Jammin' 'til the jam is through

Oh yeah! We be jammin' alright. Cherry jam and raspberry jelly so far this week, and apricot and peach are up next. My organic fruit man at the Farmer's Market says that he can get me a sweet deal on a case of #2 apricots for jamming and canning - $24 for 24 pounds. That's going to be a lot of 'cots!

I've had a little help with my preserving efforts. Here we have Scarlet working the Cherry Chomper -



Which resulted in -


12 Pints of Skeena Cherry Goodness

Factoring in the price paid for the cherries (organic), sugar (also organic) and pectin, my cost per 1/2 pint jar ends up being somewhere around $2.58. Not bad, but I could have done better if I had taken the time to go to Costco for 10 lb bag of organic sugar instead of using a bunch of 2 lb bags from my neighborhood grocery store. (I should also mention that, with both the raspberries and cherries, we ate some of the fruit plain, which, if I could subtract that from the cost of the ingredients, would lower my price-per-jar a bit.)

The raspberry jelly was my first attempt at a jelly, having always made jams previous to this. The price per half pint on it came out a bit higher, at $2.72 per half pint.



It gelled very well and came out only slightly cloudy, because I apparently squeezed the berries too much, according to the pectin package. Um, how does one juice a berry without squeezing it in some way or another?

Anyway, slightly cloudy or not, we now have a total of 30 half-pints of preserves put up so far this year. Brace yourselves, people. By fall's end I'll be giving this stuff away left and right.