canning joy

I tried my hand at canning for the first time this year. I started with a basic strawberry jam, and it turned out very well!! We sampled the first jar yesterday, and oh YUMMY! It's amazing how much fresher it tasted than store-bought jam. It just has four ingredients: strawberries, lemon juice, fruit pectin, and sugar. Simple and tasty!

The process itself demands a lot of focus from start to finish, which meant doing it when Jim was home to keep the boy occupied. But other than a slight incident involving fruit and sugar boiling over and onto my stove top, it went smoothly, and I now have lots of yummy jars of jam to share with family and friends.



My mom and dad are coming down Wednesday to stay for a week, and my mom and I are going to make some Plum jam together while she's here. After that, I may also make my dad's salsa recipe, and maybe also his cinnamon applesauce. Yum :D