I had one mishap. When I reached for a large berry a wasp stung me. It wasn't that bad but I did have some swelling. The sting didn't subside until I found a plant on the roadway in which I took a leaf and rubbed it on the bite. The pain went immediately away. The plant kind of looked like plantain but I knew it wasn't.
When I got home I tried some plantain. When I rubbed it on the bite the pain came back. It did not help my insect bite. I tried many plants like sage, mint, and lemon balm. None worked like that little unknown plant in the old dirt road. I would of went back to view the plant again but I had jelly to make.
Today I only got three and a half cups of berry juice.
You can cook the berries and strain the seeds, however. my way of using a juicer gives me more juice. I also add water at the end of uicing in order to obtain more juice from the pulp around the seeds.
The basket strains the juice for me with centrifugal force.
I save the seeds for my biochar can. At 140 degrees F or 60 Celsius the seeds will become unviable. They can be used for mulch or biochar.
To make jelly I use one package of Jel Ease and 1 cup of sugar for every 3 cups of juice.
Cook the juice down to about 1/2 of the original juice. Out of 3 1/2 cups of juice I made 1 1/2 cup of jelly.
It takes a long time to reduce the juice. After cooking or reducing, cool, and refrigerate.
All that work for a tiny bit of blackberry jelly. But when you taste it, you will say it was worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment