These preserves were a challenge. I’ve never done any canning before, but one word sums it up — hot. You boil the fruit, then you heat the jars, then you boil them. All this in the summer heat? We used fresh-picked blueberries and a flat of strawberries from the farmer’s market. I tried to make mine all natural so I skipped the pectin, used a small amount of sugar and added lemon rind. It didn’t gel quite like I wanted it to, so next time I will try to add some apple peel as this recipe suggests. The tops seem sealed, but I am skeptical so we will eat them quickly. A little runny, but yummy nonetheless. I think I’ll buy the proper equipment and try this again in a few weeks.
My five-year-old made this pinwheel mostly on her own. I helped attach it to the dowel rod with a paper clip and a couple of beads. She was very motivated and wanted it to look just like the picture in the instructions here. And by the way, trying to hammer a pin into a dowel rod as suggested in the instructions is ridiculously hard.
