No Jam This Time
Well… I take that back. Ok, so we did make some no-sugar-added blueberry jam this weekend to complete our jammin’ adventure with 24 jars! 10 jars of peach, 7 jars of grape, and 7 jars of blueberry. That means plenty to send off to family and friends as gifts this season and plenty leftover for me to pair with peanut butter for lunch.
It’s getting chilly out and I can smell Fall again. This normally wouldn’t be so extraordinary except I’ve lived without a true Fall for the past three years. I had almost forgotten my favorite season; Calgary’s summers usually crash landed right into Winter, and I realized this past week that I really missed the season of cooler sweatshirt-and-long-sleeved weather with beautifully changing golden and red leaves everywhere. That little nip in the air along with a fresh hockey and football season has brought back one of my favorite things about Fall; cuddling on the couch watching [insert hockey or football game here] while I knit. I recently have had a lot of Cthulhu Toque orders crop up, and I realized that it’s probably due to the cooler weather rolling in. It’s about time to start thinking about toques and scarves and all of that gets me energized to pull out the yarn and needles (or hooks) and get to work.
Speaking of my Cthulhu Toques, I’ve got plans in the making for a toddler sized (due mostly to the several requests I’ve received) version as well as a few other little surprises. I just hope I can find enough time in the day to make and do all of the little creative plans I’ve got in mind AND get a head start on my Christmas gift knitting. Stay tuned!
Have you noticed the cooler air? Don’t you think your head would be a heckuva lot warmer if you were being snuggled by the tentacles of the mighty Cthulhu?! Of course you do. Be sure to check out my Etsy shop and get your awesome Cthulhu Toque before the weather gets too cold! Are you a crocheter? You can also just purchase the pattern…
Rawr!
We Be Jammin' (Again)
Take Two! I have a few days off this week so today Lucas and I used this gloriously dreary day (outside) to spend the afternoon inside canning. (AKA finish Christmas presents.)
This go around we decided to try making a peach jam. A few weeks back when we made concord grape jam we used fresh grapes from my grandma’s garden. Since we didn’t know anyone who had fresh peaches in the area, we just picked up some *gasp* frozen unsweetened 100% peaches at the grocery store. Yes, we’re lame I guess, but we were itching to can more jam and the produce section wasn’t looking too… healthy today.
Once again we used the SUREJELL brand of low sugar/no sugar pectin and combined the recipes and tips we found on various websites online to come up with what we thought would make the best peach jam. We used four pounds of frozen peaches, which we thawed completely, and 2 cups of white grape peach juice for sweetener instead of sugar. After a little help from the food processor and some hand blender thing we found in my mom’s cabinet, we threw all of the peach goop and juice onto the stove to boil. Once we got a rolling boil going, we added in the pectin and 1/4 cup of Splenda. That really was it. So far so good and all 10 jars we managed to get from it sealed properly. Now we’ve got 17 jars of fresh jam between the grape and peach to give away as part of our Christmas gift packages we’re doing for family and friends this year. Awesome!
Also today I finished yet another knitted object for my upcoming nephew — can you believe that he’s due at the end of this month?! In true fall style I whipped up a pumpkin toque and figure that even if he’s born after Halloween that the pumpkin would be an appropriate icon for the in-between Halloween and Thanksgiving period. I hear my brother and sister-in-law aren’t big fans of hats that look like vegetables, fruits, or flowers… too bad for them, eh? Since baby William isn’t here yet, I used (big surprise) Oliver and Winston as models. I think the toque turned out pretty darn cute, don’t you?
We Be Jammin'
canning concord grape jam
Finally, an update! A few weeks ago, my grandma convinced Lucas and I that we needed to try canning. Her grapes ripened well and yesterday afternoon we went over and took a nice hefty load of concords off her hands. She ensured us that it would be easy, and after a little pre-canning prep reading online, the whole process really was easy. And dare I say… fun? Looks like we’ll be gifting some jam this holiday season.
With a diabetic father and sister-in-law, a lot of us in the family watch our sugar intake. My grandma makes jam complete with sugar, but I was determined to make some lower sugar jam so that more of the family could enjoy it. I picked up some SUREJELL brand for Less or No Sugar Needed recipes pectin at Meijer and started looking around for a good recipe. Most recipes required a lot of sugar, and I found out quickly that low or no sugar recipes require some changes to the basic jam recipe. After all of my research on which recipe to use, I felt pretty confident with what we put together; a combination of several low sugar jam recipes to align with the instructions that came with the pectin. Here’s what we came up with:
Lucas and Lesley’s Low Sugar Concord Grape Jam Recipe
Ingredients
7 cups prepared fruit (buy about 5 lb. fully ripe Concord grapes)
1 cup no sugar added white grape juice
1/4 cup Splenda
1 box SUREJELL For Less or No Sugar Needed Recipes Premium Fruit Pectin
8-12 (8 oz.) canning jars with accompanying 2-piece lids*
*note: if re-using jars from previous canning sessions, it’s recommended to always buy brand new lids. (Just the flat lid part only, not the screw bands.) You can easily purchase these separately at most grocery stores or other big box stores like Meijer or Wal-Mart.
slipping the skins
Directions
Throw your jars and 2-part lids into the dishwasher to wash them thoroughly. Be sure to turn on a sani-dry or drying process to the cycle; this ensures the jars are nice and hot and dry at the end, which is suitable for hot jam. The jars need to be hot when you pour the hot jam into them so that they don’t break from the temperature difference. Using your dishwasher (if you have one) eliminates the need for hot water to keep the jars warm in while you prepare the jam. Alternately you can wash the jars and lids by hand with soap and water and then keep them in warm (not boiling) water until you’re ready to fill them. While you should keep the jars and flat lids warm until use, keep the screw bands separate and cool to make closing up your hot jars later a little easier. You don’t want the water to boil because boiling the flat lid before using it to create a seal may warp them and not allow them to seal properly later.
separating the seeds
Slip the skins from the grapes, separating the pulp from the skins. Toss the skins into a food processor and blend; set aside. Combine grape pulp and white grape juice in a saucepan and bring to boil; cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Toss the cooked pulp through a Foley press or run through a sieve to remove the seeds. Now combine the skins and pulp in a big bowl; this is considered “prepared fruit.” Measure exactly 7 cups of prepared fruit into a large 8 quart saucepot and put it back on the heat.
Mix the 1/4 cup of Splenda and pectin in a small bowl. Add it to the fruit in saucepot; stir to mix well. OPTIONALLY you can add 1/2 tsp. of butter to reduce foaming, if you have any foaming. Bring the fruit to a full rolling boil on high heat and boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and skim off any foam if necessary.
processing our jam
The dishwasher cycle should be complete; pull the hot, dry jars from the dishwasher and place on a towel on the counter. Ladle the fruit into the prepared jars, filling to within 1/4 inch of the top. Wipe the jar rims and threads. Cover the jars with the two-piece lids and screw bands tightly. Place the jars on an elevated rack in a giant pot of water on the stove, or in a canner. If you don’t have a rack or canner, you can use extra screw bands or metal cookie cutters and tie them together and use them on the bottom of the pot to elevate your jars. Submerge the jars; the water in the pot must cover the jars by 1 to 2 inches. Add more boiling water if necessary. Cover; bring water to a gentle boil. Let the jars process for 10 minutes in the gently boiling water. Using tongs, remove the jars and place them upright on a towel to cool completely. After the jars cool, check the seals by pressing the middles of the lids with your finger. If the lids spring back, they did not seal properly and you can try again. If you don’t want to try and re-seal, the jam is still perfectly useable, but refrigeration will be required and it won’t have the same shelf life as your properly sealed jars.
Ball brand No Sugar Needed fruit pectin
About the Sugar
This method only adds around 4 grams of sugar (from the low sugar juice) per jar of jam you make, so it makes ridiculously low sugar grape jam that tastes deliciously fresh, allowing the natural sugars of the grapes to provide all of the flavor. Alternately you can use 1 cup of water in place of the 1 cup of grape juice to eliminate all added sugar, but the juice gives just a hint of sweetness to keep the grapes from being a bit tart without pouring on cup after cup of granulated sugar. The 1/4 cup of Splenda added in with the pectin is negligible and can be omitted completely if you’d prefer.
And there you have it! After the jars cooled and we had checked the seals and found them to be satisfactory, we just let the jars of jam sit, undisturbed, for 12-24 hours. I plan to knit doilies to adorn the jar lids and make pretty little tags for them before we gift them this holiday season. Enjoy, and good luck making jam!