PLEASE NOTE…. I HAVE NEVER TRIED THIS BEFORE IN MY LIFE!!!!

Honest…. I always have wanted to learn how to can and I was always afraid to try it. After all, don’t you need like complicated equipment and gear and a PhD in housewivery skills or something? Like a qualified grandma around or something??? I mean, what if it doesn’t work? Will we die if it’s not right? If I give my friends some will they die? OH MY GOSH…

Well. I got to thinking about it and if people used to do this in the old days and you don’t really hear too many stories of canning related deaths…. I figure it’s probably not THAT hard… So I did some online research and then got out my homesteading books and read and read and considered it all, and then finally read something online that said basically that if you don’t do it right and you open the jar, you’ll know RIGHT away if it ain’t good…. so I figured it was worth a shot.

I read the little instructions on the package of pectin about 23 times.

Yeah, I decided for my first batch I should probably use the cheater pack of stuff, just to make it work out better. I guess some folks don’t but well, I’m just a jam canning newbie so I want to stack the deck in my favor here. Plus, I want to be a guiding light to all you others out there that are scared to death to try this!!! Hopefully I will show you that it’s okay… and it’s all good and pretty easy.

Okay I got my berries from the Farmer’s Market because in all my hesitation and worry, I missed the u-pick-it places and all the raspberries are done. My garden ones were just not ready to produce much this year, so we’ll just have to wait for home grown Moby Jam…. next year though… next year….

We washed them and picked out the yucky ones and the bits of leaves and such. We were going to use our new-to-us food processor to mash the heck outta them, but it said not to. Apparently the over activity of the food processor kinda wrecks some of the natural pectin in the little guys. Sure don’t want to do that!

So my helpful assistant, Maggie, went to work with a potato masher. We left them a little chunky, cuz we like jam that way.

As to the recipe… we followed one on the little phamplet. It was really simple. 4 cups of mashed raspberries, 6 1/2 cups of white sugar and one pouch of pectin.

I think the hardest part of this all, is making sure you keep everything super duper clean and sterilized. We used out little Presto pot because it makes stuff super hot and fast and all. And we don’t have a range/stove, believe it or not. (More on that later…. hahaha)

Jessy was in charge of sterilizing the jars and all. We boiled all the jars for 10 minutes, and then with sterilized tongs, too… she drained them and set them on a clean towel, open end up, to cool a bit. You don’t want them really cold or anything, because the hot jam mix could break them…. but they need to be sterilized good and pretty dry. Just be careful not to touch them with ANYTHING else that is not sterilized!!!

Well, ya pour in the mashed berries and the sugar and get it hot. Boiling actually, and stir constantly. I would think that burning the bottom of your fruit would be kinda yucky. The phamplet said to cook it until it made a rapid boil that could not be stirred away… that it keeps boiling pretty rapidly.

It also said to add a 1/2 teaspoon of butter to help control the foaming. We did that. It said to. We follow directions when we are afraid of killing our friends with jam.

Okay, in goes the pouch of pectin. Then you boil it another minute and keep stirring. Constantly. Again, don’t want to burn it. Oh and watch out.. the sugar fruit mix is really hot. REALLY HOT….

Just take my word on it….

After a minute, turn off heat and ladle into the hot sterilized jars.

Note to self: get one of those canning funnels because it’s hard to ladle the hot stuff in nicely without…

We were surprised… we expected 6 jars and we got 9!

Good thing we sterilized more than we needed! We were ready!

Take a hot clean rag and make sure that the rim is clean of any jam stuff or like seeds, etc. It can wreck your seal. Just run it along each rim. Then get your hot bath ready…. it said not to boil the lids, but to dunk then in boiling water to make them hot. And then pop on the jam jars and then add the rims and tighten them finger tight.

We kinda figgered that meant tight but not SUPER DUPER tight… Oh yeah, and make sure you use your tongs for dipping the lids and putting them on the jam. You want to pretend you work for like the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta… and just be SUPER careful about not contaminating this stuff. After all, your friend’s lives hang in the balance here… not to mention your family and yourself!!!

(Okay… funning aside… here is a great post to read while the jam is getting ready to process…. Death by Jam…. )

THE LOWDOWN ON BAD CANNING…..

Okay, get your water hot and boiling, tighten up the lids, finger tight and get ready to process them!

You don’t want the jars sitting on the bottom of the pot… you want to make sure the hot water moves around them. Our little strainer for the Presto Pot was perfect. Just transfer the hot jam jars into the water, make sure it covers the little dudes and then slip on the lid and boil for 10 minutes.

Really kids, this is the hardest part! It’s all the back and forth stuff, but it’s really not that bad. We did the whole batch in about an hour… and it was really slow because we were reading the instructions and getting our jam groove on. I’ll bet you could get good at this and do a batch in a half hour! But hey, why rush…. just enjoy it! It’s really quite fun and rewarding to make your own stuff like this!

We had to do ours in two batches, but I think that was fine, because the second batch of jars was still super hot when we processed them. And it says that after 12 hours, if it doesn’t set up you can reprocess them! So I think 15 minutes was fine to watch.

Okay… boil for 10 minutes with the lid on. And then turn off the heat, remove lid and let cool for 5 minutes and then remove. Set on a towel, to drip dry and cool for 12-24 hours. Don’t fuss with them, just leave them alone. They will be beautiful and so tempting to fool with, but just DON’T.

The pamphlet said to LEAVE THEM ALONE for 12-24 hours. You just better do what the pamplet says.

Aren’t they purdy?

Okay, tomorrow… here’s what we will do. We will test them for a seal. All you do in push in the middle of the lid. If it makes a poufy pingy noise then you screwed up. The seal is not vacuumed sealed good. Take that bad boy and pop it in the fridge right away and use it. It’s safe to eat, but not safe to store in the pantry and all that stuff.

I had to try them just a few minutes ago and they are all solid pulled down and not a single pushy ping in the bunch of them!!!! I think that means we did it just perfect!!! How cool is that?

Of course, one will be sacrificed tomorrow to make sure it is good on toast and all that… but I have to say, it was not that hard and it was really fun and the girls and I really enjoyed it. I’m no longer afraid.

I think I’ll have to see what other kinds of fruits I can find at the Farmer’s Market next week ripe and cheap! I think peach jam would be delightful… I need to read about it and see how that goes. I love peaches! And they have been very prolific at the market… Maybe an apple jam… or would that be apple butter? Hmmm…. need more research!

Well, I hope you give this a try. It was really not that bad! And if you’re really concerned, you can always put it all in the frig! And give it away to friends and tell them to use it right away and put it in their frig! That way you’re safe.

But I read there was only 160 counts of anyone getting sick from home canning in the US in 2008… 160? Out of a WHOLE COUNTRY? I think your odds are better to get sick from a fast food joint or some little dinner somewhere…. I wonder what the odds are of that…

An estimated 87 million cases of food-borne illness occur in the United States each year, including 371,000 hospitalizations and 5,700 deaths, according to an Associated Press calculation that used the CDC formula and current population estimates.

There were geographic variations in disease rates among the states, the CDC found. The highest rates of salmonella occurred in Georgia and New Mexico, campylobacter was most common in California and E. coli thrived best in Colorado.

Wow…. 160 vs 87 million.

Does that make you feel better now? It’s far more dangerous to eat out in the real world then it is to home can your own jam.

That is going to make me sleep better for sure. So go out there and jam something! And let me know what you did and how it went!!! Sounds like fun!

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