Carol,

See, you answered your own question and you don't need me at all.

Yes, in this case, even though they failed to specify it in the latest edition of the BBB, you crush the berries first.

I have had this recipe for years, and in the 'Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving', it is stated correctly as:

4 1/2 cups crushed blueberries

For some reason, in the latest BBB edition, they dropped the word crushed. (sigh) I don't know why, because I can see where someone would look at that, measure, then crush as they begin following the narrative of the recipe.

If the intent of the recipe is to measure first and then crush, they usually word it something this this:

4 1/2 cups blueberries, crushed

So, I think you're fine.

I made Blueberry-Lime about a month ago and it is all gone. So, I'm making more tomorrow. Today I've been working on cherries, with two batches of Cherry Jam completed, and a batch of Cherry Preserves halfway done. It is in the 'soaking cherries in sugar/juice stage' right now. Tomorrow it will be Blueberry-Lime Jam and 5 more lbs. of cherries are awaiting some sort of processing, so I'm thinking maybe Candied Cherries and/or Cherry Syrup....or something. I made homemade Vanilla-Cherry Ice Cream last week, only I doubled the amount of cherries in that batch and Tim is in hog heaven with his ice cream. And, tomorrow is a salsa day after I pick tomatoes and peppers.

I need to write out a schedule and post it so I can keep my days straight. Last week was mostly peppers, and I've been trying to do fruit and salsa this week before the next big wave of peppers is harvested.

The pepper harvest this year is very similar to last year's, but I'm trying to process and use the peppers within a day or two of picking them so that I don't wake up one morning and realize the peppers have taken over the kitchen like they did last year.

I wish the tomatoes were producing as well as the peppers, but I'm just happy I'm getting tomatoes because it is a very tough tomato year.

Linda Lou's Apple Pie Jam is also on my 'To Do' list, since DS discovered when he was here checking out the jelly closet yesterday that--horrors!--all the Apple Pie Jam is gone. (Why do people want what you don't have? I had 8 or 10 kinds of jelly in there and he was looking for the one that I didn't have.) DS and DDIL have been carting jelly out of the house by the case, but I don't mind because there is such an overabundance of peach and plum jelly/jam/butter/spiced butter. They're having fun sharing the bounty of 'our' family garden with their friends, family and coworkers. I'm having fun making stuff, so it all evens out.

I love this time of year. I love looking at all the beautiful jars lined up in a row sparkling like little jewels. [I also love looking at all the goodies piling up in the freezer, and then later in the fall, in the root cellar.)

The garden, on the other hand, is muddy and weedy and hot and humid and full of grasshoppers and worse, so I'm ignoring it today.

Happy jellying and jamming!

Dawn

I ran to town to vote and picked up the blueberries and some more apples in case I needed more. When I was almost home I remembered that I didn't buy sugar. I buy so little that I rarely think about it, but when I got home and checked, it looks like I can make it through the Apple Jam and the Blueberry Lime at least.

It is hard to imagine how much jam okiedad and okieson go through. My DH might eat two teaspoons once a month if I were to serve it to him on toast or a hot biscuit. He is not a big sweet eater normally, but does like his pie. Maybe once a year he will say, "Do we have any strawberry jam?" When the rest of the family visit, it's a different story. LOL

Carol,

Okiedad and Okieson eat a lot of jam and jelly. They love the stuff on biscuits, toast, etc. I don't eat much jelly and jam because it is too sweet for me. I do like Apple Pie Jam on apple muffins, and I like Blueberry-Lime Jam, even though in general, I am not a huge fan of blueberries.

At Okieson's fire station, they eat lots and lots of jelly and jam. Their 24-hour shift starts/ends at 7 a.m., so sometimes they eat breakfast just after arriving or sometimes just before leaving, depending on how busy they are. Part of virtually every breakfast is toast or biscuits or something that you can put jam or jelly on. Okieson has been carrying in a case of jelly to work about every other week for them. They are loving it. One of the firefighters sent me a case of jelly jars as a 'thank you' gift for all the tomatoes, peppers, salsa, jam and jelly DS keeps taking to work for them. They also, as a group, are saving and returning all the empty jars. DDIL's bosses are in their mid-70s and love homemade jellies and jams, and they are really good to her and wonderful to work for, so we send them lots of jellies and jams which they are sharing with their grandchildren. To me, homemade jelly and jam are the easiest way in the world to make people happy.

Because I don't like the extreme (to me) sweetness of jams and jellies made with pectin, since pectin requires a huge amount of sugar in order to jell, I have acquired a copy of the Chez Madeleine jam and jelly book. In this book, almost all the recipes rely upon homemade pectin from green apples, or just on more traditional slow (very slow) cooking down of fruit to make jam. I am hoping to master these lower-sugar recipes for myself, and then when I am comfortable with the no pectin technique, I'll buy a copy of the Les Comfitures book of more advanced recipes and learn how to prepare them.

I probably am 'playing around' in the kitchen too much during harvest season and letting the garden survive on its own a bit too much, but other than harvesting, I can hardly bear to be out in the heat and humidity. At least I am not neglecting the garden by reclining on the soft, watching soap operas and eating bon bons.

Dawn

Well, no soap operas or bon bons for me either, but I sure didn't get much of anything done today. I worked in the garden for awhile, but just cutting some weeds in an area that wasn't planted and needs to have some soil improvement done.

(1) After going to vote, I went to Walmart to get blueberries and limes to make Blueberry Lime Jam after I finished the Apple Pie Jam.

(2) After meeting my husband for dinner, I went to WalMart so I wouldn't run out of sugar if I made both Apple Pie jam and Blueberry Lime jam.

(3) After coming home again, I returned to WalMart to get the blueberries that they failed to put in my basket on trip number one, but not noticed before trip number 2.

So after 3 trips to Walmart, I still have not started my jam, but I am determined to get the Apple Pie jam done tonight. What a lost day. A brain is a terrible thing to lose.

I started to say that I didn't think I'd ever been to Wal-Mart three times in one day, but I do think I have been there 3 times in one day during some of the worst wildfires....because we had to keep going back over and over again to get more, more, more water and Gatorade and food for meals.

My favorite way to eat Apple Pie Jam, other than on muffins, is to melt a little in a coffee cup in the microwave and then pour it over a bowl of vanilla ice cream as a topping. It's just almost as good as apple pie a la' mode.

I have one batch of jelly left to go, so I'd better get back to the kitchen.

We have rain headed our way and I'm going to have to stay awake long enough to see if it makes it here.

Dawn

Hey...at this late hour, I just finished 16 pints of bread & butter jalapeno pickles. I sooo understand where you both are. I caught myself being really MAD tonite at all the harvest I'm struggling to deal with..then I logged on here and I know I'm not alone! Carol - doesn't it just irk you when they don't get your bags loaded with what you pay for????? I've had this happen 3 times in the last 2 weeks! I'm now a Royal B*#/!th when they sack my stuff before I cart it out. SERIOUSLY????

I haven't been out to the garden since Sunday...and I'm scared. We got some rain last nite....OMG.

Paula

Paula, After I came home again and emptied out all of the bags, I had other things missing, but when I looked at my ticket, they weren't on there. I guess she just stopped ringing them up and totalled it. I remember wondering how she fit all of that into so few bags. Now I still have to go back tomorrow to get the things I really went for the first time. Usually I would come straight home and put everything away but I was in a hurry and hadn't bought anything from the refrigerator or freezer.

Paula,

I know we're all three wearing ourselves putting up the harvest, but we're so lucky to be harvesting enough to have some left over to put up after we eat fresh. I have been watching for whichever fruit is in season at the moment and buying it and making jam or jelly or whatever. Of course, y'all know I didn't have to buy any plums or peachs for that. Lately our Wal-Mart has had cherries for $1 per pound which is a great price, so I've been buying 3 or 4 or 5 lbs. every time I'm in the store. I want to plant a couple of cherry trees next year so that maybe one of these days we'll have our own cherries to pick. (I hope they don't ripen here in OK at the same time as the peaches and plums, because the big first round of tomatoes falls about that time too most years.)

I'm looking at the radar seeing the rain now just 1 county away and hoping it doesn't rain enough to split the ripening tomatoes before I can harvest them. I'm always grateful for rain in July but wish it would rain the day after I do a big harvest instead of the day before. I just took the old dog outside to do her doggie business before she goes to sleep, and I hear thunder and it is getting closer. If we get another half-inch or so before July ends, we'll be back up to our 'average' rainfall for the year-to-date. The rain should start falling here in just the next few minutes.

Carol, I wonder if the person who was in line behind you ended up with a lot of your groceries?

I always check all the bags carefully before we leave the store. For us, even a trip to Wal-Mart is a long round trip and I hate arriving home without something we had in our cart and paid for. Having to spend another hour driving back, getting it and driving back home is no fun either.

I am through with jelly-making for tonight, and tomorrow will be jamming and salsaing. Probably will be dehydrating tomatoes at the same time.

I love harvest time as much as I love spring planting, but they both wear me out equally.

Still, just remember, y'all that when we're opening up jars or freezer bags of our own home-grown food in the fall and winter, just having our own veggies and fruit from our own gardens will make spring and summer seem a little closer. I'm glad, though, that we don't live in a zone where we can raise a full garden year-round because we'd wear ourselves out and burn ourselves out. As much as I love gardening and putting up the harvest I get to a point by about October or November where I've had enough of both.

Dawn

I picked tomatoes this morning and noted that I didn't eat one while I was picking. Early in the season, I had to pick 20 cheeries to give me strength to pick the rest. LOL

Compared to Dawn and Paula, I am not even in the same ballpark. I don't have fruit like both of you have, so I haven't done anything like your number of jars. Although I probably have the largest garden around, it isn't anything like Paula has, and I'm sure Dawn has. I don't live in the expensive part of town, but even then, building lots near the water are still expensive and most of them are quite small. We have two average lots for this neighborhood, and the part of the lot behind my house has chain link fence and I am working toward having the entire thing in garden. I'm not quiet there, but close.

I planted Kentucky Wonder pole beans and they haven't done much of anything. In addition, the Japanese beetles hit them hard so they look bad. Early in the season, they gave us plenty to eat, but none to freeze or can. I then planted a small number of George's Old Timey Greasy and they should be blooming soon. I planted two kinds of long beans and one of them made beans very quickly then just seemed to dry on the vine before they reached the right size. I think it was a heat issue. I planted another long bean which has seemed to grow much more normally but still isn't producing, so this has not been the year of the bean.

The potatoes were just stored and have been used on a regular basis. The broccoli that wasn't eaten was frozen, and I am freezing peppers that we don't use fresh. I had the fewest EVER edible pod peas and we used them all fresh. So really from my garden the only things that requred a lot of work were the tomatoes and squash. I did some quarts of tomatoes with squash and I am hoping to do some tomatoes with okra, I made a little bit of squash relish, but mostly I have made salsa, and I need to do it again today. I have given away some squash, but have more in there now that I need to use. They will probably get frozen for squash casserole. Freezing doesn't stress me out like canning does. I don't have an adequate kitchen for canning so this year has been a hassle. I am scheduled to get a little kitchen make-over the third week of August, so maybe I will see some improvement then.