Gooseberries

Late last summer I found a gooseberry bush in our backyard, the berries were red and somewhat dried out. I missed the peak gooseberry season! They were growing right next to the garage behind some tall weeds. Art dug it up and moved it to the new veggie patch he made, together with 3 blueberry bushes we were given. Looking back putting the berry bushes with our veggies was not a good idea and they will be moved but that story is for another time.

Anyway the gooseberries, best I can tell, are ready. They were picked last night and wow are they a prickly bunch of berries. The bush would be well placed under first floor windows - thieves would have a hard time getting through them unscathed.




I picked the stem and flower ends and gave them a quick wash, ate a handful or two, they really are very good. And then what??? My husband asked for jam so gooseberry jam it is.

I got all my supplies ready, read the recipe from my Ball Home Preserving book only to find that I'm one cup short of fruit, I should not have eaten those two or three handfuls of berries. But they were so good...




I went looking through my fridge and cupboards for fruit I could us to top up the mashed gooseberries. That's when I remembered making zucchini orange marmalade years ago with my mother in law. Why not use some zucchini? It worked really well in marmalade and works well in zucchini bread, really you don't even taste the zucchini, so I came up with Gooseberry Zucchini Jam. Delicious!!!







Margaret