Belated bacon jam

Last winter I got a lesson in making bacon jam. Thanks Tanya! Somehow I never got the photos put here.


Ended up with three jars of deliciousness.

Apple-Pear Butter

We've been getting biweekly fruit deliveries from Organics to You for a few months. Since we had built up a bit of a collection of different varieties of apples and pears, I decided I wanted to try making an apple-pear butter (if such a thing existed). With a quick google search, I found plenty of options.

Ultimately, I adapted a recipe from recipe.com for the version I ended up going with. We only had about 4 pounds of apples and pears, so I had to modify it.

Apple-Pear Butter

2 pounds pears
2 pounds apples
2 cups apple juice
1 cup dark brown sugar
½ Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp ground cloves
juice & zest from one lemon

(I substituted 1 Tbsp of Jeff's powder deuce for the ground spices.)

I peeled and sliced the fruit with the food processor, added the rest of the ingredients, then cooked it on the stovetop for about half an hour.

I had been expecting the fruit to soften and break down, but it didn't go quite as I was hoping. So, eventually, I ended up passing the cooked fruit through the food processor again. Then it had the consistency of apple sauce and I returned it back to the stovetop to cook it down.

I let it simmer for about 45 minutes or so over low heat, stirring occasionally, until it was good and thick. Then I transferred the apple pear butter into jars. It cooked down to just over 2 pints, so I didn't bother to cook it in a hot water bath. I'll just pop the jars into the refrigerator.

Canned Tomatoes

I've been suffering from a bit of insomnia, so it totally wiped out my energy this week; I hardly managed to do anything productive. Today, however, I finally had some energy and I decided I wanted to deal with our growing pile of tomatoes. Between our CSA and our tomato plants, we had a pretty large backlog.

I first made a batch of tomato sauce. Since I mostly used cherry tomatoes, I used the easy method where you just throw the clean tomatoes into the food processor and turn them into juice then cook them down until they're sauce. (I found the method at this website.) I turned five heaped pint baskets of tomatoes into three small jars of sauce.

Then I did a second batch of diced tomatoes from the larger tomatoes. (I used the method from this website.) I peeled the tomatoes and Jeff cut them into small pieces for me and added a bit of basil from the garden. Then we added lemon juice and put the cut tomatoes into the jars. Though, I don't think we smashed the tomatoes down enough in the jars, so there's a big gap now at the top. So, I don't really know if they worked or not. They all sealed, so perhaps they're OK. I may pop them into the refrigerator just in case.

I have finally gotten the hang of using the reusable canning lids. It's best not to put the rubber seal part into the hot water bath because it expands and then doesn't fit jar properly. I just keep them at the side and add them as I put on the plastic lid. The rubber ring doesn't come in contact with the food.

Millions of peaches

Peaches are here! Maybe not millions of peaches, but that was the song we kept singing.

We picked up two 26-pound boxes of peaches at Justy's Produce. They were not quite ripe when we picked them up last Tuesday (6 days ago). But today they seemed just about perfect. So we let the canning begin. We used the same basic approach we did a couple years ago, except this time we tried to fill the jars a little fully of peach slices.

Sharon blanched the peaches for 1 minute then dunked them in ice water to loosen the skins. I'd then peel the skin off and slice the peach. If it was ripe, and produced a nice slice it would go into one bowl. Otherwise it would go in the "jam bowl". Sharon would usually process three peaches into the ice water then attend to other canning stuff while I caught up.

Once I got enough for a jar full of peach slices, Sharon would pull a jar from the hot water bath and fill it with peach slices, then pour in a light sugar syrup (4 cups water, 2 cups sugar). The reusable canning lid and rubber ring would then come out of the little pot of simmering water and top the jar. Once ringed, back in the hot water bath it would go. 

Once I got 4 cups of "jam peaches" they would go into the food processor with 2 cups of sugar an a little lemon juice. 

We wanted a stove with at least five burners specifically for canning.

 The water bath with jars of peach slices.

Here is two batches of jam just starting to simmer.

It requires pretty constant attention until it cooks down to a happy consistency.
Then into little jars and another hot water bath.

And the fruit of a day's canning.

For lunch, peach slices and chocolate ice cream!

Apricot-Pineapple Jam

This morning Jeff and I went off to storage and retrieved some of our canning supplies. We were still missing some of the tools, but we had enough to actually do some canning today. I made three batches of Apricot-Pineapple Jam.

I almost never follow recipes for making jam. I tend to reduce the sugar well below what the recipe calls for. I also never use pectin anymore, I don't feel the need. Most of the time the jam sets up without it and when it doesn't, I don't particularly care if my jam is a little runny since we tend to use it mostly on pancakes and waffles anyway. I also cook the jam for a long time to cook off the liquid so it is usually pretty thick.

The recipe I used for inspiration today was Easy Apricot Jam (No Pectin). I liked the suggestion about mixing in pineapple so I gave it a try. I can't really give an exact recipe of what I did, because I didn't actually measure the fruit. I just blended two food processor bowlfuls (it was probably about 8 cups) of apricots, a 20 oz. can of chopped pineapple (also run through the food processor) plus 3½ cups of sugar. I also stopped adding the lemon after the first batch, because I used the pineapple juice in place of it.

I also added the step of processing the jars in a hot water bath. We learned how to can fruit out of cookbooks, and they always say to process in a hot water bath so we just always do. Better safe than sorry.

The jam turned out a beautiful shade of apricot and it tastes delicious. It has just a bit of kick from the tart pineapple. (I actually had intended to make the third batch without the pineapple, but by then I had gotten so used to using the pineapple that I threw in the can without thinking about it. Oh well.)

We also tried, for the first time, reusable canning jar lids, available from Lehmans. We bought these a couple of years ago, but never got a chance to try them last year because we had no kitchen. The jars looked like they sealed, but these plastic lids didn't produce that reassuring pop that the metal lids do. But it will be nice to be able to reuse these from year to year. We'll report back if they don't work.