Blueberry jam or how to make the best out of a 2 for 1 situation

Ingredients
3 cups blueberries
⅓ cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
juice from 1 lime

Like most people, I find it hard to pass up a good deal, and right now whenever and wherever I go, signs advertising two pints of blueberries for the prize of one are screaming at me. In the endorphin-loaded situation of grocery shopping, the little that is left of the rational side of my brain reminds me that between my fiance and myself, we are never going to finish two pints of blueberries before they go bad and how much I hate wasting food. But my little inner temptress tells me that if I don’t take that second pint, it’s like throwing away free food, rejecting a gift from the universe - and just think of all the beautiful things that one could make out of them!

Maybe this weekend, I was in a particularly vulnerable place, having been lured in by pictures of stunning blueberry galettes, the berries were right there in front of me to grab, and somehow they did end up in my shopping cart.

At home, reality struck me - and luckily, so did inspiration. Why not do what generations of women in my family had done with the plentiful bounties of fertile summers - turn them into something less perishable and more preservable?

Making jam is a beautiful process, as you watch the fruits transform from their ripe, fresh form into a lush, molassy sauce. I used a little bit more than half of the berries and simmered them in a saucepan over medium heat with raw cane sugar (I don’t like marmalade that is extremely sweet, so for some people a little bit more sugar might be preferable), the juice of a lime to add some freshness and a cinnamon stick for an extra dimension of flavor, from time to time mashing the berries with a wooden spoon. It took around 25 minutes for most of the juice to have evaporated, and later having cooled down in the glass I had prepared beforehand, the jam thickened to mashed pieces of berries held together by a dark, rich sauce of viscous consistency.

Making the best out of a 2 for 1 blueberry situation? Check. Only did I wished we hadn’t forgotten to buy some bread to go with it. But that is a challenge for another day!

Life is good!