US meets UK

Yeah. Oh Yeah… I sang that song and danced around the kitchen while making jam. While trying to link the song, I found this video! It’s like it was made for me. My friend was probably thinking “why did I invite her for jam making”?

My friend Kristen and I have been inspired to try canning as a way of preserving our summer bounty. But, since it never seems to workout that enough of a bounty is ripe at one time we sought out other people’s fruits to can. First stop? Olney Farmer’s Market. When I mentioned to a sweet vendor that we were canning, she directed me over to the “seconds” area-where peaches with issues and bruises were half price!

Afterwards we headed over to Blueberry Gardens (near Olney/Spencerville) to hand pick our own. For the privilege of picking our own, we paid $8 per quart. It was fun to figure out which blueberries were the ripest (one for me, one for my basket…) and chat as we picked through the bushes. Neither Kristen or I have had much success with growing blueberries, so I’m glad we went to the professionals.

We may have picked too many…

Our utensils? Ball Canning accessories – not necessary, but very helpful! A large pot, jars, and a creatively fashioned “rack” out of aluminum foil to prevent the glass from sitting directly on the bottom of the pot. I can really see how having a proper rack to pull the jars out would be easier.

We got started on our jam making using a recipe for Natural Summer Fruit Jam from the Ball cookbook. We decided to go with the “less sugar” kind which uses apples to increase volume and decrease added sugar. Creation the apple sauce was easy… until we needed to push it through a sieve. Not so easy and very time consuming.

We still ended up using 2 cups of sugar for the blueberries and a whopping 5.5 cups for the peaches!

The book says to get the jam to 220 Fahrenheit- but we just couldn’t get it there. What I later learned from Food in Jars is that our jam would have a difficult time reaching that temperature with the reduced sugar. We over reduced the blueberry jam to a super duper thick amount that ended up only filling 2 jars and a little bowl. This batch should have filled 5 jars. The blueberry jam was so good though, that we reduced ourselves to eating it by the spoonful.

We instead used the gel test method for the peach jam-way more successful.

Our Jam canning was a complete success-save for one lid that didn’t properly seal right away. We tested the seals too quickly post cool down, and accidentally popped one off. We probably should have left the jars alone for longer to give it a chance to seal-but we were so excited!

But that’s okay-because that is the jam I’m eating today!

ETA: Live near DC and interested in canning? Common Good City Farm is offering a canning workshop on September 11th. Check it out!

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 12:09 pm and is filed under DIY, Food, edible philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.