put up or shut up
My stomach hurts and my mouth is sticky: evidence of another afternoon and evening spent making jam. Today I was successful with apple-cranberry jam and not entirely so with apple butter. It's still not quite buttery enough, even after nine hours in the slow cooker; we'll see what happens after some more cooking tomorrow.
I also re-cooked some peach jam that I made a couple months ago, because it was actually more like peach sauce, rather than anything that you would want to put on bread. So cooked down some more, with more liquid pectin. This jam stuff is more an art than a science hear at the squibix home, and I'm afraid I'm still drawing with crayons.
However, at least we're managing to put up some reasonable quantities of preserves. To date we have the equivalent of five gallons of jam, relish, and pickles, not counting the stuff in the freezer (which wouldn't stay good following a power loss due to nuclear war or global economic meltdown). Most of that is shown in that picture up at the top of this post. Not that we're planning to eat it all ourselves, of course. If you're on our Christmas list, look forward to delicious local, home-canned produce! Place your orders today.