Saturday, June 7, 2008

Jam!

I have been wanting to try to make jelly/jam for a few months now but just have been too busy to make it to a farmer's market to get the needed fruits. Friday, a nice farmer guy (aka Summer Santa in full Summer Santa gear -- overalls, trucker hat, white beard, etc) showed up at my workplace with his truck loaded down with strawberries! I think it was truly a sign to learn to make JAM! I promptly purchased 4 containers and he gave me one free. Somehow I missed the fact that each one was 4 quarts. So as soon as I got home and stowed the berries (all 20 qts of them) in my fridge I ran to the local store and got 2 dozen jars, sugar, and pectin.

This morning I spent 3 hours cleaning berries, processing them into juice, cooking and jarring jam. It was fun, messy, but totally worth doing again. I now have 20 jars of jam (the small half pint size), one batch of juice frozen for future jam endeavors, and TWO containers of berries still in the fridge. I plan to make at least one more batch of jam (I have to get more jars) then clean, slice and freeze the rest for my hubby. He likes smoothies!




Canning Jars



Yummy Berries



Jam all Finished


My Mess!

I can't wait for some yummy toast!!

2 comments:

Mary M Walker said...

The jam looks very GOOD!!

Jennifer said...

YUM! You're making me hungry today!! :oP