jam ~

blackberry jam

strawberry jam

It is funny the things one remembers from their childhood ~

One of my favorite things that came with summer is the jam we would make from the fruit in our orchard. Now I loosely use the term orchard and now farm because our farm and orchard was small and not a 'working' farm. We did have pigs, goats, cats & dogs and the occasional duck and our orchard had 8-10 trees. In the heat of the summer we would pick the fruit then spend the rest of the day peeling, pitting, cutting then cooking. I cannot say I enjoyed this process and probably gave my parents attitude but it was the foam from the cooked fruit that I enjoyed so much. 

I found several recipes for jam on the internet and on the back of the box of pectin. In addition there are many recipes for refrigerator/freezer jam that do not need pectin. So yea! this saved me a trip to the store. The blackberries were a gift from a friend, I rinsed them, about 5 cups, added 3 cups sugar, 2 tsp lemon juice. Maybe because I used less sugar but it did not thicken up. So I poured them back into a pan, reheated with 2 tsp apple juice and voila...thick yummy goodness. It was either the reheating, the pectins in the apple juice or both that thicken the jam.

Having had success, I purchased strawberries, cut off the hulls and into the pan with sugar, lemon juice and apple juice. This time I got foam! Sure wish there was some homemade bread in the house....Should have planned better.

Have a great week