Putting it by {part 3}: Raspberries

If you've been around these parts for more than a year, you'll recall that we have extremely generous landladies who planted a whole slew of raspberries in the backyard, and have pretty much declared them to be the property of the tenants (not to mention that our landladies have been living in Costa Rica for the past two years, so even if they wanted any raspberries, it'd be a bit of a trek!).

I've taken on the role of raspberry caretaker, and have made the executive decision not to cut them back, or discourage their takeover of the yard and driveway at all. Of course, this has led us to be known among all the neighborhood kids as the free, local, pick-your-own. Yeah, I had to have a little chat with one little girl who kept showing up with a bowl (I just told her not to take too many, but that she could still have some- just so you don't think I'm a total bitch).

Anyways, in previous years, my way of preserving the raspberries--because there are far too many to eat them all fresh--has been making jam, and freezing them (which I've already done a little bit of, though I'm sure there will be more of both over the next few weeks). This year, I'm also going to try some raspberry syrup (for those sodas I talked about) and raspberry vinegar. I've been reading a little about the health benefits of vinegar, and think I want to try to incorporate it into our diets some more. I've got some chive blossom vinegar brewing at the moment and am excited to use that for salad dressings.

Do any of you have any more suggestions for how to preserve raspberries? I'm all ears!

PS: after my last post, many of you over on flickr expressed an interest in learning how to make jam- it's embarrassingly easy. Really! This is my standard raspberry jam recipe. I was thinking if there was any interest, I could put together some kind of tutorial, or a short list of good books on preserving. Let me know!