Since I've been making so much jam, I though I'd try something a little different and make Mango Jam. I just received a new cookbook on canning and used a recipe from it. This is the first time I've used pectin, and I have to say I wasn't so impressed. I was reluctant to add anything besides fruit, sugar and lemon juice, but every recipe in this book uses pectin and the author swears by it.


The jam looks great, but I don't think it cooked long enough, so its a bit chunky and thin. It tastes great. I had to modify the recipe entirely by cutting the sugar in half, adding more fruit and tripling the lemon and lime juices.

It too made its way onto buttermilk biscuits, which made Nadia very happy!

Santa Rosa Plum Preserves

I am definitely on a jamming streak. I love the process of canning fruit and making jam! Today was Santa Rosa plums purchased from Monterey Market instead of picked like the apricots. The plums themselves were delicious, and their flavor didn't change terribly once made into jam. I used the recipe from the apricot preserves and just swapped the fruit.
I used about 10 0r 11 lbs plums (skinned and pitted), 3 cups sugar, 5 tbs lemon juice and lemon zest.
The plums shed their skin in the boiling water much quicker than the apricots did. Once skinned and pitted, the plums were tossed in a pot to boil with the sugar and lemon juice. A mass of plum pulp, not so appetizing at this stage.


This batch yielded 8- 8oz. jars of plum preserves!

Had the morning to myself (boyfriend and girls were at preSchool) so thought I'd make good use of my time. It was nice to have a focus for a couple of hours. The canning process wasn't so bad, although I could have used another set of hands, but removing the skin from the apricots was a very laborious process! The jam turned out beautifully and I had to make biscuits because what else am I going to do with all of this jam? In the end, I wound up taking warm biscuits and jam to my boy and the girls at preschool. Eat your heart out Martha!

Today I picked apricots with Ellen of the^workshop. Hopefully they will make their way into jam by this evening. Ellen was a better harvester than myself, but we both wound up in the upper branches, reaching for that last bunch.



We ended up with more than 12 pounds of apricots!

Canning Take Two

So peach preserves this time. Strawberry jam had a 50% success rate, but we decided to try it again, this time with peaches! The key is letting the fruit mixture cook to the "jell point," which was not mentioned in our Strawberry jam recipe, hence 3 jars good jam and 3 jars strawberry syrup!

We used this recipe, but our peaches were really sweet, so we cut the sugar a bit and added some lemon zest too! Jam should be ready for the tasting in a day or so!!!!

Strawberry Jam

The last day of my three days off, and this morning my boy and I made strawberry jam. Atleast I can pretend that I'm Martha Stewart and don't have to go back to the duldrum of my work life tomorrow.

The process was fairly easy, but I had some help. We'll see how it turns out. The liquid takes 48 hours to set. Hopefully I'll being enjoying strawberry jam on buttermilk biscuits the day after tomorrow!