Not a great photo, but who cares…the love is in the jars today 😊
Cleared out the sweet stuff for the most part. Today’s little projects included:
- Pineapple tidbits
- Raspberry Jam
- Blueberry Lime Jam
- Blueberry Earl Grey Jam (Thanks Linda…it’s yummy!)
- Strawberry Tarragon Jam (Story number 1)
- Strawberry Rhubarb Orange Jam (Story number 2)
- Raspberry Blueberry Jam
Strawberry Tarragon Jam – Story number 1.
I’ve made this a few times over the years and I am always twitchy about the amount of tarragon I put into it. Anyone who has ever cooked with tarragon has probably had a bad experience with tarragon. It’s a powerful herb. I grow it in the garden, but rarely use much of it, so it’s a good sized plant. I decided to add a bit more than I have before and damn, it was good jam. But it was a little thin and I didn’t want to keep it on the heat too long. I’ve had good luck with small batch jams in the microwave over the years…it dehydrates them pretty well without heating them in the same way the stovetop does. So at the end of the cooking I decided to give it a short turn in the microwave.
However!
I should have thought a little bit about how hot it was before I turned the timer to five minutes and went to do something else. Kirk was puttering around and I was getting things prepped for the next batch of jam and went to pop a lime in the microwave for 30 seconds to pump up the juiciness. I opened the microwave having basically lost track of the jam …. that was a red disaster inside the microwave!
I casually shut the door to the microwave and suggested Kirk go take a few things to the Salvation Army and shooed him out the door. Once he drove out, I opened the microwave and stared at the complete disaster inside. Two thirds of the jam was still in large 8 cup measuring bowl, but a pretty good amount of it was in the rotating plate, and a fair bit all around the base of that. I’d been smart enough to put a paper towel on top to catch any spatters if it boiled….one paper towel could not stand up to what I unleashed inside the microwave though. I jammed a cookie sheet under the microwave to catch the next mess I knew I’d be creating and pulled out the measuring bowl, then the microwave rotating plate. I poured all of that into a new bowl and used turkey baster to suck up the liquid jam caught in the depression below the microwave plate, and then thoroughly cleaned the inside of the appliance.
Once that was done I surveyed what was left of the jam and, to my amusement, it was basically the amount that I was trying to reduce it to…just not quite in the manner I’d ended up using. And I got it all cleaned up and into the canner before Kirk came back.
Strawberry Rhubarb Orange Jam – Story number 2.
I was prepping two jams, using two different cookbooks, at the same time. Raspberry Blueberry Jam, and Strawberry Rhubarb Jam. I wasn’t planning on the Strawberry Rhubarb Jam, but the rhubarb plant had a few good stalks left and I thought I’d use them up. One jam recipe included the zest and pulp of a large orange…the other did not. The one with the orange used powdered pectin. The other used liquid pectin. Both used almost identical amounts of sugar.
If you’ve made jam, you know that powdered pectin and liquid pectin are used differently, and added at different times.
You know what happened.
Well, I’ve been canning pretty much my entire life and if there is one thing I know, it’s that a jam that doesn’t set can be renamed as a sauce and used on pancakes, so it’s not like anything is really ever a disaster (except when you blow up your jam in the microwave), so I just winged it at that point. And it’s pretty darned tasty, though I don’t yet know if it will be jam or pancake sauce…time will tell.
Other than that, it was a relatively uneventful first day at the canner 😆
