Great morning

Thanks to Twins Ace Hardware for hosting the Canning Seminar this morning and to the wonderful, large, friendly, curious group who came. I loved teaching, really enjoyed meeting you all and the strawberry rhubarb pie jam was a hell of a delicious batch. And, to all attendees, every jar "pinged"- perfect seals on each and every one.

Now I'm off to make a batch of cookies and start in on the 20 pounds of beef short ribs I just bought. Yee-haw!

Jam

Five half-pints of strawberry-rhubarb pie jam are cooling and setting, and with the little extra in the pot, I made this lovely snack before heading off to J's school.

In canning, there are several ways to tell if your jam has reached the set point or will come to a good set. Temperature is definitely a helpful indicator of doneness as you want most jams to reach and remain at 220° F before filling and processing the jars. You can also run the plates in the freezer test (my least favorite for a number of reasons) and/or the how is it sheeting off the back of my wooden spoon test (a good one!). Experienced canners can also tell when the sound of a spoon run through the hot jam changes to one that alerts you that success is near.

Even with those tests though, some fret that their jam is still too loose: will it ever firm up? This picture of my leftover jam in the pot (the rest was processing in the water bath) shows that this jam will assuredly reach a terrific point of jamminess. Do you see how the jam isn't filling in the open areas? It's just sitting there, the sugars nicely crystalline, the pectin chains all back together again.

Summer strawberries?

Ol had a school holiday today, so we've been busy. Read: I am now pooped, and we've been down a man since Jack stays for chess on Wednesdays. Yo! The party is just about to get started. At some point this morning, we headed to the market (I don't live there despite how it must sound) and were thrilled to run into what look to be actual farm strawberries; fresh, local, just-picked. I'm sure some of that description is a romanticization, but you know how agri-companies' (Driscoll's, etc) berries are giant, uniform, lacking in scent, too white near the stem, and have no flavor? Well, these don't look, smell or taste like that. Also, local berries means enough warmth has finally trickled into our area to ripen these babies to maturity. Yippee!

I can't wait to get going on these and am thinking strawberry-rhubarb pie jam!