It started with peeling peaches. If you haven't had the joy of trying that...do it lol. I tried blanching them. 30 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 30 seconds....all the way to 2 1/2 minutes and the skins still wouldn't slide off like the directions said. Once blanched they are impossible to peel with a potato peeler. We muddled through that, 20 lbs of blanched peaches, then graduated to the peeler.
Skipping all the mundane steps we get to the jams.
The night before I had made pineapple coconut jam. It was truly glorious. A taste of paradise. I'm in heaven.
It involved a whole pineapple peeled and cored then pureed in a blender.
While that pureed I cracked the coconut, saving the water. I dug out all the delicious meat(the white part) trying not to get any of the brown skin. Once that was freed from it's shell I pureed it, or attempted to. Turns out coconut doesn't puree real well, it chops to a gritty fine mess. I took that gritty fine mess and poured it into cheese cloth over a bowl...and proceeded to squeeze as much of the milk out as possible. I saved the water and the milk. Blended the coconut and pineapple together, added the water and milk as needed to make it smooth. After that it all got dumped in a pan, sugar dumped in(I didn't keep track, it was about 1 cup less sugar than puree mess). Brought to a boil, pectin added, boiled for another minute then dumped in hot jars. Lids on and into the bath blah blah blah ;) . Afterwards I had 6 jars of amazing jam. The flavor is to die for.
But lets get back on track to the peaches.
Only a couple little glitches amazingly. The first being peeling the peaches. Muddled through, no problem.
from that we got peach jam, mango pineapple peach jam, and strawberry jam.
From there we moved on to canning fruit.
Peaches first off... they float. bad. I packed those jars tight. I crammed in as many peach slices as I could...and they still float. I'm confident in the processing though so they will be safe to eat. I added a little citric acid to keep the fruit from browning if it floated above the syrup.
Speaking of syrup...I tried first a light syrup, got the first floaters. Googled that crap and saw that a heavy syrup might help floaters. I made heavy syrup. Got more floaters. Googled more and decided not to fuss over it since everything I read said it's ok. So we got floaters.
Next was strawberries. I had some extras from the jam so what the hell, why not, lets throw some strawberries and syrup into a half pint jar, well, 4 jars.
That left about 5 lbs of grapes. I was so not about to peel those little bastards, so they didn't get used in jam. But...it is possible to can them. So why not. I had the jars. I have kids that will eat them. I had lots of grapes.
Made more syrup, dumped them in jars.
Then the processing fun begins.
I got a 23 qt pressure cooker/canner. I love it.
I put the quarts of peaches in. I put the second rack on top. On that went the grapes and strawberries. lid on and back to a boil before starting the timer for processing.
Processed 20 minutes in a boiling water bath. opened up the canner...to find pink water.
Steam clears out and I start taking jars out to discover 2 of the strawberries had boiled over and leaked because I apparently didn't leave enough head space. No biggie, set those aside to fridge and eat now.
Finished up the peaches. Started taking jars out to discover just what that loud pop was that I heard. I had major floaters...in the canner. Peach slices everywhere. Apparently when you accidentally put two lids in one ring it pops off leaving you a big mess to clean up.
So there is the most recent adventures in canning and jamming.
It was a blast.
