Learning to can and eat

  In the last post I talked about learning to make and can plum jam.  I enjoyed it so much we now have 40 jars of jam sitting in our pantry.  Spiced plum jam, ginger plum jam, nectarine plum jam, and raspberry plum jam are all sitting there waiting to be enjoyed.

  On the bottom shelf is also some ketchup that Matt made with our tomatoes. It is way better than regular store bought ketchup but I may be biased because I don't actually like ketchup.  So our little panty is getting some use.  Next up, pumpkin and apple butter.  And if I can get my hands on some persimmons or quince then we will have even more jam.

  One really nice thing about having the garden is the ability to walk outside, grab some stuff, and make dinner.  The above photo is a frozen cheese pizza made amazing buy our onions, tomatoes and basil. Super fast and tasted great. So even if you don't have time to slave over a hot stove you can still enjoy your garden's bounty.

  Not much else has been going on recently. The weekends are our home improvement time but since we have had people visiting or canning to do the last month or so not much has gotten done. We still haven't finished the closet that you may remember from an earlier post. But I have been sure to pin every idea I see on pinterest so you can be sure there will be lots of stuff to be done around the house. Stay tuned!

Plum Jam

    We are very lucky to have four plum trees growing along our back fence. They are pretty, provide shade and privacy and are abundant with plums.  The actual fruit however is not the tasty, juicy type sold in stores. I think they are what prunes are made of. Not to say you can't eat these plums, they just aren't wonderful. So what do you do with a backyard filled with plums? Make them into jam, right?

    This is what I started with.  It is about a third of what is on the trees right now but of course not everything is ripe all at once.  Some of these plums are super ripe, others are still a little hard and the rest are somewhere in between. But when you chop them all up and boil them with sugar it will all even out.

    I ended up with about 5.5lbs of chopped plums.  The recipe I found on youtube only called for 4lbs before everything was chopped up but I am really bad at estimating how much things weigh.  So I did two batches because my pot was not big enough.  I used less sugar than the recipe said and added cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cardamon to give it a little more flavor.

    Here is the mixture boiling away happily on the stove while the jars it is about to go into are being sanitized in a pot of water next to it. It smelled soooooo good.  Leave out the pectin and you could just heap it onto ice cream and be happy.

    Here I proudly display my newly found domesticity in my green pantry from a previous post. I ended up with 12 jars.  The recipe said the jam would last a year.  Guess I get one jar a month until next plum season.  If you have some plums and want to try canning just go here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFIPGpiS9bM. Next weekend I think I am going to try tomato sauce.