Jam On It

Let the jam making begin.  We decided to go with a traditional recipe of equal parts sugar to fruit.  We worked in four cup batches, so:

4 cups fruit

4 cups sugar

Stir over medium heat until it thickens and gels up.  Stir often and scrape off any foamy crud with a metal spoon.  There is a lot of cryptic advice about when the jam is ready.  The running off of the back of a metal spoon in two drops as one has me befuddled.  Essentially, I have found that it is ready when the consistency thickens and changes and the mixture takes on a sheen like jelly.  Put into sanitized (boiled) jars, wipe jar rims with a clean rag (which seems a bit contrary to all of that careful boiling), add lids, and process in boiling water for 10 minutes.

The are more precise recipes in most cookbooks and online.

The faint of heart can use a pectin product that will assure your jam sets up.  You will have to use about twice as much sugar as fruit and I think the thickening agent has a slight taste to it. 

Cicely, Emily, Amanda and I chopped fruit and made jam for the better part of the morning.  Zane pitched in with the dishes.

We saved a small amount of each batch to taste test. 

All said and done we made seedless wild raspberry syrup, wild raspberry jam, apricot jam, peach jam, strawberry jam, peach melba (about three cups of peaches to one cup of raspberries), and triple berry jam (equal parts of strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries).  My favorite was the peach melba.