Violet Jam

A boy in the grass picking flowers

June is a jam month for the Food in Jars Mastery Challenge and I need to be honest, I really wanted to challenge myself and jam was a hard one to find. Jam is my THING.... how could I take it up a notch?

Then I remembered that we had violets growing at the edge of the woods.  FLOWERS .... I could challenge myself by using flowers. It was a wonderful Sunday morning activity. With the help of Baby, we went foraging in the field for violets.
 
























It was an ideal Sunday morning, drinking my tea, sitting in the shady grass with my youngest picking flowers.

I need to be honest here though one cup of packed violets is a hard earned venture, even Baby bagged out before I got them all. They almost camouflage themselves among the grass - you can only see them when you look at them from the right direction.

I love the swirl in the leaves. 

All in all, it took over an hour to procure one cup of violets but luckily that is all I needed because I picked every last one of them.

I used a recipe from  Soule Mama found HERE.  

I don't know if I did it right or used the right amount of pectin because my jam isn't as purple as hers. It also seems to have a grainy consistency. I would definitely make this again, but I might use natural pectin from apples. This was a nice experiment in foraging and I will tinker with it again. How many rounds of blooms do violets have in a season?

I Tweezed out any impurities

Ingredients

1 (packed) cup violet blossoms
1 cup water
juice of one lemon
1/2 cup honey
pectin (I used 1/3 of a box of Pomona pectin - turns out that 1/3 is 1 Tablespoon and 1 Teaspoon.)

Process

1. Spend a lovely late spring morning with your youngest child foraging for violets. 

2.  Blend violets, 1/2 of the water and lemon juice.

3.  Heat remaining water and honey in a saucepan. 

4. When warm, add pectin and stir until mixed well. 

5. Add pectin/honey mix to blender. Blend again until smooth. 

6. Place in hot jars immediately to set. This is a freezer jam for preserving.

From two to more!

I made more simple jam today but this time I doubled it AND used fresh WILD Maine blueberries!
I am quite a fan of those freezer jars, but I was so excited to find the larger ones with the green lid. We will soon be going through jam like mad so I figured a couple of extra large jam jars was not a bad idea.

The one that is only partly filled is living next to the toaster now, but the other three are nestled into the chest freezer in the basement.

Out with the old and in with the new...

This is baby food that was just evicted from our freezer. This baby food is over 4 years old. Why have we kept it so long? Maybe because it was the last vestige of our beloved the Dairy Queen and Queen Lactina.
Our baby starts Kindergarten with in two weeks, and there is no better way to get ready for months of lunchboxes x 3 than to can!

So...

Out with the baby food and in with the blueberry jam! We are blessed!

Strawberry Jelly for Halloween!

Yum!
My latest round was super easy! You can do it too! Here's a picture of what you need (minus the sugar, bowl, and some freezer jars!)














See that pectin packet?
It has ALL the directions on the back.
3 steps of directions - that's it!
Quick and easy - I promise!
I just ate it on an English muffin with butter.
It was breakfast and it was beautiful.
I know it contains pectin, but I don't care.
I had to try it and I am so happy I did.
This recipe was inspired when I found these plastic freezer jars from Ball's at the market.

















I highly recommend them!
This recipe could not be any easier.
Its a cinch to clean up after too!
So go make some jam.
You know you want to.
What?
You don't have the time?
Really?
You are too busy?
Really?
If you think you are too busy to make jam, picture this.
I made this jam last night in the course of an hour WHILE picking up Daughter from the bus, finishing Mama Cucina's crock pot mac and cheese for dinner, getting ready for a class I needed to go to, and getting the kids ready to be in the car to go to Puck Stoppers soccer game.
One busy hour that included jam and all it's clean up!
You can do it - I know you can!