Concord Grape Jam!

 Fall is here and so is the canning season!

Concord Grape Jam is in the books!

https://merrymeetingmenu.blogspot.com/2020/09/concord-grape-jam.html

Lilac Jam

As I searched for recipes for violets, I learned that lilacs are another edible flower and was immediately entranced by the task of finding a recipe to make jam with the last two remaining flowers on my lilac tree. There was lilac jelly (oh so beautiful you must wait until next year) but the Jun Food in Jars Challenge is jam, so I had to settle on the only recipe I could get my hands on that worked with my available time (as in right then and there) and my available resources (two flowers only makes about one cup of usable flower). 

This recipe I found was from Music, Life, Love blog that appears long out of service. Do I trust the recipe? It seems an awful lot like the violet recipe and it will be going in the freezer, so... what the heck, I can always dump it later if it is awful.

Ingredients
2 cups, loosely packed lilac blossoms (no green parts or stems)
Juice of 1 fresh lemon or 4 Tablespoons of bottled lemon juice
3/4 cup water
2 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup water (a second time)
1 pkg. Sure-Jel pectin

Process
1.  Put 3/4 cup water and the lilac blossoms in a blender and blend well.
2.  Add the lemon juice and notice how the lilac paste turns a richer purple as soon as the lemon juice hits the dull purple paste.
3. Add the sugar and blend again to dissolve.
4. In a saucepan over medium heat, heat  the second 3/4 cup water in a sauce pan. Slowly stir the package of pectin into and bring it to a boil, continuing to boil hard for 1 minute.
5. Pour the hot pectin into the blender with the lilac paste.
6. Blend again and pour into jars or small storage containers.
7. Let cool, then cover with lids and store in the freezer. The jam will turn a deeper purple as it sets up. You can dip out the jam whenever you want some.


I'm really quite excited about them but once again worry about the pectin texture. I really need to get better at doing pectin the natural way.

They took on a surprisingly browner hue as time went on. It still has a shade of purple, but not as much as it was.

Store in freezer for up to a month. 

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.

Wild Maine Blueberry Jam!

6 big ones for us, and 6 little ones for gifts! Yummo!

Red Raspberry Jam

Made from raspberries from Mount Desert Island!

Strawberry Jam

That first pint went awfully fast but at least I have a start on my gift giving!

Strawberry Rhubarb Freezer Jam

A good start on my summer canning!

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.

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!

3 bags of Wyman's berries...

...yielded 6 jars of jam! The baby has been yammering all afternoon, "I want jelly! I want jelly!" which either means he can not handle one more peanut butter and (local) honey sandwich, or else I make the best darn jam in the whole wide world. I am going with the latter, because my house smelled lusciously of raspberry-blueberry-strawberry-blackberry-sugar simmer and boil that even SP came home and said wow! Now, watching those six jar cooling on the counter, I too can not wait until breakfast so I can sample it, and maybe, just maybe, I will make another loaf of acorn bread tomorrow and discover that I really have created my own piece of heaven on earth!