We're Jammin' !!

(Genealogy has been updated.)

I had planned on making some broccoli-corn chowder, and broccoli puree soup out of my garden yesterday.

Then an acquaintance said to me "hey, I have a large crate full of fruit that is poised on the edge of ripeness (if not over it). Want it?" 

So I jumped...and then spent all evening making jam. Ended up with 14 pints. I water bath canned 4 of them without pectin, as they were a nectarine/plum blend, and plum has a naturally high pectin ratio. The other 10 I made into freezer jam. I had forgotten I purchased, rather by accident, a whole bunch of freezer pectin pouches a year ago. They sat unused in my cupboard until last night.

So here are the results. I used the pints which were half-full so you could see the difference:

You may be able to tell straight away the jar on the left is freezer jam. It has quite large chunks of nectarine fruit in it. The jar on the right was cooked down first. Just that process alone rendered down the fruit to more of a "normal" consistency like you expect in jam.

The freezer one (probably due to the fact that it wasn't boiled for 30 minutes) tastes much more like fruit, whereas the shelf-stable (BWB) jam tastes more like..jam. They are still both good. Our family is evenly divided on taste: half each preferred one or the other.

This event reminded me why I generally only do berry jam: no peeling, scraping, blanching yada yada when you use berries. Pitted fruit jam (pitted fruit anything) is a significant time investment. The actually jam making part is a breeze by comparison !

For the freezer jam, I just followed Ball's directions on the pouch (4 cups mashed fruit, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 3 T lemon juice. Let sit for 10 min. Add freezer pectin, stir for another 3 min and poured into jars. It sat at room temperature for 30 minutes to "set", then I moved it into the refrigerator overnight and today into the freezer.

For the cooked jam, I used 6 cups (3 of each-nectarine and plum) of chopped and semi-mashed fruit, 3 cups sugar, 4 T lemon juice. Medium rolling boil for 30 min, skimming off foam. Ladled into hot jars and BWB'd for 10 minutes at a hard rolling boil.

I really miss the grow-your-own/can-your-own free food days. My grandparents used to farm self-reliantly on their backyard in the city plot. My grandfather used to grow and can enough of everything to last through late summer (next harvest) every year. In snow country. I wish I'd had enough sense to ask for the canning jars when they both passed away !

Anyway. Part of my problem with canning is I think the way my grandparents did it is the only way. As in, if you're not canning 100 bushels at a time, you're somehow a failure. I've realized slowly, that canning or gardening bit by bit, adds up. I have 14 pints more of jam than I did 48 hours ago (and it was free!) In a day or so, I'll have quite a bit of broccoli chowder put up, all free. I'm working on changing my viewpoint to accept that it really is okay to can just 8 pints or quarts and be done.

Bit by bit, row by row, that's how we see our prepping grow !