My Jam & Jelly Day

I haven’t been doing much of anything lately as I have been consumed with picking raspberries.  We have so many berries and I hate to see them go to waste so for the past few weeks I have been picking berries almost every other night.  Since the berries have started to ripened Steve figures we have picked close to 5 gallons of them and there is likely still plenty more to come. 

The bulk of the berries have gone into jam and my first attempt at freezer preserves.  Last Saturday I refer to as my “Jam & Jelly Day” as I spent all day making jam, jelly and preserves.

Saturday started with me scalping the rhubarb and picking through the stocks for the cream of the crop: I only wanted the red tender stocks.  Some of the rhubarb went straight in the freezer for baking and some was turned into jam or jelly.  This was my first attempt at making any jam or jelly with rhubarb and I made Blubarb Jam (blueberry and rhubarb) and Rhubarb & Orange Jelly.  I taste tested as I went along and I am quite pleased with the flavor of final products.  I ended up with 8 - 246 ml jars of the jam and 6 – 246 ml jars of the jelly.

I’ve made raspberry jam on numerous occasions and was confident in the outcome.  When making jam I’m always amazed and how much sugar is used.  Unfortunately you can’t cut back on the sugar because if you do your jam won’t set properly.  I’ve tried “reduced” sugar recipes that use a different type of Certo (pectin) and the flavor just isn’t the same so I stick to the regular “full” sugar recipes.  We don’t eat a lot of jam so I’m not overly concerned about the extra sugar being consumed.   Anyway, I cooked up two batches of jam and if I recall correctly I ended up with 20 – 246 ml jars of raspberry jam.  Have I mentioned before jam makes a wonderful Christmas gift for just about anybody??

Raspberry Jam (left), Rhubarb & Orange Jelly (centre), Blubarb Jam (right)

This was also the first time I had attempted freezer preserves.  The process is similar to making jam but without adding any pectin to thicken it.  The flavor was spot on but I think I over stirred it because I was expecting to have more “chunkys.”  Next time I’ll know better!  I ended up with 4 – 16 oz cups in the freezer.

I was also planning on making some freezer jam but thanks to Steve, just before I started, we realized all the lids on the containers I had bought were cracked.  That stopped me dead in my tracks; which was a good thing because it was time to be done with my Jam & Jelly Day. 

My day had start with cutting rhubarb around 11:00 am, and it ended when the last pot was clean at 10:00 pm.  It was a long day but it was nice to get everything over and done with in one day.

I hope all of you that end up with jam or jelly at Christmas appreciate it!