Can Can

In the past few years, my parents have gotten into vegetable gardening. There are four raised beds here in the Nantucket garden for veggies and herbs. We have lots of tomatoes this year. 

 And down the road, there is a new nature preserve that is teeming with wild blackberries. We head down there at least every other day to fill our colanders and mouths with purple-staining goodness. 

It's amazing he can find berries from behind his bangs.

The only member of our picking crew who gets nothing from the adventure.

And look what we have coming our way in just a few weeks:

The other day, we made a quick stop at the berry patch to get ready for canning! We made several pints of blackberry jam. 

Jamming away in the big kitchen

 Christine also made several quarts of tomato sauce. Opa did the picking and Christine the canning. Just stewed tomatoes and one tablespoon of lemon juice per jar. The tomatoes spent 40 minutes in the boiling bath. The jam only spent 5 minutes.

Next step: labeling and putting away for the cold months. As Californians, this sounds quite exotic and festive.