Jam Session

Two years ago I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and loved every single page of it. She is a writer living on some acreage with her family and they decide to in-source all their food for a year by growing, raising, and making it themselves, buying it locally or, except for a few exceptions, go without. What an awe-inspiring experiment and a way of life. My husband would never go for it. I suppose neither would our HOA. To dream….

Anyways… One of the things I couldn’t wait to do when we got a house (besides renovate, paint, decorate, etc.) was to grow my own veggie garden and can. Well this spring was like the worst on record, so not much has happened in the veggie garden. I’m still holding out hope for my four tomato plants.

My mom canned a little when I was growing up. Nothing crazy like a full winter’s worth of green beans and pickles, but certain jams, applesauce, and things like pears and peaches. I wanted to at least try that.

Earlier this month she gave me her canner, so now I needed the fruit. I picked up some blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and apricots this weekend. After a detour for some jars, pectin, and extra sugar I was set…..

Until I got home….. and realized just how much I had bought. A “canning flat” of 26 pounds of apricots sounds like a deal until the recipe calls for 3 pounds to make one batch, which is like 5 to 7  jars. Opps.

After a few moments of freaking out, not to mention a sense of overwhelming-ness when every single recipe I consulted said something totally different (the directions that came with the pectin were soooo confusing I refused to use them), here’s what I came up with using the website pickyourown.org:

5 cups of fruit
1 package of no/low-sugar pectin
2 cups Splenda
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon butter

I made three low-sugar batches:
Strawberry-raspberry (3 cups, 1 cup)
Strawberry-raspberry-blueberry (2 cups, 1.5 cup, 1.5 cup)
Apricot

Wash and cut up fruit, then mash up. For the apricots, I ran them through the food processer. Pour in a large pot and bring to a rolling boil, stirring to keep from burning. Add the pectin and stir in. Bring back to a boil, add sugar, Splenda, and butter (this eliminates the foaming that occurs and helps prevent burning). Boil for 1 minute.

Fill sanitized jars and cover with lids and rings. Place in boiling water in a canning pot. Let sit for 5-7 minutes after it has returned to a boil.

Cool on cooling rack, checking the jar lids have sealed and the jam is setting.

This amount, makes anywhere from 5 to 7 8oz. jelly jars of jam so make sure you have enough plus some ready for each batch. I was quite surprised how each batch resulted in different amounts finished jam.

In the end, I think I did alright as a novice without any help. My last batch certainly was faster and more smoothly than my first. My next adventure will be in canning the rest of the apricots, since I still have like 20 pounds left. Stay tuned for that :)

Important note: The above directions are not obviously word-for-word of the directions I used. They can be found here. Please use a trusted source when canning and follow those directions. Because I used a no/low-sugar pectin, I had some freedom in the amount of sugar I did use, something not true with regular pectin, which requires a certain amount of sugar.