Canning & Jamming!

Sunny Apricot Jam ~ 10 Half Pints



Started out looking like apricot soup:


Apricot Jam in Cookpot

My apricot tree did not have even one apricot on it this year. My plum tree had a few beautiful plums, but only enough to enjoy eating fresh. So in my dual effort to clean out my freezers (all 3 of them), and in order for me to even out the "jam vs Jen" score started by that strawberry jam incident last June, I used some frozen fruit to make a couple of batches of jam.

I made one batch of apricot jam and one batch of plum jam. Both fruits were gathered from local trees, pitted and frozen either last year or the year prior. They kept remarkably well in my freezer. Their colors and taste were still quite fresh. When cooked down with the sugar (I don't use added pectin in my jam) both fruits tasted great.

I had an abundance of apricot jam this time. See the photos above. The recipe makes about 8 half pints, but this batch produced 10 half pints for me. I had only prepared 8 jars, so I poured the rest into a pint jar and kept it in the fridge to use now rather than later.

My plum jam, shown below, made exactly 8 half pint jars. One of which did not seal correctly. First time that's ever happened to me in my canning experience. So I placed that jar of tangy plum jam into the fridge next to the apricot jam. Both jams make great PB&J sandwiches, especially on my homemade bread.



Bright and Tangy Plum Jam ~ 8 Half Pints


Here are the plums simmering with the sugar in the cookpot. Sort of looks like plum stew at this point.



Plum Jam in Cookpot

One of my new canning tools that makes fishing the lids out of the hot water in the canner a lot easier, is this nifty lid rack show below:


Canning Lid Rack

Using this rack, I just lower the whole thing filled with washed & rinsed canning lids into the hot water inside the canner to sterilize the lids and keep them warm until I need them. Then I lift the whole thing out and place it on the kitchen counter while I work quickly to fill the hot jars with jam and place a lid and ring on each one. Before I had this rack, I'd have to fish out each lid separately either with tongs or the little magnet tool that worked well, but had a handle that was way too short. Kept burning my fingers. This rack is way better. You can buy it at Lehman's, along with many other nifty things.

So now I have plenty of jam around here for awhile. I may make more before the summer is over. I still have more frozen fruit in my freezers. Nice to enjoy the fruity tastes all during winter.



© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Bread & Butter Pickles

Homemade Bread & Butter Pickles


Last Friday's visit to our local organic farm store netted me about 4 1/2 pounds of cucumbers. I chose small ones with pickling in mind.

I like making these bread & butter pickles, but my own garden cucumbers are a long way from producing so far this year. Seems like my summer crops all got delayed for some reason. Weeds, probably. I feel confident that I will have my own cukes this summer, but it will be awhile yet. So I took advantage of the fresh organic cukes I found in the farm store this week and made some pickles yesterday.

Last August I was lucky enough to have a large crop of cucumbers in my garden, so I turned 6 1/2 pounds of them into bread & butter pickles

Maybe next month I can make another batch from my own garden, but at least for now, we have 5 new pints of freshly made B&B sweet pickles!



© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Really Bad Day in the Kitchen

I have had my own kitchen for over 30 years now. I have cooked, baked, roasted, stir-fried, sauteed, canned & preserved all sorts of things. I am an experienced cook. I have had my share of kitchen mishaps and disasters over the years. That comes with the territory. Mistakes help you gain experience.

I have burned things, under-cooked things, had things stick to the pan. I've even had things catch on fire! Once, a very long time ago, the kitchen faucet even "exploded" all over me drenching me completely. Those last two were both during dinner parties that I was hosting!

None of those "disasters" can compare to the stupid, stupid mistake I made in my kitchen today. None of those previous mishaps made anywhere near the mess or calamity that I managed to pull off today.

I am so frickin' pissed right now! I am so mad that I feel like crying (for the past hour) but can't even relax enough to allow the tears to flow.

What the hell happened, you might ask? OK, I will tell you.

Remember that beautiful flat of organic strawberries that I wrote about in my last post? Well, I made that nice Shiny Red Pie and ate most of it myself, and then decided to save out enough strawberries to make a batch of strawberry jam. I love strawberry jam and so does my family, so I put aside about 5 or 6 pint baskets worth and waited until today when I finally had time to devote to the cooking and canning process. Fresh berries don't keep very long and I really didn't want to freeze them, so I had to make time in my day to make the jam and get it canned properly. I also wanted to enjoy the creative process.

Ok, so I carefully wash and hull 6 pints of strawberries. I realize I don't have enough sugar for the recipe, so off to the local market I go to buy a 5lb bag. Paid way too much for it, but hey, it's convenient to buy it here so close to home. Back home, I locate my half pint canning jars and a bunch of brand new lids and rims. I wash the whole case of them, even though I will only need 8 or 9 jars for the recipe.

Great, now I have everything I need. Finally. All organized and ready to go. Strawberries, washed and hulled. Check. Sugar, measured out and ready to pour into the cook pot. Check. Jars, lids, rims all washed and sterilized, ready and waiting in the preheated canner full of hot water.
Again, check.

I mash the strawberries with the sugar in the cook pot. I heat them gently until the sugar dissolves. I turn up the heat like the recipe says and insert the jelly thermometer to watch for the proper gel temperature. Up here at 3000 ft altitude, that would be 214 degrees F.

Now all I need to do is wait and stir, wait and stir, until the gel point temp is reached. I've made jam before. I've made lots of jam and many kinds of jam before. Strawberry, blackberry, peach, plum, apricot...even apple jelly. I've made jam. I know how to do it. Really don't even need to look at the recipe anymore, but I do so out of insecurity and...anal-ness.

It's taking awhile to boil and get any reading on the thermometer that is anywhere near 200 degrees. So I remember that I always seem to have the flame too low when I make jam not wanting to scorch the bottom or ruin the batch. So I turn up the flame, and I put the lid on the pot.

Fine. I stand there for a minute or so and then decide to leave the kitchen and go outside for a minute. Just a minute. One, maybe two minutes tops.

Huge mistake! Gigantic, stupid, huge mistake!! Don't ever do this. Don't ever, EVER do this.

I really was only gone for about two minutes. When I re-entered my kitchen the jam pot was fully boiling over and streaming red, gooey, sticky jam all down the pot, all over the stove and all down inside and under my stove top!

It was a big f*cking mess!! I have never, ever made that big of a mess in my kitchen before. There was partially cooked jam everywhere. I moved the cook pot of jam, now only half full. (Crap!) off of the stove. I also moved the very heavy and very hot canner full of sterilized jars and boiling water off of the stove. Removed the burners and then mopped up the thick sticky red mess from the top of the stove with a sponge and a wet dish towel. I was dripping sticky syrup all over the place. Then when I had removed enough of the jam from the stove top to allow me to lift the top and check to see if the pilot light was still lit (it was) I could then see where the rest of my pot of half cooked jam landed. It filled the depressions under the burners with about a half inch of red goo. I sopped that up with the sponge and rag, but it was no easy job. I had to climb halfway inside my stovetop to reach the mess and clean it without burning myself on the pilot flame or without making further mess. It was a crappy job, and I was so angry at myself for allowing it to happen in the first place.

I finally got it cleaned up enough to turn my attention back to my jam pot to see if I could salvage my beloved strawberry jam and all of the work that had gone into it. I wiped down the outside of the pot and put it back on the flame. Put the canner back on the fire too. I salvaged only about 1/2 of the recipe. That is actually what am I pissed off about the most. The mess was bad and unfortunate, but messes happen sometimes. I am really upset that I wasted half of my jam recipe. Those wonderful berries don't come along everyday.

So I finished cooking what was left of my jam as if nothing bad had happened. I turned up the flame to get it to the correct gelling temperature and then I filled the jars and processed them in my water bath canner for 10 minutes. (10 minutes because I live at 3000 ft, sea level would only require 5 minutes)

I lost over half of my beautiful deep red strawberry jam to that overflow spill and to my stupid lack of attention. I am still really pissed.

Oddly, in the middle of me cleaning up the sticky mess, I was composing this blog post in my head. I couldn't wait to tell you all about it. You people keep me sane. Thanks.

Here's a photo of my stupid 4 jars of organic homemade strawberry jam.

Organic Strawberry Jam





© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

In a Pickle!

Yesterday I took some nice National Pickling Cucumbers that I harvested from my garden


Pickling Cucumbers washed and ready

and sliced all 6 1/2 pounds of them


Sliced Cukes

along with some onions and mixed them together in a bowl with a lot of salt. I then covered them with ice cubes 2 inches deep and allowed them to rest in the fridge for 4-5 hours. After their salty cold rest I brought them out and started to make their sweet pickling syrup using the pickling "software" shown below:


Pickling spices, sugar and vinegar

Below is a shot of the pickling "hardware" (see also the "jar lifter" in the above photo, a very necessary tool)


Measuring cup, ladle, wide mouth funnel, cook pot and canner

After boiling the sweet pickle syrup for a few minutes I added the vegetables into the syrup pot and carefully brought the whole thing back to a boil. At that point it was time to fill and seal the hot jars and place them into the canner for their hot water bath. Processing them 15 minutes for sweet pickles at our elevation of 3000ft.


Canner filled with pickle jars at full boil (lots of steam on a hot August night!)

I am now the proud producer of 9 pints of beautiful homegrown and homemade bread & butter pickle chips. I don't always get a really good harvest of cucumbers, so it pleases me very much to have a heavy crop this year. I love to make them into pickles as well as eat them fresh. Some years I have enough to make Kosher Dill Spears too.


Bread & Butter Pickles ~ 9 Pints!

Now I need to hide them from Hardware Bob as he is addicted to sweet pickles...

© Copyright 2008 Mountain Harvest Basket