Archive for Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade
April 2, 2013 at 7:25 am · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade
Some cold weather in California limited the citrus supply I usually get from my in-laws so I thought this winter would pass without any citrus canning. However, a few weeks ago I spied some nice looking meyer lemons in my Whole Foods and bought a bunch to turn into marmalade.
After purchasing the lemons I brought up the citrus wrap-up post from the Can Jam to give me some ideas, and hopefully a recipe. Success!
DATE: 03/25/2013
FRUIT: 2 pounds meyer lemons
SOURCE: Whole Foods
RECIPE: Meyer Lemon Vanilla Bean Marmalade
YIELD: 6 half-pints
Permalink
July 26, 2012 at 11:52 am · Filed under Fruit Preserves, Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade
Lemon curd, candied kumquats, and two kinds of strawberry jam made it into our larder since last we spoke but never got documented here. Papa and I got a doozie of a late season flu shortly after the citrus was canned and once we recovered the end-of-school chaos began. We had a short reprieve where we made two kinds of strawberry jam before heading with the family to Germany for a wonderful vacation.
Truthfully though we haven’t been canning too much so far this year because we have a lot left from last year. We give a lot of jams away at our holiday party and last year circumstances prevented us from having the party so we have a lot of jam still in the pantry. But now that we’re back in the country I’m getting all twitchy about the apricots that are about to be through, and the tomatoes that are on their way, and I wonder if I can still get blueberries? So, expect to see more of me here soon.
Permalink
February 5, 2012 at 2:13 pm · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade ·Tagged 2012, lemon, marmalade, orange
Hey there! So yeah, last time we talked I was drying tomatoes. Not too long after that I canned two bushels of apples as applesauce, half chunky, half smooth. One bushel’s worth went to my brother and his family the other we kept. I think we might run out. My husband also made hard cider and even got a bottle capper thing-a-ma-jig. I had intended to tell you all about it but it happens every year at some point, usually in September, I cannot cope with even thinking about canning for one more second. Often I still have canning left to do, applesauce for example, and so a bushel of apples sits in my kitchen for weeks until the fruit flies drive us crazy. It’s like I use all my September/October/November energy in the canning frenzy that is August.
But about this time, just after the new year, I start thinking about getting down the canning pot. I’m lucky enough to have family that lives in The Golden State so this year I remembered to ask if they would mind sending some citrus our way. While citrus fruits are more plentiful in our stores this time of year I can never get the variety or freshness that they can at their farmer’s market. Shortly after the first box arrived we made a double batch of marmalade. I used a proportion of 2 oranges to 1 lemon. It was a little loose in the jars but hopefully in a few weeks it will have set up nicely.
In the meantime I think I’m going to make some curd with the lemons from the second box and I’m hoping for a third box to make limoncello. I’m also hoping for kumquats, I might just eat them before they get in a jar though. Anybody else making anything citrusy out there?
DATE: 01/29/2012
FRUIT: 8 oranges, 2 lemons
SOURCE: the in-laws
RECIPE: on the sure-jell box
YIELD: 12 half-pints canned plus 4 half-pints in the fridge
Permalink
August 21, 2011 at 8:17 pm · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade ·Tagged 2011, jam, raspberry
You know the cliche about sending your husband to the grocery store, he never comes home with what you wanted. Well yesterday I sent Papa to the farmer’s market without me in hopes of getting some raspberries. I had a commitment and raspberry season is waning. We usually pick our own raspberries from a local winery but they were having a bad raspberry season and didn’t have enough to share. All these things were making me a bit jittery about the raspberry and razzlebarry jams — probably the two most-loved jams we make — so I sent Papa and the urchins to the market with instructions of getting two flats of raspberries if they could and a half-flat of blackberries.
I should mention here that Papa is, in general, a very capable shopper and he certainly knows his way around a farmer’s market. I can trust him to know the difference between a butternut and spaghetti squash or a pickling and slicing cucumber. However, as you know, this little story is leading to a moment and that moment has something to do with volume. You see, at the slightly further away but larger market the raspberries are sold in half-pints — and when we pick we pick half-pints as well — so I was expecting two flats of half-pints for a total of 12 pints of raspberries. Instead, what I found on the counter when I got home was two flats of pints for a total of 24 pints of raspberries. And the craziest thing is he got all those raspberries for less than what we normally pay for half the amount!
Needless to say we made a lot of jam.
DATE: 08/21/2011
FRUIT: 18 pints raspberries, picked over
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: from the pectin box
YIELD: 36 half-pints
Permalink
August 16, 2011 at 9:01 am · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade ·Tagged 2011, jam, peach, vanilla
For the last few years I’ve made peach jelly from peach syrup left after canning peach slices. It’s alright but we always end up with a bunch left because it’s not great. This year I decided to just make some peach jam. And I added some vanilla, just for the fun of it.
DATE: 08/12/2011
FRUIT: about 6 pounds peaches
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: on the pectin box with the addition of the seeds from three vanilla beans
YIELD: 13 half-pints
NOTES: I also let the vanilla pods cook in the jam. I removed them before processing.
Permalink
August 3, 2011 at 8:09 am · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade ·Tagged 2011, apricot, jam, rosemary
Apricot-Rosemary jam was a success of the 2010 canning season so we made it again this year. And as all things seem to be going this year, we made more! It looks like Marisa decided to make some too.
DATE: 08/01/2011
FRUIT: 10 cups apricot puree, 5 tablespoons chopped rosemary
SOURCE: farmer’s market for the apricots, garden for the rosemary
RECIPE: jam on the pectin box with the addition of the rosemary
YIELD: 29 quarter-pints
Permalink
August 3, 2011 at 7:58 am · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade ·Tagged 2011, apricot, jam
This year I was smart enough to get a half-bushel of apricots and because I was a little late with the request the only thing available were seconds. Fifteen dollars is all I spent on the fruit and two days later I had 73 jars of one type of apricot preserves or another. That’s a pretty good return on investment.
DATE: 08/01/2011
FRUIT: 15 cups apricot puree
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: on the pectin box
YIELD: 30 half-pints
Permalink
July 27, 2011 at 5:16 pm · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade ·Tagged 2011, blueberry, compote, lemon, verbena
Rather near the top of my favorite herb list is lemon verbena. What? You mean you don’t have a favorite herb list? Well you should. Anyway, I planted lemon verbena in our garden this year not sure what I would use it for, thinking maybe I’d make some kind of body product with it. Then I was at the bookstore looking for magazines to take to the beach and decided to buy the BH&G Special Interest Magazine Canning. I don’t usually go for these kind of magazines — they are often filled with really basic canning recipes that I already have — but I flipped through it and saw a few recipes I might like to try including blueberry and lemon verbena compote. Yum.
DATE: 07/26/2011
FRUIT: blueberries
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: Blueberry and Lemon Verbena Compote from BH&G’s Special Interest Magazine Canning (page 108)
YIELD: 5 half-pints
Permalink
July 16, 2011 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade ·Tagged 2011, blackberry, blueberry, jam
I bought a flat of blueberries and four pints of blackberries at the farmer’s market in the morning and had most of them canned into jam by late afternoon. That’s what I call productivity. And delicious. I essentially made a batch of blueberry jam and a batch of blackberry jam together. Blackberries are a little sour so generally they require a bit more sugar so I just used the proportions off the pectin box for a batch of blackberries and for a batch of blueberries and put them all in one pot. These two berries are such a good combination of flavors. Katie seems to like it at least.
DATE: 07/16/2011
FRUIT: 3 pints blueberries, 4 pints blackberries
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: proportions from the pectin box
YIELD: 17 half-pints
Permalink
May 29, 2011 at 10:03 am · Filed under Jams, Jellies, and Marmalade
One of my childhood homes had an established rhubarb plant on the edge of the vegetable garden. It was there when we moved in. My parents don’t like rhubarb and would never have planted it. My grandparents though would come over and harvest it every Spring. I never had rhubarb and grew up thinking it must be gross, or at least only something for old people to eat. My husband on the other hand grew up with rhubarb — although now that I think of it his mother doesn’t make pie so I’ll have to ask what rhubarb concoction they ate — so last year I made a batch of strawberry rhubarb jam. It actually turned out better looking than the strawberry jam so most of it was given as gifts at the holidays but I did get to try some. It tasted just fine to me, and actually not that different from the plain strawberry.
This year Stefan said I could skip it if I wanted to. It turns out rhubarb, for him, was one of those things that lived more fully in memory than in reality. I get that, but I figured variety is the spice of life and in May there isn’t much to put in jars besides strawberries and rhubarb.
DATE: 05/28/2011
FRUIT: just over 1 quart strawberries and 1.5 pounds rhubarb
SOURCE: farmer’s market
RECIPE: on the sure-jell box
YIELD: 6 half-pints
TASTE: yummy
Permalink
