Raspberry time!

I've gone to the local market a couple of times and found half-pint baskets of raspberries for $4. At that price,jam madewith it would be impossibly expensive. So I hopped in the car and headed up to Whittamore's Farm, a great pick-your-own and farmer's market northeast of the city. It was definitely the right choice.

The country store was loaded with gorgeous fresh local produce. Beans and peas and new potatoes and tomatoes and summer squash. And raspberries! Flats of raspberries for only $28. Compare that with the $48 I would have paid buying the same flat from the local market. Crazy.

So I bought two flats, froze a bunch for winter consumption and decided to make a jam AND a jelly, both from Blue Ribbon.

The jam was relatively straightforward, but the recipe wisely suggested removing about 3/4th of the seeds from the pulp when crushing the fruit. Happily, I bought a tomato de-seeder a few months ago in anticipation of saucing season, but it was perfectly suited for the raspberries as well. Amazing device that pours out raspberry pulp and juice on one side, seeds on the other.

The jam set perfectly, I started packing into quarter-pint jars for gift purchases, I ended up getting a total of 4 half-pint and 6 quarter-pint jars.

The JELLY was a different story. Lots of steps: first freeze the berries (in theory they yield more juice), then thaw, then crush, then simmer, then sieve, then filter through cheesecloth, again and again, and then filter through coffee filters. The result is supposed to be a crystal-clear, ruby-coloured juice that produces a crystal-clear, ruby-coloured jelly.

The problem is that raspberry juice isn't thin -- it's thick! Thick and unwilling to drip through cheesecloth, never mind coffee filters. After I had filtered it several times through the cheesecloth, I filled a coffee filter with the juice and it sat there for half an hour before a couple drops of juice passed through it. Out of frustration I just made jelly from the thicker juice. The result was a gorgeous flavourful jelly but by no mean crystal clear. Still, it tastes amazing! :)