Raspberry jam

Shari and Luke made the first (correction, the third - I seem to recall a flat of strawberries now that I think of it) batch of jam for the year. It is a raspberry. It is destined for a buddy of Luke's. This batch is traditional style, meaning that it is more sugar than berry. Shari found some great low sugar / no sugar pectin a couple years ago. It is amazingly good. The resulting jam tastes like berries, not berry syrup.

There was a discussion on the radio last year. It was about canning, preserving and so forth. Not much stands out to me except the little segment on jam where the guest was down-playing these new low-sugar pectin jams. Her position was that jam made in the high-sugar way was the one true way, that it was more natural in some fashion. Natural may not have been the word, but that seemed to be what she was getting at. To me, though, there's not much better than berries straight from the plant. The further you get from the plant, the less natural it is. Berries with a touch of sugar makes a jam that is very natural, to me.

Sugar and berries get to know each other.

Pouring the finished product.