My Garden Summer - Sun Cooking

[Dee & Frank Hughes]

Back when me and mia spousa TLD were young and good looking, ok better looking, we used to take the family vacation on Cape Cod. In Sandwich there's a Thornton Burgess museum - he wrote the Peter Rabbit stories - called the Greenbrier Nature Center. Among the things they have is a jam and jelly kitchen and they used to specialize in "sun cooking" certain fruits like cherries and peaches. We always picked up a couple of jars and felt the taste was better than normal preserves. In fact I recently read on line that the taste difference in sun cooking rather than traditional was something like the difference between a brand new Porsche and a 1989 Taurus.
So in one of those great confluences of chance I happened on a sun cooking recipe; bought some of the best blueberries I have ever tasted at last weeks Farmers Market and have the gift of one of our good old sunny heat waves in my yard. So= viollia!

This is day 2 of the cooking. Will take 2-4 days for the juice to thicken, then ready for canning.
If it works I'll have one less reason to bitch about 90 degree days.

[Dee & Frank Hughes]

Hi Marianne- here's the link to the recipe I followed.
www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/dining/271crex.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=sun cooked&st=cse
I think full sunshine was more important than temp. I canned these about a week ago and must say they were delicious.

[Marianne Barrowman]

I never heard of sun cooking before. Is there a lot to learn about it? Do you need it to be 90 to work? I'm in Michigan for the summer and we've been having a cold year, like no days over 90 yet.