Strawberry-blueberry jam in minutes!

A few weeks ago I explored making and canning orange marmalade. This week I decided to use my surplus strawberries to make fresh jam. While I don't eat alot of jam or preserves, I figured a small batch would be worthwhile and used by end of year. And, if I didn't eat it as jam, I knew it could come in handy when making a quick dessert topping (i.e. drizzled over ice-cream or poured over a slice of cheesecake).

When I made the marmalade, I bought these adorable Ball 8oz Platinum Jar. Yes, I find small jars to be adorable :-) They are very modern looking and perfect for gift-giving, which is exactly what I did with many jars of marmalade. I complained at the time how I couldn't find the same style of jar in a larger pint-size version. Well, the good folks at Ball came to my rescue and sent me sample set of pint jars, as well as a few other goodies.

Once again (as I do so often) I've got to reflect on my farm upbringing to put this in context - my mother canned and preserved the majority of food we ate. During the year we ate canned green beans, green peas, pickled beets, dill pickles, sweet pickles, numerous jams, and other wonderful goods. We honestly lived off the land and it was our Ball canning products that made it possible.

My mother swore by Ball jars and with her 30+ years of experience I tend to go with her opinion on this. So, it was nice that Ball reached out to me with such a generous set of samples with which I could carry on my family's food preservation heritage. Granted, they didn't know my backstory at the time, but I appreciated it.

So, recently I made jam and am behind in talking about my experience. It turned out delicious so I want to share my creation with you and tell you about the products I used. I received the following samples and put them to good use:

Ball Blue Book of Preserving
Ball Plastic Freezer Jars
Ball Simple Creations No Cook Freezer Jam Pectin

The book is a complete resources for all of the canning and food preservation do's and don'ts. It's 124 pages packed with equipment guidelines, step-by-step instructions, and plenty of recipe ideas. It's the perfect starter book (actually, it's more of a magazine format) for beginner's and good reference for everyone else.

I have never made freezer jam before but my mother does it every year. There are a few jars of raspberry jam in my freezer as I write this. I read the no-cook freezer jam package and was surprised at just how easy it is. You take 4 cups of fresh chopped fruit and mix with sugar and the pectin. Stir for a few minutes and let it set for 30 minutes. Then, package and freeze.



Although I had plenty of strawberries, I wanted to mix it up and used one cup of wild blueberries. The proportion of blueberries to strawberries was perfect. The recipe made about 5 8oz. jars ... and we only have 2 jars left. Hmmmm, so much for stocking up on jam! It's really quite good, very fresh tasting and satisfying.

I packaged the jam in the new 8 oz. freezer jars. My mother uses a variety plastic containers but this product is pretty slick. The jars are sturdy and have a no-spill plastic cap to seal in freshness. The jars also are stackable which helps with freezer storage. The jars lock into one another, so they don't tumble over easily.



The good news is that my jam jars will soon be empty and ready to be reloaded. I've used the jam over the strawberry ice-cream I made recently ... absolutely magical. And, from the photo above you'll see I've used it as a fruit dip with a big, juicy Asian pear.

Once my jars are empty, I'll try something new. Someone gave me a jar of cinnamon plum jam one year and it was incredible. I'm hoping to replicate it at some point, so maybe it will happen soon.

For more information on Ball products, supplies, and resource information please visit the Ball website.

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Raw pack oranges: more sunshine in a jar

This picture represents my 'orange' journey. So far, you've seen candied orange peel (in the middle pint) and orange marmalade (the squat half-pint). Last night, I explored raw packing the oranges which is represented in the front jar, peeled oranges in a light syrup. The empty canning jar in the picture signifies there may be more to come :-)

Writing this reminded me of the 70's -- my father had a CB radio in our truck and we played with it on road trips to listen to truckers. Each member of our family had a 'handle', a nickname used on the CB. My nickname was lovingly 'half-pint', as I am the youngest of two boys (and somewhat 'squat').

Well, yesterday half-pint marched his butt (and aching back) to the hardware store to buy more canning supplies. I reached the aisle and noticed two older and somewhat rough-and-tumble looking men standing smack dab in front of the canning supplies. It looked like they weren't going to move, so I politely nudged myself up to the shelves.

One of them looked at me and asked what I was going to do with the jars, "are you gonna do the thing with the gas?". I innocently replied, "oh no, I'm going to make marmalade." As soon as the words left my lips, I knew I had said the wrong thing. It was as though I had ordered a Shirley Temple at a biker bar. He scoffed, gave me a sneer, and they both walked away mumbling something to each other. I was left wondering what they planned to do with the jars and how it involved 'gas'. Clearly, they were not marmalade lovers.

Unfortunately, I mustn't be the only canner in our area or maybe my post the other day let people know where to find the cute little Ball Elite Platinum jars, because they no longer in stock. They did have 1 pack of the small 8oz. jars, but I wanted to try the 16oz. jars (which they did have the other day). I settled for the standard issue pints and left before the big burly men returned with more questions.

Once again, I used the UC Davis publication on how to preserve oranges (PDF) and followed the instructions for raw packing. I forgot to count how many oranges I used, somewhere around a dozen or so. You simply peel and remove the white pith/seeds. You can use water or varying strengths of a simple syrup and I opted to use a 15% solution to ensure everything came out of the jar sweet.



They look beautiful -- I've never had oranges prepared this way and am curious how they will taste once opened. I will likely sacrifice one jar this week to find out.

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Orange marmalade: sunshine in a jar ...

This is my first successful batch of orange marmalade utilizing the oranges from our backyard. I tried using a recipe from Tyler Florence once upon a time and it failed miserably. Finally, success!

The recipe makes 6 half-pint jars, however I ended up with 7 plus a little extra that I put in the fridge. I'm actually not a huge fan of marmalade, but this is pretty tasty -- sweet, bursting with fresh orange flavor, and not bitter at all.


Growing up we canned everything from the garden -- green beans, tomatoes, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, salsa, chili sauce, pickled beets, concord grape juice, raspberry jam, strawberry jam, peaches ... the list goes on. In today's world, canning just doesn't make sense and a trip to the grocery store is more convenient. I miss that connection to the creation and preservation of food. Ahh well, I'm blabbing on. I'll keep my philosophy to myself for now (or spill it out in a cookbook someday!) :-).

Back to the marmalade. Disappointed that Tyler did me wrong last time, I searched around again this year for a new marmalade recipe. I came across a PDF file from the University of California @ Davis which provides detailed guidelines for how to preserve oranges (PDF). It's an amazing document. I also want to try raw packing the oranges for canning, but that's for another day.

The recipe and canning instructions are contained within the file I referenced so I won't repeat them here. The process took me about 1 to 1.5 hours to complete which isn't too bad. The key is prep everything and have it ready to go, since the last 30 minutes is when all the action happens.

I used a combination of navel oranges and meyer lemons. I didn't want to end up with a bitter mess, so I took time to remove as much pith as possible from both the peels and flesh. For the peels, I used a teaspoon and ran it on the inside of each peel and the pith came right out. I should note that my oranges were fresh picked and they seem to be more tender and easy to work with than store bought (which have likely been sitting around awhile).

The cooking process is simple and if you set a timer, all will go well. You cook the peels for 20 minutes, then add the cut up flesh and cook another 10 minutes. You measure out 4 cups and add the pectin, followed by the sugar. If all goes well, you end up with a big pot or dark orange gunk. Here is a pic of the pot just after I removed it from the stove and prepared to place it into the jars. It'll be fairly runny at this point, but don't worry. It will thicken as it sets.


I mentioned the other day that we're having dinner on Saturday with a couple friends. The marmalade is one of the door prizes (and also my attempt and using our citrus before it falls off the tree). On Friday, I'm going to make small orange cakes to send home with them too. Unless I get another burst of energy, the gift baskets will include fresh oranges/lemons, a small orange cake, a jar of marmalade, and a bag of citrus peel candy. Fingers crossed that my friend's like oranges :-)

Regardless, I fell in love with the little half-pint jars. They're so squatty, aren't they kinda cool?



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