Canstravaganza 2025

Food in Jars blogger Marisa was holding a canning challenge that started in January. I happened across it after I'd already inadvertently completed the February assignments: frozen fruit and freezer excavation. I love that she includes a community-building item in each month. She also notes that this is all in fun and we should feel free to mix things up. I can say that I did at least one of the two challenges for each month at some point during the year, just not necessarily in the month she listed them.

January

• Food in Jars challenge: Root vegetables and brassicas. I didn't check this box. I've made banh mi mix in the past (shredded daikon and carrot in vinegar) and it lasts forever in the fridge so I'll come back to this at some point. Community-building assignment: Share a jar. Definitely did that; I took jars to meetings and gave them to friends. That happens just about every month, actually.

February

• Tayberry Jam Recipe by Chef Heidi Fink. 11 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints
• Classic Raspberry Jam Recipe by Creative Canning. 7 quarter-pints, 7 half-pints
• Blackberry Roasted Plum Preserves by Southern Fatty. 8 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
• Blackberry Plum Fruit Leather: No recipe needed. Pureed blackberries and plums in the food processor, dropped in dollops about the size of a Nilla wafer on the dehydrator trays, and dried overnight to produce little fruity coins by the next morning. Those went into the freezer.
• The Food in Jars challenge was using frozen fruit, the community challenge was freezer excavation. For me, that came up when the freezer defrosted later this year. But I did make all of this month's jams from berries and fruits I'd harvested last year and stored in the freezer.

March

Working with green tomatoes frozen in 2024, 12 pounds of tomatillos frozen in 2023, I made:

• Tomatillo Lime Jalapeño Jam: 8 half-pints, 12 quarter-pints. I added 3 jalapeños to the recipe, wanting it to have a bit of heat because that felt like a fit.
• Green Tomato/Tomatillo Chutney: 12 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints. I linked to the recipe although I think in future I'll use my own Green Tomato Chutney recipe whether I'm using green tomatoes on their own or mixed with tomatillos. I can attest that the spicing mix in that is really, really good.
• Food in Jars challenge: Make a mix. I didn't make a mix in the sense of a muffin mix or salad, but I did mix green tomatoes and tomatillos. Community challenge, contribute to a community fridge or pantry. I think we did drop something off at the food shelves by the community garden on Yew, and I gave away some herbs when I had more than I could use later in the year.

April

• No canning, but the Food in Jars community challenge was to plant something and I did that. The canning challenge was herbs and alliums. I collect and dry herbs when the pots cry out for harvesting, so that happens when it happens.

May

• No canning. Food in Jars challenge was berries. Mine are still growing at this point. The community challenge was to learn from a friend. I swap canning recipes with my friend Stefanie' we have different pickled cherry recipes and I like mine.

June

• Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries,: 26 half-pints (I'm not messing around this year. It took a great deal of discipline to stretch last year's cherries to this spring!)
• Food in Jars challenge: Jam. I cover that in other months. The community challenge was to attend a potluck. Our neighborhood potluck is in August and I went to that.

July

• Tayberry Rhubarb Jam: 9 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
• Food in Jars challenge: Pickles, and I made those pickled cherries in June. Community challenge, support a local farmer or grower. I do that with regular trips to the Olympia Farmers' Market, and I buy eggs from the "farmette" stand down the street.

August

• Apple Cardamom Rosemary Jam: 4 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints. Read my notes on seasoning adjustments in my piece on making lots of use of apples
• Froze 8 pounds of sliced apples for future apple-pear butter; the apples are ready ahead of pears this year
• Food in Jars challenge: Sauces, which I'd thought I would make this year. I ended up doing this in November when I experimented with ketchup (never again!) and ended up making a chutney sauce. The community challenge was to gather or glean, and this time of year I'm picking blackberries. I also get apples as they ripen from a couple of publicly located trees.

September

• Last September was a canning frenzy. This September wasn't. I went on a two-week vacation starting Sept. 27 and needed to get things done to be ready for that.
• Food in Jars challenge: Condiments, and host a swap. I did the ketchup effort in November. A canning swap sounds like a fun idea; maybe I'll organize that one of these years.

October

• Also not a canning month, but the "October Surprise" of a defrosted freezer guaranteed I'd be canning in November.
• Food in Jars challenge: Drying and dehydration. I did that back in February with fruit leather, and over the course of the summer I harvested and dried some of the herbs I grow. Community challenge, share your knowledge. I write blog posts to capture and share my recipe explorations so check, did that.

November

• Blackberry Jelly: 15 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints.
• Tayberry Jam: The tried and true Chef Heidi Fink recipe I used last year. 
• Sour Cherry Amaretto Jam: I used the no-pectin sour cherry jam recipe from Sourdough Brandon, enhanced by the amaretto suggestion in the recipe from DishNTheKitchen.
• "Razzbuzzy Jam": 7 quarter-pints. Followed the Classic Raspberry Jam and stirred in 3 T. of raspberry liqueur. Not very buzzy, but tasty!
• Spiced Blueberry Jam: 7 quarter-pints.
• Smoky Spicy Tomato Jam: 3  half-pints, 11 quarter-pints. This Food in Jars is on repeat from last year and it's my go-to.
• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce: 8 half-pints, 11 quarter-pints.
• Salted Caramel Pear Butter: 2 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints
• Cranberry Orange Jam with Crystallized Ginger: 3 half-pints, 13 quarter-pints
• Read my comments on the Serious Eats site. Allow for more cook time to get softened citrus and cranberries. Try reducing the sugar a bit. You don't need pectin.
• This is also the point in the year when I start thinking I should have put up more half-pints, ordered more quarter-pint jars, or both! I like the quarter-pint size for gifts.
• Spiced Apple Butter: 4 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints, 1 6-oz jar, an experiment in reusing a commercial jar and lid that went into the refrigerator because I wasn't confident about the seal.
• Food in Jars challenge: Apples. Yep, got that covered. Community challenge, barter with a friend or neighbor. I do a lot in our Buy Nothing group, both giving and receiving. That space doesn't permit bartering but it feels as if it's in the general spirit.

December

• Food in Jars challenge: Use it up! Is she kidding? I make far too much to use it up in a year! Community challenge, bake for others. Yep, did that.

Not the blowout year that 2024 was, but then I still have jars of product from that year on the shelves. Anyone want some jam? Chutney? Green tomato sauce? Anyone? And I did actually end up hitting the mark on the Food in Jars challenge, just in different months.

When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam

I spent much of last September in a canning frenzy. This September wasn't. I went on a two-week vacation starting Sept. 27 and needed to get things done to be ready for heading out of the country to England.

October? Also not a canning month. That two-week vacation went into mid-October, then we had a family weekend trip (which involved giving away jars of tasty treats), then I had a business trip.

Oct. 31, however, brought me a nasty surprise that meant November would start with a lot of canning. Went out to the freezer and discovered the door was open a tiny, tiny bit. Just wide enough for long enough to have defrosted every last thing, including all that produce I'd prepped and frozen earlier in the year. My visions of cozy winter weekends making a batch of this and a batch of that when the mood struck turned into a salvage situation with the clock ticking.

I made some fast decisions about how much I could get through in a weekend and put those thawed bags into the refrigerator. I figured since the apples and pears were mostly destined for apple-pear butter they could stand the freeze/thaw/freeze cycle a bit better than berries and tomatoes, so they stayed in the freezer to go back into their cold slumbers.

Saturday production:

Blackberry Jelly 15 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints. This no-pectin recipe jelled like a dream. I usually make jams but I had two big bags of blackberries and I still have seedless blackberry jam from last year, or was it the year before? The pulp and seeds will go into fruit leather with some plums a neighbor gave me.

Tayberry Jam: 16 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints. Pruning those bushes really paid off in production! The tried and true Chef Heidi Fink recipe I used last year. My experience has been that it takes much longer to get to the jammy stage than her recipe suggests. I use two tests: Does it run together in a sheeting action when I dip some up in a spoon, and does it hold together and slide down a plate from the freezer without a lot of juice separating out when I tilt the plate? I picked the latter tip up from a recipe somewhere and really like it, as it doesn't involve burning my finger in the jam.

Sour Cherry Amaretto Jam: 5 quarter-pints, 2 half-pints. The cherries are courtesy of a Buy Nothing you-pick offer. I didn't get a lot, around 3.25 pounds. I used the no-pectin sour cherry jam recipe from Sourdough Brandon, enhanced by the amaretto suggestion in the recipe from DishNTheKitchen. Honestly, a tiny bit disappointed on this one. The sour tasted more of the lemon juice than the cherries to my tastebuds.

"Razzbuzzy" Jam: 7 quarter-pints. Going with the "let's add liqueur to jam" theme, I made the Classic Raspberry Jam recipe from Creative Canning. I only had about 2.5 cups of raspberries. I used a 1:1 fruit:sugar ratio per the recipe and added 3 T. raspberry liqueuer. Not all the alcohol cooks out, or so I've read, but this isn't really enough for a buzz. It's just a fun word.

Spiced Blueberry Jam: 7 quarter-pints. Another tiny batch. I had just about 1.5 pounds, perfect for one of the Food in Jars small-batch recipes.

I'll cover Sunday production and beyond in another post. 

Related reading and recipes

• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe

In last year's "canstravaganza" I made strawberry rhubarb jam, courtesy of the abundance in my garden, along with raspberry jam and tayberry jam. I pruned the tayberry and raspberry bushes for the first time this winter and they rewarded me with an explosion of berries this summer. Since I could see that coming, I ate the strawberries fresh as I picked each day's batch and stashed rhubarb and the berries for a combination to be decided later.

Tayberries have a wonderful floral sweetness that really comes out when they're cooked. I thought that would balance the rhubarb well. I did a bit of exploring for sample recipes involving tayberries and rhubarb and couldn't find one with that exact combination. Time to develop my own, with my usual research on fruit:sugar ratios and other elements. Since tayberries are a cross between blackberries and raspberries I started with recipes for blackberries, then looked at other berry/rhubarb and tayberry/something combinations, bearing in mind that rhubarb is tart and other berries vary in sweetness. Food in Jars, my go-to, commented that a 1:1 ratio could work fine in a strawberry rhubarb recipe.

I hoped to avoid using pectin so the jam wouldn't end up too solid and jelled. I've overshot before on this and I want spreadable jam, not rubberized fruit you can stand a spoon in. I've also had trouble reaching the jelling temperature at times and have added a bit of pectin late in the process with success. According to one recipe I read blackberries have more pectin than their red cousins. Tayberries are purple when they're ripe so I'm treating them like blackberries.

My sources:

• Low-Sugar Blackberry Rhubarb Jam with low-sugar pectin, Food in Jars. Blackberries:rhubarb 1.5:1 by weight. Fruit:sugar not provided in consistent measurements; 2.5 pounds fruit:1.5 cups sugar.
• Blueberry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: Blueberries:rhubarb:sugar 1:1:1 by weight.
• Tayberry Lemon Jam, no pectin, Anchored Baking: Tayberries:sugar 2:1. 
• This one is worth reading for its great photo series illustrating the various stages of jam testing with a chilled plate. It takes a different approach than the usual "run your finger through, look for the wrinkle" technique. Instead you put the jam on the plate, chill it in the freezer for four minutes, and observe what it does when you tilt the plate up. If the jam stays as a blob and slides down the plate without a bunch of juice separating out, it's jam.
• Tayberry Jam, Little Berry Blog, no pectin: 2.25 lbs. tayberries:2.5 c. sugar
• Tayberry Jam, Chef Heidi Fink, no pectin: 5 c. tayberries:3.5-4 c. sugar
• Tayberry Raspberry Refrigerator Jam (no pectin), Jam Blog: Ratio of raspberries to tayberries was strictly a function of how many they were able to pick. Berry:sugar ratio 2:1 by weight
• Strawberry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: Berry:rhubarb ratio 2:1. Fruit:sugar ratio also 2:1. Measurements by volume, not by weight.
• From a mention of vanilla in this Food in Jars post and the next one listed I'm taking away the idea to include a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste for every 6 c. total fruit.
• Sweet Cherry Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars. Cherries:rhubarb 3:2 by weight. Fruit:sugar 5 lbs:3 cups, or an estimated volume comparison of 14:3 cups.
• Small Batch Vanilla Rhubarb Jam with pectin, Food in Jars: 1.25 lbs. rhubarb:1 c. sugar
• Rhubarb Hibiscus Jam, with pectin, Food in Jars. 2.25 lbs:2 c. sugar

With all this in mind(ish), I settled on 1.5:1 tayberries:rhubarb as a good ratio for the fruit, and 2:1 fruit:sugar as a starting point for the sugar. The jam is really delicious although the rhubarb tartness doesn't show up the way I thought it would. Tayberries are pretty powerful; next time I'd make it a 1:1 ratio, maybe even 1:1.5.

I have a lot of tayberries on hand. Even after making this I'll be doing something else with them. Hence the large quantities here, which I split across two pots. Many jam recipes tell you not to double the recipe in one pot because it will take so much longer to cook down. They're right, it does, and I've cooked various too-large quantities of chutneys and jams and paid the price in time. 

Feel free to reduce these quantities! This is geared around how much rhubarb I had on hand.

Several of the recipes call for lemon, often expressed as the juice and zest of one lemon. I don't always have fresh lemons on hand; I'm using 3 T. bottled lemon juice to stand in for a single fresh lemon zest + juice. This gives a boost to the pectin levels without adding commercial pectin, which I prefer not to use.

Tayberry Rhubarb (Taybarb) Jam

Prep 

• Macerate the fruit overnight if you want to. (Notes* at end of recipe)
• Get your hot-water bath canning setup together. This blog isn't your home for full canning safety information. Consult the National Center for Home Food Preservation for detailed instructions.
• Put a small plate in the freezer to get cold for the wrinkle test you'll use to check jam readiness for canning.

Ingredients

• Rhubarb: 2.6 lbs, a hair over 8 cups, diced fine
• Tayberries*: 3.75 lbs., 12 cups. Fresh or frozen both work. Other berry varieties also good here!
• Sugar: 7.5-10 cups (taste and adjust based on berry sweetness; if you picked your tayberries when they were red, not dark purple, they weren't fully ripe and will be more tart)
• Lemon juice: 1/2 c. (1/4 c. per 10 cups of fruit)
• Vanilla bean paste (optional): 2-3 t.

Yield: 8 half-pints, 9 quarter-pints

Cooking instructions

Gently mix the rhubarb, berries, sugar, and vanilla bean paste if you're using that together. 

Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring regularly. Turn down to medium heat.

Add the lemon juice (or juice/zest if you're using that).

Cook, stirring regularly, until the fruit softens, reduces, and breaks down to a jammy consistency. Be sure to stir clear to the bottom. I use a rubber scraper to be sure I'm getting everything up, especially as it starts to thicken and stick more. 

Depending on whether you start with fresh or frozen fruit this could take 20 minutes or so up to 30-45. If it spits at you, which hot fruit can do, reduce the heat slightly. The rhubarb should more or less dissolve and the liquid thicken.

As the fruit softens use a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon or rubber scraper to break up bigger chunks. If you want a smooth jam, you might very carefully use an immersion blender. I'd protect myself with a lid or towel covering the pot if I went this route to avoid getting splattered with boiling jam. I didn't do this and my jam was a nice spreadable consistency.

Continue cooking until it reaches 220 degrees or passes the freezer plate test. I can generally get my jam a bit north of 200 and then find it's jammy enough to pass the freezer test and sets up just fine, not rubberized.

Ladle into clean, sterilized canning jars, wipe the rims with a clean damp paper towel or cloth, put on the lids to fingertip tight. Put in the canning kettle, bring to a full boil, and process for 10 minutes.

About the foam

For the prettiest jam, recipes tell you to gently skim off the foam that forms on top. I chase it to the edge, trying not to pick up any bits of fruit, and put it into a small jar that then gives me foamy jelly—delicious! Not something I'd give as a gift but I pop it into the fridge and enjoy it. I've also completely skipped this step and stirred the foam into the jam as it cooks. It does end up rising to the top when I put the cooked jam into the jars. You could skim at that step too, I suppose, to preserve your culinary esthetics reputation. This time around I did a decent job of skimming; image below is a "before".

Note on jars and lids

One of my most satisfying discoveries last year was the Fillmore one-piece canning lids with the buttons. They seal with a very satisfying pop within minutes of coming out of the hot-water bath, sometimes within seconds. These make my jars look nicer as a gift item, since the recipient gets a very reusable jar/lid combo. This, of course, means it's possible fewer of my jars make their way back to me. I figure the canning-jar economy is a pay-it-forward setup and don't worry about it.

I discovered these thanks to a Food in Jars post on canning with one-piece lids. I have lots of rings left and I'm using those on non-jam products like pickles, applesauce, and salsa that I can in pint or quart jars. The Superb brand lids Fillmore also sells are very high quality and also have a solid pop.

I also really like the Fillmore square-shouldered half-pint jars and their smooth-sided quarter-pint jars, all made in the US. The quilted ones by other jar manufacturers are pretty but I have a hard time getting the dissolvable Avery labels I use to stick if the size goes beyond the little smooth oval onto the quilted surface.

*Optional added steps

You can do one or the other of these but not both, since you wouldn't want to lose sugar in the process of squishing berries through a sieve. I didn't do either and it turned out fine.

Maceration: Mix the sugar into the tayberries (and rhubarb too, if you want) and let them sit for several hours or overnight. This will release the juices. Don't discard the juice! You want that tasty liquid to cook into the jam as it cooks down. The maceration step speeds up the cooking time a bit.

Seedless option: Another step I skipped that you could add if it's your preference: Gently cook the tayberries alone for a bit to loosen them up, then squish them through a fine sieve with the back of a soup ladle to remove the majority of the seeds. Tayberries are a blackberry cross and their parent's seediness does show up in the jam.

Why the sieve and spoon method: I've tried a food mill; I don't have plates fine enough to get the seeds out. I've tried a KitchenAid seed removal attachment. Himalayan blackberry seeds backed up and eventually blew the attachment right off the front of the mixer. I'm just lucky I wasn't standing in front of it at the time. It blew with a sound like a rocket going off and likely could have taken an eye out, or at least done some serious damage.

Related Reading

• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation
• "Sweet Harvest" 
• Thoughts on Community Engagement Thanks to Picking Berries
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024

"Sweet Harvest"

A poem I wrote Sept. 28, 2024, after discovering my beds of raspberries included some canes that put out a second late autumn harvest I wasn't expecting.

"Sweet Harvest"

All summer long I harvested
raspberries, ripe crimson jewels,
queen of the berries.

Now in autumn I am surprised
by a late crop on tall canes.
I gather a taste
of sweetest summer,
all the sweeter for coming late
when hope of sweetness had passed.
I pass the bushes one way, thinking
I have found all there is to gather.

Looking back I see that
what I thought was not yet ready
is ripe and beautiful
and asking me to pick.
Asking me to take the sweetness into me.