Blackberry jam & Salsa

Our new neighbors let us pick a whole bunch of their blackberries!

We had already made a blackberry pie with the first round we picked.

This time I wanted to do some seedless blackberry jam.

To remove the seeds, I washed and sorted the berries, then put them in a saucepan with 1 C. of fruit juice. (It was blueberry juice, I think--storebought). I let it simmer (not boil). Then removed from heat, and put it through the strainer attachment on our Kitchenaid--the same one we used for applesauce last year. It did a great job! The seeds pooped out one side and the rest, mostly juice, went into another bowl. Processed them according to the Ball blue book. Yum! 

Salsa--around 30 pints.

I had 2 ladies from the ward helping out, who wanted to learn how to do it.

It made everything go so much faster and easier!

I used the same recipe as last year, but cut down the sugar (only used 1/4 C. instead of 3/4 C.)

I like it much better.

This was 2 batches worth.

I used up all my frozen tomatoes from last fall on the first batch, and had enough left over for half of the second batch. Since I never got around to making tomato sauce, I was very glad to get those out of my freezer! They were coming up on the year mark, which is about how long they can be frozen for. To finish off the second batch, one of the ladies brought some tomatoes, and I went out and picked all the ripe ones I could find. We were actually 1 C. short (so 19 C. instead of 20) but we called it good with that.

We've been eating it and it's yummy!

Our salsa from 2011 lasted until the end of the summer, so I'm hoping this will do us until next year!