Berries Blue

We got 10 pounds of Indiana blueberries last weekend.

Ten.

Pounds.

Bill made some dutch oven blueberry cobbler over a fire (pictured with homemade vanilla ice cream):

I made jam, natch. One is blueberry lime from the Ball Blue Book. It is my first pectin jam of the season, and the first jam to set. I still need a bit of practice on finding the gelling point. Up till now, I've made a lot of really yummy syrup that will slide right off of toast. The other is blueberry peach (recipe below). It also hit the gelling point. I don't know if that's because blueberries and/or peaches are naturally high in pectin and therefore better at setting, or if I've learned patience.

Can you tell which is lime and which is peach? No? Me either. Which is why we always label jams.

I also made blueberry pie ice cream. It's vanilla ice cream with graham crackers layered with blueberry sauce. Yum. I'd make this again, but I would modify the blueberry sauce a bit to cook more water out of the berries. After only 7-10 minutes of boiling, most of the berries are still intact and freeze into little berry ice cubes. I think a longer cook, or even using some jam, would mitigate this.

Also, I might have to make my own graham crackers. We have a "no transfats in the house" rule, and it turns out nearly all graham crackers are made with partially hydrogenated oils. Except the organic ones. Which taste like cardboard.

After all this, plus freezing a bunch of berries and tons of munching, we've still got some left in the fridge.

10 pounds is a lot of blueberries....

Blueberry Peach Jam
3 peaches, skinned and cut into small pieces (~2 cups)
3 cups blueberries
3.25 cups of sugar
squeeze of lemon juice

Combine into pot, boil to jelling point. Fill hot jars, process 15 minutes in boiling water bath.