Jammin'

Since I've been reading up on eating whole foods, I am trying to cook just about everything from scratch. I get the peace of mind of knowing exactly what went into my food and it's healthier than the processed mystery ingredients in most things on the supermarket shelves.

So...
While everyone else was grilling and lighting fireworks last week, my cousin and I decided to make jam. Lots of jam. Enough jam for many months of toast and scones and PB&J's. We ended up with six flavors with about two batches of each.

First we prepped the fruit we bought the day before (except for the cherries which I picked and froze earlier in the summer).  Everything was washed, hulled, and then approximated into 2 cup increments.

Then we mashed it all up. The berries were pretty easy to get with a spoon, but the peaches and apricots required some serious hand squishing action.

After that, the fruit went into a pan and was mixed with 1 Tbs pectin per cup of fruit. We put the pan over medium heat and cooked it until there was a rolling boil.

Yeah, we had t-shirts made for the day long event. Because we're that awesome.

So once the fruit was boiling we took it off the burner and let it cool a bit before stirring in sugar. We experimented with different increments of sugar from 1/4 cup to 1 1/3 cup. The hope was to use as little sugar as possible, but some of the fruit was quite tart so we adjusted by taste.

After the sugar was nice and combined, the pan went back on the burner and brought to a rolling boil again. Since we were making freezer jam, the hot jam could go directly into our clean glass jars once it was cooked, leaving room at the top for expansion in the freezer. Then the lids were screwed on and the jars set out until room temperature. After they cooled, we put the jams in the freezer, where they stay until ready to use. They are good for about 3 weeks in the fridge after opening.

Strawberry, bueberry-raspberry, peach, apricot, blackberry, and cherry. Not too shabby for five hours of work!