I recently learned about some edible berries. I always thought that the red berries in the picture below were bane berries but it turns out that they are highbush cranberries. I also heard about chokecherries and only recently learned what they look like. My brother and I went out and picked a bunch of them. The picture below shows about half of what we picked.

Both berries are very sour by themselves so we decided to turn them into jelly. We cooked them and strained out the pits and seeds. We added sugar and once the syrup reached 220 degrees Fahrenheit we pulled it off the stove. As it cooled, it turned into a thicker jelly and we canned it. We made chokecherry jelly, highbush cranberry jelly, and chokecherry / highbush cranberry jelly.

Something that I noticed is that both berries are super easy to pick because there are around ten to fifteen on the end of each branch. We were able to pick a lot really quickly but the pits make up for the ease of picking. We lost at least half of the mass from the pits in the chokecherries and the seeds from the highbush cranberries. I think that I personally liked the combined jelly better than the individual flavours because the chokecherries are a bit more bitter and the highbush cranberries are more sour combining to a well rounded flavour [once the sugar was added… : ) ].