Preserves

Highbush cranberries aren’t really cranberries. They’re a robust shrub related to honeysuckle, and they grow wild in North America from Alaska to Newfoundland, crossing into some parts of the Lower 48. There’s…

This week, I emerged from the woods in Alaska with a pocket full of recipes for apples and cranberries, made on our two-burner propane stove. Those recipes — a butter, a sauce,…

Editor’s Note, added September 15, 2010: While this technique came straight from a published preserving book, and you can find similar methods in many obvious places (even the New York Times used…

I was thrilled to get this month’s Can Jam assignment — tomatoes all the way, chosen by my buddy Julia — because I knew it would give me a chance to redeem…

This is my favorite kind of canning project — making something wonderful (and a little bit quirky) from a plant, bush, or tree that we live with every day.

If I’ve learned one thing in the few years I’ve been canning, it’s that what you make is only as good as the ingredients you start with. I believe you should taste…

The first jam I ever made was plum jam. There were two plum trees in the backyard of the house I was renting and I almost killed myself picking two hundred pounds…

I was cranky about these cucumbers. I can stand at the counter for hours slicing lemons for marmalade, but give me a pile of cukes to cut into 1/4-inch rounds and I’m,…

Look at these funny little apricots. They’re Royal Blenheims, and I won’t make apricot jam without them. I really have no license to be such a snob. I made my first batch…

I came home from the 2010 Marin County Fair with a fistful of ribbons for my preserves. Nine in all, for my seven jars. Did this surprise me? You bet it did.…

Last week I drove from Fairfax down to Watsonville (six hours round trip) in search of the elusive tayberry. I found one scraggly patch of tays at an organic U-Pick farm —…