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The Great Jam Experiment 2010

I grew up in a home where canning was the norm. I fell asleep many a night to the rattle and hiss of my mom's canner. She would can string beans, corn, home-made veggie stew and jam. It was so common place, I didn't think much about it as a kid. We had locally grown food year round. As I got older, I wanted to learn how to make my own food and can it. It seemed so tough to do. I surely didn't have the right supplies and I wasn't even sure what to do.

Saturday, on our way to a party, we stopped into a QFC. They had this seemingly HUGE container of strawberries. Alan asked me twice if I was sure that I needed that many. I assured him that I did. He then asked me what I was going to do with them all. I confidently, for no apparent reason, answered "make jam!" I went on to use them in a couple of July 4th baking projects, but still had 3.75 lbs left. So this morning I googled strawberry jam and jumped right in!

After a quick trip to Freddies to get the jars, I started hulling and then smashing 4 cups of strawberries, then juiced three fresh lemons and readied 4 cups (gah!) of sugar.



Once I had it all laid out, I put it on the stove and got it to a rolling boil of 220 degrees for 10 minutes.



While the jam was cookin' I readied the jars and lids. I dug out my stock pot thinking that it would be plenty big for the four 12 oz jars of jam. It would have been, had I been able to just set the jars down in the pan. Unfortunately I learned that I needed to set them on a rack in the stock pot. With some creative finagling I was able to get them in the pot and covered with the appropriate amount of water where I let them boil for 15 minutes.



When the timer buzzed I removed them from the water and let them cool until each one of the lids "pinged" to indicated they were sealed tight. I was really proud of my handy work. I definitely want to try to can some other stuff. I need to collect up more jars and then plot away! Arminda promised to help me do pickle string beans, and I would love to can up some veggie soup and chili. Come winter time it would be nice to just pull something home-made off the shelf and have a healthy home-made meal in seconds!

Comments

  1. i just never feel pioneer enough to make jam!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was actually so easy and everyone loves it! Since this post all my friends have been sharing their awesome recipes. I am excited to hit up the farmers market and try some new recipes.

    ReplyDelete

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