Gather 8 cups of ripe autumn olive berries. They are ripe from September through late October.
Add 1 cup of water 8 cups of berries and bring to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes.
Run the mash through a sieve to eliminate seeds. The result should be about 5 cups of pressed fruit.
Measure out 3 ½ cups of sugar or use honey
Take ¼ cup of the measured sugar and mix it with the contents of a package of no-sugar-needed Sure Jell.
Mix it in with the pressed fruit and bring to a rolling boil.
Add the remainder of the sugar to the boiling liquid and return to a rolling boil and let it boil for one minute.
Then can according to canning directions and cool.
This makes about six 8 oz. jars of well set jam. Nice and tart.
Autumn Olive Berries, Evening Primrose, Lobelia flowers (not edible)
Nutrition Facts
Autumn Olive Berries are the fruit of a large shrub or small tree (Elaeagnus umbellata) with fragrant, ivory-yellow flowers, silvery-green leaves and silvery-mottled red fruit. This shrub grows wild throughout the eastern United States. This fruit is crammed with nutritional value. They are 17 times higher in lycopene than tomatoes (the substance that makes tomatoes red)
“The red berries of autumn olive have a high carotenoid content,” writes Fordham, “and particularly high levels of lycopene (30-70 mg/100g). Lycopene has powerful antioxidant properties, making it of interest for nutraceutical use.”
The berries also contain high levels of vitamins A, C and E, and flavonoids and essential fatty acids. Lycopene is their main attraction, though. Lycopene, adds Clevidence, who heads ARS’ Phytonutrients Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, has generated widespread interest as a possible deterrent to heart disease and cancers of the prostate, cervix and gastrointestinal tract.
US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Fruit Lab gave the fruit a new name (or an old name made new again) — Autumnberry. They’ve opened an Autumnberry Research Lab. “A New Fruit for Processing: Autumnberry, Aki-gumi, or Autumn olive, they say, has “Organic Farming Possibilities.” Requires little or no fertilizer. Easily harvested by hand or machine. Flavorful fruit, which can be:
consumed fresh
processed into jams, jellies and sauces
dried into fruit leather
And to top it off…An excellent source of the anti-oxidant lycopene! Rich source of carotenoids including: lycopene, phytoene, a- and ß-cryptoxanthin, and ß-carotene.”
