Jammin'...

 A few years back I was making use of the bounty of blackberries here, making jam.

Wanting to try something different, I started looking around the garden for a companion to those luscious black beauties...

And there...right under my nose...

Yup...lavender.

And so was born my locally famous blackberry lavender jam.

Yesterday it was off to Regina's kitchen to do some jammin'...

She's one of my biggest fans of the jam and I decided to show her how its done...

Canning supplies all packed up...

Jars warming in the oven...

Crush the berries slightly...

Bubble, bubble, cook, stir...

At this point I add about 3 or 4 stalks of lavender flowers. Don't worry about stalks or seeds or bits like that because I put them through a food mill before putting into jars...

And VOILA!

I like canning with someone else...sort of a traditional girl thing to do isn't it?

Wish I had a giant kitchen to have 2 stoves going and a whole gaggle of people canning together...

Maybe I should ask for this one for Christmas...

A girl can dream can't she?!

Is it worth it?

The season of canning has begun.

Putting food up.

I came home yesterday with 2 big boxes of gorgeous peaches to can.

Tom asks me..."Is it worth it?"

I say to him more than once during these times....

"Just wait until a cold, drizzly day in February...I will go downstairs and come up with a jar.

As the jar pops open, you will smell summer...

You'll taste August."

Of course it's worth it!!

Jars ready...

I think of my great grandmother and what it would have been like in her time...

Cooking on a big old wood stove like this one...

Some women were lucky enough to have a 'summer kitchen'. 

I imagine that produce was abundant with the amount of farmers in the area.

People grew much more of their own food in their backyards.

Canned food was not something you bought in the store. It was what you did in late summer.

Aside from all the other chores.

Without modern conveniences.

And so the tradition continues.

For me its not so much a necessity, although I prefer to know exactly what's in my jar of peaches, it's the satisfaction of seeing all those lovely jars, full, sealed and ready for storage in the basement.

So when it looks like this...

You know what's waiting for you...

Summer in a jar!