Posted by Heather Harris





June is hands down my favorite month. School is out, summer is in, the vegetables are growing, and fruit is ready to be jammed! It also used to be Portland dining month, but someone must have decided that was just overdoing it, and moved it to miserable March this year. After all, who needs an incentive to venture into town on a warm night and taste all of the local produce bursting out of the industrial chic cafes in June? But March? I'm thinking I might need a little help to get me to try the beet and parsnip confit. But thank goodness, there is this beautiful thing called preserving, which means I can enjoy a lovely strawberry jam in March (if I managed not to gobble it all up by mid-July), almost as delicious as eating a fresh berry in June. Then I can bypass the early spring radish steak special altogether!June is only half over and I already have cherries plucked from the yard, Rainier's snatched from a roadside stand on the Puget Sound, apricots and jalapenos from the grocery store, and strawberries the kids and Ipicked at a local farm, all lovingly sweetened and pickled lining the shelves of our pantry. And my rhubarb was actually beefy enough after four years of cajoling to harvest and mix in with the strawberry jam! The vegetable garden is currently overflowing with kale, but kale marmalade doesn't sound too appetizing. You'll have to wait for Portland Dining Month 2015 for that treat.An afternoon of canning can leave you a bit parched though, so I have two little recipes below without measurements (this is a gardening blog, not a cooking one) to refresh you after a hot, sweaty, and curse-filled day of canning, using the leftovers stuck with jam glue to your countertops. Just scrape it off and enjoy! Happy preserving! Muddle a few over-ripe strawberries in a tall glass with some mint (or whatever edible greenage you have laying around)Pour on some vodka, amount depends on how the canning went. (Also refreshing without vodka, but who's day of canning went that well?)Stir in a little lemonade concentrate.Toss in some ice and top off with tonic.Very similar to above recipe)Muddle those last few pitted cherries in syrup that you couldn't quite cram into the last jar with some mint or other greenage etc. in a tall glass.Pour on some tequila (see how I mixed it up there!) Again, amount depends...Stir in some leftover sugar syrup.Put in some ice and top off with tonic.