Making Jam
Saturday September 10, 2005
As I was listening to Holosync it shut off in the middle. The batteries were down so I stopped, replaced them with the ready to go recharged ones, and started over. Somehow I ended up not getting going after that. After email and LJ reading, browsing a few websites and having lunch we got ready to actually make the jam. The Pomona Universal Pectin is rather interesting. In the interests of people making their own recipes it includes how many teaspoons of pectin and how many teaspoons of calcium water, which is the pectin activator for this type, one needs per cup of fruit juice or lb of fruit. It also has a list of what to do if it doesn’t jell, jells too much, isn’t sweet enough, etc. such as heat to boiling and had another tsp of pectin or heat to boiling and had another 1/2 cup of juice, or heat to boiling and add more honey or sugar. It seems like a very forgiving product. They also include a few of the usual recipes and one that sounded quite interesting which was apple cider jelly so I may make a batch of that later. Next week I am going to try the pineapple honey recipe that I have.
It only took us about 40 minutes to make from the point of having the juice
ready to heat. Tom helped with washing jars and getting them one by one as
I was ready to fill them, cleaning off the top of the jar, and putting the
lids on. I wore my braces and put rubber gloves over them. Even so the 1-2
minutes of vigorous stirring to mix in the pectin and get it properly dissolved
hurt. Now I just have to wait a couple of days to see if there is any increase
in the problem with my hands or not (since it developed over a month progressively
in the first place it may be hard to tell unless there is a significant worsening).
If not then I am ready to try the pineapple jam late next week. Of course,
we have to go out to the barn to find the jars, probably buy more lids, and
see whether enough of the bands have survived to do another batch. We ended
up recycling about half or more of the bands I pulled out of the cabinet looking
for ones that were in good enough condition for this recipe. The others were
too rusty though they don’t really do anything but prevent the lids
from being knocked. The seal is really complete once the lids have been sucked
down by the developing vacuum of the cooling air.
Copyright © 2005 Kyril Oakwind