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.

Red Neck Eye Spy

By the way, it's a pellet gun for the squirrels harassing the poultry feed.

My new front door

The house is back on the market. We have worked really hard to make everything look perfect, including power washing and staining the porches, weeding and mulching all the garden beds, and buying lots of flower pots and plants to put in them. We used extra granite from the fireplace installation as stands for the pots on the front porch. I am pretty pleased - it looks great!

Patron Vases

This is a picture of one of my favorite examples of reusing.
I love flowers. I love fresh cut flowers in vases through out the house.
I love vases that have no risk of tipping over as the result of over zealous children.
These vases are such an example.

























I am NOT a big fan of tequila, but any friend who is, you are welcome to give me your empty bottles of Patron!

Lilac in Suspension

Do you ever wish that you could keep your lilacs blooming year round?
I just think that May should last forever - it's such a wonderful month! It's the onset of when I can pick home grown flowers outside and fill my house with them, which is exactly what I did with lilacs last Friday. I was sitting at the kitchen counter enjoying the aroma of the one above when I noticed something really cool.

One of my lilac flowers was suspended beautifully in the water.

See look closely:













































Isn't that just too cool!?

Happy Mothers Day!

Flowers remind me of my mother. They would have even if she hadn't asked us to remember her with them. While I was in CT I saw some beautiful orchids.
This one reminded me of the colancho (sp?) I have that was Moms.




























But then there was THIS one! I have never seen anything like it! My sister collects orchids which is really great because I bought it for her.



























The really cool thing about it is that once I got it home the top bloom decided to open, and when it did it did so within the grasp of the flower below it. It was such a romantic, loving, sensual thing to watch - but then again maybe I was just anthropomorphizing a flower.



























Isn't that gorgeous!

Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Unexpected October Bloom

We were raking last weekend.

Well, to be honest, SP spent most of the time on top of the tractor blowing the leaves off the lawn.

Does that make him a red neck?

Funny part was he actually had a rake in his hand most of the time, looking like he was jousting some unseen leaf monster.

I digress.

After he tractor-raked the lawn, he hand raked the flower beds and found this surprise bloom.










I love it.

Snap dragons are special.

They will always and forever remind me of my maternal grandmother Mima.

Thanks HiHo!

ZInnias are another Fall Bloom!

Dianthus Blooming in October

Baby picked this for me yesterday!

How wonderful it is to still have fresh blooms after our first frost!

Lovely!

I put it on my kitchen window sill.

It is HiHo's favorite color.

Miss you HiHo!

My lilies have bloomed!

When my dear mother HiHo died, she asked us to remember her with flower and music. I haven't gone more than a week without a fresh flower in the house in all of these long 10 years.
I love when my lilies bloom because then I can bring fresh cut flowers into the house that smell just wonderfully! Of course, I cut the anthers and pollen off because of the mess they make! I love flowers and I thank HiHo for teaching me that! In this picture are one of the lilies I chose from White's Flower Farm in Litchfield CT. In the back ground is my knitting in a wonderful knitted and felted bag from my MIL Barby. The book is one on IPM that is getting a lot of action during this gardening season! The next flower to bloom looks like it will be my Phlox and then the Asters. I can't wait for this humidity to end so I can happily be outside again with all my wonderful plants!

A couple of my Flowers

Chives and Peony