Salmonberry Freezer Jam

Life continues to be busy around our house as we get ready for baby #3.  Tomorrow is my official due date, but I had a doctor's appointment this morning and it doesn't seem like I'll be in the hospital in the next two days.  We shall see though.  With both of our older children, I didn't have much "warning" before labor started.  I was always just doing my normal thing and intending to go about my planned activities the next day when labor started during the night.  So we'll see when this little one decides to make it's appearance.

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About 2 weeks ago now, the kids and I did some berry picking.  Our berry of choice was the salmonberry.  I think I've heard of these berries before this summer, but definitely not before we lived in Alaska.  They may grow in other areas, but I don't remember ever seeing them in Oregon.  Even though I think I'd heard of them, I didn't know what they or the bush they grew on actually looked like.  So of course, I didn't know what they tasted like either.  I'd have to say that a fair amount of what I have learned about Salmonberries this summer has come from my 5 year old daughter.  She did some salmonberry picking with her aunt about three weeks ago and soaked up a bunch of knowledge that she shared with me. 

Salmonberries look a lot like raspberries, but are rounder.  They also come in two colors: yellow and red.  The yellow ones especially look like clusters of salmon eggs hanging from their bushes.

After picking a few more berries with Shawn a couple of days later, (I thought) we finally had enough to make a batch of salmonberry jam.  I got my recipe (and some more knowledge) from a book a friend gave me called, Alaska's Wild Berries. Unfortunately when we got home, I realized that we only had enough to make 2/3 of a recipe.  I say unfortunately, because that required some painful math to make an otherwise simple recipe.

First we took our berries and smashed them.

And smashed some more.  Don't ask me why she was wearing pj's.  It was a Sunday afternoon, so she had to change her clothes before we went back to church that evening.

After removing 1 cup of the seeds, we strained the juice from the rest of the seeds.  Salmonberries have a lot of seeds.

Then we added back the reserved seeds to the juice and added some sugar.

Then we boiled 2/3 of a box of pectin with some water.  The sentence before doesn't sound like the math was that complicated, but since one box isn't exactly1 cup, things were less than simple.  I finally just measured it by weight with my kitchen scale.

While I got the freezer jars ready....

The little missy stirred the juice/seed/sugar mixture with the pectin/water mixture.

And she mixed some more.

Then we poured the hot jam mixture into the jars.  After sitting out for 24 hours, they were ready for the freezer.  Probably one of the easiest and tastiest jam recipes I've made before.  Unfortunately we only got 4 jars of it, but that's probably enough for our family.  Now I just need to make some homemade bread to slather some of this jam on.  Mmm.

What berries are you enjoying this summer?