This past fall my wife and I decided to move to Portland, OR. Once the decision was made, we immediately began the process of relocation.
As a consequence the fate of a summer's worth of boysenberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries was sealed. Carefully washed and frozen, the berries would not survive the move. In fact they did not and I've the extra girth and weight to prove it.
For the past couple of years one of my favorite hangouts was a local pickling/fermenting shop. There you could buy preserves, shrubs, and picked vegetables. These items appeared in their daily fare of vegetarian menu items. And, they taught pickling and canning classes.
Timing prevented me from participating in a canning class, but the notion of my frozen berries and their dependency on the ice box as opposed to preserved berries in a jar began to ferment in my brain.
An aside about the move to Portland - here I have cousins that know something about canning.
So, having gorged like a brown bear on summer fruit and having successfully relocated to Portland, this summer I began an informal research project based on my approach to learning by doing to determine whether I could create a fruit puree product preserved by means of canning instead of freezing.
More to follow ...