All Jammed Up

 On and off, I have engaged in food preservation efforts.  I am a whiz at freezing but though I have helped others to do some canning and (of course!) read about it all the time, I've never canned on my own.  T is equally interested and about as experienced so….you see where this is headed, I hope.

This weekend, T and I decided to put all that book learning to work.  We canned 10 pints of strawberry jam and then, because we still had some strawberries, we made 6 pints of freezer jam.  We used a very simple recipe from Pioneer Woman, but the real help came from Ball Canning's amazing website.  The stove hasn't had this many burners lit since Thanksgiving.

The jam smelled amazing while it was bubbling on the stove.

All 10 pints fit nicely into the giant canning bath pot.

And here's the finished jam, jars properly sealed, and stacked up to fulfill my Laura Ingalls fantasies.

The jars came with labels and we slapped on a few of those. 

There's volumes more of these to be found at etsy, I see.  I think that we all know what that means.

On Sunday morning, T and I awakened to discover that we both dreamt about canning the night before.  We're hooked, I suspect.  There's more jam on the horizon and we're thinking of trying our hand at pickles, zucchini relish, and dilled green beans.   It's a very good thing there is a root cellar in the basement of Sassafras House.