And Then There Was Raspberry Syrup....

It has been a busy week of canning that's for sure. I finally dealt with the raspberries that I had picked at my friend house. Funny enough......I have raspberries trying to make a go of it in my back yard. I have very limited space to keep them and I started with only 4 canes . They are thornless raspberries which I enjoy....no getting pricked with the thorns that is. I started moving the new shoots this year to make nice rows...but I'm afraid that our long vacation away without watering them didn't do them any favours. The funny part that I'm taking a long time getting around to is.....my friend with the raspberries totally ignores them and has in fact pulled out many of them because they were in his way. They.......aside from NEVER being watered produced an astounding amount of berries. Fortunately for me....my friend had no interest in them.......so I picked them all.

One last item remains on the canning agenda this year......and that is to make chokecherry syrup. I have been looking high and low trying to track down a source for these. Well actually not that hard........ But I did do a bit of poking around and came up with nothing. So I asked this same friend to ask his garden loving friends if they knew of anywhere to get chokecherries. No luck. But when I was over to pick the raspberries at his house....he mentioned the trees in his backyard. Turns out they are chokecherry. Go figure. So in a few more weeks......there will be chokecherry syrup to add to the fruit syrup list this year.

I followed the recipe shown here on this post for Saskatoon syrup but using raspberries instead. I did put all of the raspberries through the food mill rather than using the recipes instructions for juice extraction. This removed a good portion of the seeds but left a large portion of the pulp. I then used this seeded raspberry pulp to make one recipe of jam and used the leftover 1 2/3 cup to make syrup. This produced 3 (250mL) jars of delicious and bright red raspberry syrup. Soon all the canning equipment can return to the basement and I can reclaim the kitchen table...........soon to be covered with sewing projects hopefully:)

Boy you leave the computer for a minute and someone takes your place. She looks pretty settled too. I don't think she'll go. I guess we'll just share the chair then:)

You just cant make Kitty 'cause Kitty won't go!