Blueberry Week Starts! How to Make Blueberry Jam

Whole Foods recently had a great sale on pints of organic blueberries ($2 instead of the usual $5), so I wasn't bashful and bought six pints. If you like blueberries, you are in luck, since I'll share the recipes and instructions for what I made during the rest of this week. (If you don't like them, feel free to substitute other berries.)

By the way, there was an interesting article in The New York Times about the organic blueberry business in New Jersey, which produces some of the country's best blueberries. Click here to read "Organic Blueberries Don't Come Easily."

One of the things I made was blueberry jam. Making jam is one of those "I can't believe it's that easy" recipes.

All I did was measure out some blueberries (about three cups) and half that amount of organic raw cane sugar. I put the berries and sugar into a pot, added lemon juice from half a lemon and about two tablespoons of water.

I stirred once to combine everything and turned the heat to medium high. I stirred occasionally; it took about 20 minutes for the blueberries to start to break apart and another 20 minutes for the mixture to start to thicken.

At this point, I turned off the heat, let the mixture cool slightly and transferred it to a glass jar. The jam was going to thicken further, so it was much easier to have this happen in the storage container, rather than trying to transfer it from the pot.

The jam was delicious (if I may say so myself) and I ate it plain, mixed into yogurt and, of course, as part of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.