatoon’s, but being an artist I embrace the messy fingers.

I grew garlic this year in my yard - I don’t have space for a garden plot so I have created a foraging garden - which is very fun! Next year I will add onions and maybe carrots and MORE garlic.

Fall will bring flushes of mushrooms from the mushroom patch and I am very excited.

My own garlic! - Dill loving bee - Saskatoon berries!

I hope this little post about random summer things brought you a little joy - make some mint tea, go outside, pick some stuff and enjoy the rest of August.

xo - Renée

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