My jams and beer bread story
01
Beer Bread – where it began
In 2023 I was looking for something new to try. I already had a great wood working hobby going (www.markkurtzwoodcrafts.com) but wanted to explore something new. After poking around on the web for ideas I came across the idea of baking beer bread. It is a quick and easy thing to bake and it tastes great! I started out simply, just beer, but soon realized I could enhance the flavor by adding chocolate, or fruits, or nuts (or a combination of these) to the batter and make even better tasting bread. Jalapeno and cheese bread is always a hit!
02
Adding fruits to the bread
Once I started adding enhancements to my bread I realized that fruit was working out the best. So off to the farmers markets to buy fresh fruit or off to the store to buy frozen fruit when I was baking out-of-season.
I soon realized that I could have even more fun with my baking by growing my own fruits. My wife has been gardening ever since we moved into the house 30+ years ago and it looks great with all of the flowers and shrubs and veggies all Summer long. All of these plants were in the front yard and around the border of the yard but nothing was in the backyard.
03
Building the garden
This is how Tabyg was formed. I became “The Accidental Backyard Gardener”.
We looked at the backyard and came up with a plan to get started growing our own fruits. We started with blueberries (https://tabyg.com/blueberries-2-2/) and soon added strawberries (https://tabyg.com/strawberry/) and then raspberries (https://tabyg.com/raspberries/). The blueberries are the slowest producers of fruit while the strawberries and raspberries just exploded with fruit so I was able to make a lot of raspberry bread and we used the strawberries for things like short cakes. For the blueberries we ended up going to a blueberry farm and picking fresh berries ourselves.
04
Bring on the jams!
Now it was late 2025 and I was baking some bread and I saw that we still had several bags of frozen blueberries left from our earlier blueberry farm visit and it just kind of hit me: make some jam!
So I did. I found a recipe that I liked on the internet (www.creativecanning.com) and made some blueberry jam. It turned out great and was fun to make. It made a small batch, three 8 oz jars, but that is a good starting point.
05
Bring on the jams!, part 2
Now that I successfully made blueberry jam I am going to give strawberry jam a try next.
Unfortunately I will have to use store bought or frozen berries since it is January but they will be a good test for the process until I can harvest my own this Summer.
06
Bring on the jams!, part 3
Raspberry jam! This will be the next jam I make, but not until Summer when my raspberries are ripe. (I guess I could buy frozen),
We had a good harvest last year and we ate them all. Raspberries are fast growers so we should have a good harvest again this year, plus, my neighbor has wild raspberries growing in their yard so I can harvest those and a friend of mine has an overgrown patch at this house so I should have a great supply of raspberries this year.
What jams are next?
Mulberries? I have access to 2 sources of mulberries. One of my neighbors has a huge tree and my granddaughter has one as well. While they are delicious, all those green stems need to be removed before cooking. Seems like a lot of work so we will see how this goes.
Strawberries? Peaches? Who knows. I am just going to explore my options and play around and see how it goes.
