I always give away most of what I make. I'm diabetic and don't eat much jam or jelly any more. When the boys were home we ate most of it ourselves. I guess why that's why the neighbors line up when I make jam, now. dooley
I bet they have a "dooley's making jam" alarm system in your neighbourhood, and that they take turns to watch your tree. Or I might have a lively imagination.
I give jars of jam away all the time, blueberry, tyttebær, cloudberry, rhubarb, all from the land. Cheesecloth,,,no, no, no,,,,the chunkier the better! Gives you something to bite into and actually taste, i say.
Absolutely. It just doesn't make sense to me to cook hot jam on a hot summer day, so I freeze all my jam fruit and cook it up around Christmas time. It's just a treat to pull out summer fruit in the winter, and of course the cooking smells are awesome. It heats my home to be doing long, slow cooking processes which saves on energy. The cooling period is much shorter so if some of your jars need to be redone, you don't have to wait forever to figure out which ones! And, finally if you have all your fruit in one place you aren't limited to one flavor, you can come up with some yummy combinations!
I been reading back thru these post. To see if anyone done rhubarb jam or jelly. I think I would like to try Rhubarb, it seems it would be really sweet. If anyone has any easy good recipes please let me know, as I have never jammed before.
hi petunia! i'm new here today and i just read through all the posts here. so glad you mentioned rhubarb! i made a big batch (for the first time) of Rhubarb-Strawberry Jam when our strawberries were coming on, and it turned out YUMO! here's the recipe... i also agree with you all on the 'chunkie' fruit jams, and on the gift ideas! i gave away plum jam last year and it was a big hit! i'm going to try blackberry jam too this year. they're almost ready for picking...and our three year old peach tree finally produced this year and are almost ripe...and thanks for the freezing-the-fruit first idea! one other thing, we just found a solar oven on sale, and i'm reading some interesting stuff about canning fruit, jams, anything with fruit in it! i baked bread in it the other day and it was soooo good. the crust was a bit tough, but a couple spoonfuls of our rhubarb-strawberry jam and it was good to go!
