Frugalcountrymom

My first jams

Ok so for about a week now I have been trying to make my peach/plum jam that I got from the last veggie/fruit group. It has been one chaotic week though and I haven’t had time I have been so exhausted especially with the heat being around in the 90’s.

So today after I made sure all the animals had water outside I cleaned up the kitchen as much as could with dinner looming close I was determined to get it done even though all I wanted to do was take a nap.

I went into the fridge and there was hardly any peaches left my kids and husband had ate most of them…so sigh I couldn’t make the huge batch like I wanted but I am glad I didn’t because I wouldn’t have had the room.

I also decided I didn’t want to use sugar. It made me upset that I would have too so I took out my honey book and looked. It called for something called tapioca flour. Dang it I don’t have this flour whatever it is I have never even heard of it before. I read I could use some starch. It made it foggy as soon as I put it in I am not sure about this for future we will see when I open one tomorrow.

This is for my future use is why I am writing it so I won’t forget.

1. Put in dishwasher jars I am going to use, Tom said I should sterilize them in hot boiling water instead to be extra safe. I will do that next time.

2. I put on some boiling water and put the plums and peaches in the water for a few seconds then take them out and put them in cold water. I noticed the longer I kept in cold ice water the better they peeled.

3. I also put boiling water on and put in a bowl to sterilize the lids.

4. Peeled them I needed Miranda’s help so they wouldn’t go cold on me before I could get to them all. Need to remember to cut them really small next time so they will cook faster.

5. I think I used about 8 cups of peaches and 4 cups plums and two cups of honey. I decided the next time I will put in whatever I have and not really worry about it just make sure it will go together for instance…. I do have to remember that the plums were really sweet and over took the taste out of the peach. I also sliced one lemon I liked this a lot.

6. The recipe had called for 7 cups of sugar goodness! So with honey it said to do half. Well I didn’t thank goodness. I only put in two cups of honey noticing how watering it was and stopped. It took a long time of boiling to take the strong taste of honey out and this was raw honey from SAT not our hard core honey here.

7. I added about 1/3 cup of starch and tried to dissolve it as much as possible but I can see in one of the jars some of the starch that didn’t dissolve dang it again I really need to make sure next time that it does.

8. Poured into jars

9. ****Biggest mistake I made was not putting the boiling water to boil before I started all this as soon as I put the stuff in the jars and closed the lids tight I needed to put them in the boiling water for 10min.

10. They started to pop the lids as soon as I started to pull them out of the hot water bath. The big pan I used only could hold 9 little jars. Guess what I had 9 little jars whooo hoooo

Tomorrow we try the jam I really hope it comes out good.