North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 07:11 AM 5/30/2007, you wrote:
>     When picked, my gooseberries retain a slight bit of their stem and their
> dried blossom.  When you make gooseberry jam, do you leave the stem and
> blossom or do you painstakingly pick off each dried blossom and stem end
> from each berry?


Jim,
I freeze the berries in ziploc freezer bags, with stems and the 
little dried blossom end still attached.  Once frozen, you can pull 
them out of the freezer and 'massage' or 'roll' the berries around 
inside the bag and the stems/stylets mostly break off, then it's a 
fairly simple matter to winnow them out before you make jam or pie.
the few that remain attached aren't that big a deal to me(I always 
need a bit more 'roughage'), but I suppose for commercial purposes, 
the typical consumer *might* be put off a bit by their presence.
Lucky