I had my first canning experience last night. Last week we were in Southern Idaho visiting C's grandma, and while there we picked probably 10 lbs of plums and a full large box of corn. C blanched, cut-off, and froze 12 cups of corn, and we still have probably a dozen ears left...
Then last night I finally got around to making jam. Plum Ginger Lemon jam. Sounds delicious, right? I followed directions, but I doubled the recipe, which I read later isn't a good idea. We boiled the jam a long long time and it would not get over 215 degrees (it's supposed to hit 220), so we finally just filled the jars with half the jam mixture, boiled them and put them aside. We added pectin to the remaining jam, to try to compensate for the low temperature.
This morning we have half plum ginger syrup and half of what may turn out to be jam. Damn.
Regardless of the success (or not), the experience has made me recommit to the idea of buying seasonally. C and I agreed last night to primarily do our shopping on Sundays at the Farmers Market. We also committed to a lower food budget so we'll see if those two things can go hand in hand.
Either way I'm excited to try it out. And I'm hoping to try jam again in the near future. What a bummer to have so much syrup from SO many plums.
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