JAMMIN! take two.

After such a disaster, could that girl ever scrounge up the courage to face jamming again??
"This is only a mom skill," she had mostly decided, when she thought she'd peruse the kiwis once more for a sale. Hey, if she backed out, they'd at least be shocking and lovely in a fruit salad. But alas, the sale had ended the day before - another sign from the heavens. As she browsed the produce, she realized that there was an acute disappointment in this resignation. Perhaps even annoyance. When 2 pints for $4 strawberries caught her eye, she lit up and bought them.
"One more try."
And boy was she glad she did. Astoundingly, the strawberries turned out wonderfully in jam. She chopped them all up and found a really cool recipe to follow, that doesn't use pectin.

She had heard that pectin was hard to work with, and if the job could be done without it, well it just seemed more natural. To substitute, she used lemon juice and a few higher pectin (unripe) strawberries, and mashed it all up.

The recipe called for cooking the above concoction for a bit.

Then it said straining out the pulp and cooking the juice and sugar to make syrup would be a good step. Interesting.

The syrup boiled up nice and big, making satisfactory pops.

"It looks good so far," she told herself, "but I must stir this time. It's crucial." So she put the pulp back in the mix and stirred and stirred and stirred. Consequently, she could not take any more pictures until the jarring was finished. But the success story is obvious:

and it was delicious.

JAMMIN! take one.

There's a story to be told, and it involves a girl who is addicted to mom-blogs.
One day, while casually catching up on her blog operas, this girl found a simple recipe for kiwi jam.
"How nice, I wish I lived in New Zealand near a giant over-bearing kiwi tree I could harvest for wonderful things like jam," she thought wistfully, with a smile. The only fruits that grew in the girl's hometown were lemons, limes, grapefruits and pomegranates, none of which seemed an easy fruit to jam with. So, she bided her time, storing the idea in the back of her mind for the day she had fruity trees of her own. At the grocery store not too long thereafter, she found a kiwi sale - perfect! She would try the kiwi jam recipe.
The fates would not have this skill come so easily, however. The recipe was not as simple as it seemed. She chopped the kiwis, thus finishing the most success she was to have.

She then put the kiwis with some OJ (for pectin) into the pot and got lots of juices out of them.

What came next was very tricksy - the addition of sugar. To stir? Not to stir? Sources were conflicting! The mixture boiled up and looked very good, so she decided to let it sit.

Let us note here that the girl later found that there was, in fact, nothing wrong with this recipe except that a novice could not use it. If stirring had happened at this point, the jam would have been perfect (and amazing!). Alas it was not in the cards, and sitting allowed the jam to burn. The burn was infectious, refusing to be quarantined in its small sector, browning up the whole pot. Soon the entire operation had a distinctly bad scent. Had it set? Well the freezer plate spot test told her it had, so into jars went the "jam". Unfortunately, what she had actually made was kiwi toffee - scarred, she pondered whether she would ever attempt homemade jam again. Perhaps this was an art for moms only.

Apple Zen

Ever since going apple-picking in Wilcox, Arizona, with my dad when I was younger, I've wanted to return and do it over and over again. The drive is only an hour and a half, and I love orchards - the smell, the spotty shade, the rows, the picker, the friendly dogs, the whole kahuna. So we went a couple weeks ago to Apple Annie's Orchard in Wilcox, and brought along our friend Hans.

It was great weather: big blue sky but not too hot.

We had a blast, picking Granny Smiths (for baking), Fijis, and Golden Delicious (they were supposed to be the best eating apples for the specific time). I took a lot of pictures, which are mostly over-lighted due to the painfully bright sun.

work, work, work for those apples!

The booty...

On the day we went, the farm was hoppin'! Here is the weigh station.

There were samples galore, which I had no problems with, there were apple burgers we didn't actually indulge in, there were people passing around homemade apple ice-cream even (sooooo good!). Hans bought some jars of home-made apple butter. I intended to make some myself, but the apples went bad before I had the time - I'd forgotten that they wax store bought apples for preservation, in part.

Goofy Hans and the American Gothic.

Alas, we made two wonderful batches of Apple Crisp, and I was pleased to gobble that up with some vanilla ice-cream :D