Today I’m welcoming my friend, Ariel, to the blog. Ariel is a mom to now 1 year old AJ, a sweet boy who is as active as he is adorable.
A few weeks ago, she sent me this hilarious tale of her first attempt at jam-making, and I thought it was too good not to share with all of you. Enjoy!
How to feel like a true woman
Women do not usually have to fight oozing, sugary volcanos as a rite of passage into womanhood. But when I came up against a spewing pot of boiling jam mix, I knew fighting that mess was the feat I must accomplish to feel like a true woman.
The idea that jam-making would prove my womanhood was influenced by my upbringing. I was homeschooled but not in the “prairie dress-sewing, make-your-own-food” kind of way that everyone imagines when I say I was homeschooled. I focused entirely on academics.
Eventually, I started to feel a little jipped that I was neither a regular school kid nor the crafty homeschooler everyone expected me to be. I doubt many homeschooled kids purposefully aspire to be one of the homeschoolers considered to be dorky or odd, but somehow I managed to be jealous of those non-mainstreamers. After all, if I was going to be labeled as one of them, it would be nice to actually have the ability to do the interesting things they could do.
When I would go to the county fair and see all the crafts and canned foods, I’d think, Those are entered by the real homeschoolers. I told myself that one day I too would enter something into the fair, redeeming the do-it-yourself part of the homeschool lifestyle I had missed.
Fitting in with the natural-childbirthers
After starting a family of my own, my desire to become a do-it-yourself homemaker grew. I wanted to identify with all the savvy women of grit before me. I quickly threw out the idea of identifying with them through enduring natural childbirth, so making food from scratch seemed like the best option.
When my friend asked me if I wanted to pick strawberries and make jam this past spring, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to fulfill my dream of becoming a truly homespun woman who could enter her handiwork into the fair.
Ain’t no stopping us now!
Unfortunately, an adequate amount of research and preparation did not go along with my enthusiasm, and when the day arrived, the person we had hoped would guide us in our jam-making experience couldn’t join us. But we were determined to proceed with our jam-making plans. Ignorance wouldn’t stop us!
I owned a copy of the Ball Blue Book on canning published in 1974. I’d found it in an old family farmhouse a year or two earlier, and today was the day it would work its magic. I pulled it out and read it over briefly. The book confused me, but confusion, along with ignorance, was still not enough to stop me. My jam-making would succeed today or crash and burn… literally.
In this spirit, I packed up my ten-month-old and drove to the strawberry patch to meet my friend.
What on earth is pectin?
Picking strawberries went fairly well, though I’m sure any seasoned picker would have shaken her head as we hopped from plant to plant, forgetting any kind of systematic picking and taking lots of breaks to eat and take photos. I tried to stop my son from eating the strawberries out of the basket, but moms know that babies have more persistence than their mothers, so I soon gave up.
Finally, as we were getting ready to leave, I mentioned to my friend that I’d read something about needing pectin. We discussed what pectin could be and why we might need it. I decided to ask the woman weighing our strawberries if we needed pectin to make jam.
With what seemed like judgement and pity, she informed us that we would need pectin to make the jam gel. We grabbed a few more cartons of pre-picked strawberries (because we didn’t pick nearly enough to make jam) and hurried away with only a small amount of shame at our ignorance and poor picking skills.
My friend went to the store to grab pectin while I went home to give my strawberry and dirt-covered son a bath. She called a few times and went to a couple different stores because, well, we didn’t really know what pectin looked like. Finally, she found some and arrived at my house to make jam, but by late afternoon, we were still reading and watching videos about how to begin.
Jar trouble
During our research, we discovered that you cannot reuse jar lids, so my friend’s used jars with their lids were now obsolete (unless we wanted to go to the store and buy fresh lids, which would have delayed the process even more). We would share my newly purchased mason jars and lids.
We also discovered that canners recommend you use a water bath canner. We assembled a group of miscellaneous pots and hoped for the best.
Due to limited space and equipment, my friend started on her batch while I waited. I tried to work on mashing berries, but my son was very intent on clinging to my legs the whole time, and it isn’t easy to mash berries and hold your pants up at the same time, so I gave up until later.
At long last, my son was in bed for the night, and it was my turn to boil my berries. I was exhausted after a very full day and the kitchen was already a stained mess, but all I had to do was make it to the finish line.
A violent boil
Our husbands were home watching TV, and I’d like to blame what happened next on them being distracting, but it was mostly my inexperience with the stove. The directions said to bring your mixture to a “violent boil.” And that is exactly what I did. In fact, it was so violent that sugary strawberry goo began rapidly spewing out of my pot, immediately charring on the glass cooktop.
The first level of our house filled with smoke, triggering the fire alarms while the goo continued to bubble over. My husband rushed over and grabbed the pot off the stove, telling me I had to take it off the heat immediately and couldn’t just lower the temperature to get it to stop bubbling over.
My friend’s husband started yelling fake exclamations of alarm to purposefully mess with me and add to the chaos. Smoke, char, alarms, and yelling were not addressed in my Ball Blue Book. I barely managed to hold back tears.
Failure
In a final, desperate hope to salvage the day, I decided to can what hadn’t boiled out of the pot, not knowing how it would turn out. I poured it into my jars, and sealed them. Now I just had to wait to see if my jam would gel or if it had all been for nothing.
Over the next few days, I kept watching my jars to see if the strawberry mix had solidified. I left the jars on the counter and then tried the refrigerator, but my “jam” never gelled. I had failed to become a competent, homemaking woman.
My friends and husband tried to put a good spin on the event by saying I had made a very tasty ice cream topping, and that is true. Somehow, I did manage to make a delicious strawberry syrup, but my feeling of failure was not expunged and neither was the gunk on my stove. We tried multiple cleaners to get the strawberry residue off our stove, and my husband even took a razor to it, but a layer of char remains to this day. Now this is war, I thought. Only full jam-making success will satisfy me! It was time for round two.
One goal
This time I would procure the proper equipment. After some searching, my husband helped me find a canner that could be used on a glass cooktop as well as other helpful canning items, such as a funnel that fit my jars so I wouldn’t leave so much staining on our countertops.
Acting in faith that this time I would succeed, I discovered where the mysterious book of fair entry information has been hiding all these years: the public library! I took the book home and read about how to enter jam into the fair. Upon learning that I would need to include my recipe source with my entry, I took more care to figure out which recipe I would use.
I had ordered some Ball pectin after another unsuccessful attempt to find it at the grocery store, and, baffled by the fact that the recipe on the Ball pectin wasn’t exactly the same as what was in my Ball canning book, I decided to use the recipe on the pectin container.
This time I arranged to have my son at Grammy’s house for the jam-making event. Creating a perfect blueberry jam was my only objective for the entire day, and I would limit every distraction.
Where are all the blueberries?!
It seemed to me that I couldn’t be more prepared. But as I have mentioned, I am not the most agriculturally-educated woman who has ever lived, and in my naiveté, I imagined that blueberry plants would look very similar to strawberry plants. In other words, I thought I’d have to crawl in the dirt the whole time I picked, so I wore long black pants on an 80-something degree day to go picking. Even worse, blueberry season was pretty much over, so I drove a half hour to the only blueberry picking farm that was still open, and the term “slim pickin’s” now has new meaning for me.
After less than an hour of picking, I had just over a pound of blueberries (a tiny fraction of what I would need), and I felt like I was a berry boiling into jam from the hot sun. I probably only managed to pick as long as I did because there was a mother with her three boys beside me. The boys had biblical names and the mother was a seasoned picker teaching her kids the proper techniques for picking… homeschoolers maybe? I must will myself to succeed! I thought. I must be like these true homeschoolers!
I picked for another three minutes before giving up and going to the farm store to see if they had any pre-picked berries. Because it was the end of the season, they did not.
My only option, other than going back out in the sun, was driving a half hour back to buy the berries I needed at the grocery store. I thought I remembered seeing some blueberries marked “local.” In desperation, I decided that those would have to do. I live in Maryland, and a woman at the grocery store informed me that New Jersey is considered “local” to my area.
So after a morning of driving and picking, I ended up purchasing “local” New Jersey blueberries from the store right next to my house. The whole morning would have felt like a complete bust, but this time I found where the grocery store kept the pectin. It was right by the blueberries. Well, now I know…
Sweet success!
Armed with my store-bought blueberries and my new canning equipment, I went to work making jam. I followed every step in my book and on the pectin package exactly. And do you know what? This time it worked!
After years of longing, I have made jam! I can now count myself among a fellowship of women who have produced home-made jam for their families, and I now had something made from scratch to enter into the fair. Dropping off my jam to the judges was a proud moment. It did not turn out to be award-winning jam, but I am a millennial, and I clung to my participation slip with pride!
As a bonus, I have all my Christmas presents ready: homemade jam for everyone! I may even decide to add a side of homemade bread, at least for some of my friends. Those food-trendy people with entirely organic, sugar-free, and gluten-free diets will miss out… which, sadly, describes most of my friends. But, do you know what? My jam tastes amazing and the older generation will love it. And most importantly, I feel like a strong, rugged woman who is part of a long line of rustic jam-makers.
How to make your own jam
I suppose one could say making jam isn’t all that difficult if you know what you’re doing, but knowing what you are doing is key. Here are a few tips I learned through some trial and a lot of error:
1. Find a recipe
I suggest using the recipe on your package of pectin to make things easier. (It turns out, you can make jam without pectin, but it is a much more difficult and lengthy process. I couldn’t find many main-stream examples of people who still do this.) You will also need sugar, and, depending on your recipe, lemon juice.
2. If you want fresh fruit, do your research about what’s in season ahead of time.
To make things even easier, buy it at a farmer’s market.
3. Get the right equipment
Make sure you have a large enough pot (preferably a canner with a rack) to process your jam. “Processing” is when you boil your jars to seal them and kill microbes. This canner could be used on a gas stove. I used this pot with this rack on my glass cooktop. Make sure you have canning jars with new lids. You might benefit from purchasing a canning kit that includes a wide mouth funnel, tongs, and jar lifter.
4. Do your research
Read instructions or watch videos of people canning a few times to make sure you have the steps down before beginning to can. The process goes quickly once you get going. And don’t let your jam boil over.
You too can join the fellowship of canners! Enjoy the process and savor your jam. It’s worth it.
Thanks so much for sharing that story with us, Ariel! If you have ever attempted to make homemade jam (or maybe it’s something you do regularly) we’d love to hear about it! Leave your story in the comments below. 🙂
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