I competed my June entry for the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge a couple of weeks ago. But then I got slammed with finishing-my-work-assignments-before-going-out-of-town, and then I did the actual going-out-of-town.

I am home now, and just in time to post about the jam I made! Because I had some delicious blueberries on hand and was curious to find out how well they’d play with ginger, I opted to try the recipe for blueberry jam with crystallized ginger that’s in Marisa’s Preserving by the Pint.

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The recipe yields two half-pint jars, but I had enough blueberries to fill three. So I did some math and adjusted all of the other ingredients accordingly.

I did make one big change to the recipe, though—by accident. It calls for both grated fresh ginger and crystallized ginger. When I saw “combine the blueberries, sugar, ginger, and lemon juice in a large skillet” I threw both types of ginger into the pan. It was only when the jam had finished cooking that I noticed “remove the pot from the heat and stir in the candied ginger.”

Oops.

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Fortunately, my failure to read the recipe through carefully did not wreck my jam! Instead of the end product having little nuggets of crystallized ginger in it, it has ginger “punches” that are more subtle and more evenly distributed—which I think I prefer.

P.S. Last month, I wrote, “When scapes appear at my market next month, I plan to try making pickled garlic scapes.” And I did! I look forward to enjoying these when scape season is long over.

 

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