fresh apricot jam. {how i make it}.

                        

photo from {flickr}.

i like my apricot jam to be slightly tart with a hint of sweetness.  i don't want to follow traditional recipes of dumping in 6 CUPS OF SUGAR into 8 cups of pure fruit.

my recipe follows a low-pectin guide of 10 cups of chopped fruit to 2 C. of sugar; however, i do not add in any additional juices as the recipe suggests.  instead, i allow my chopped fruit to sit over night with lemon juice and 1 C. of the 2 C. of sugar sprinkled on top.  this allows the natural juices of the fruit to draw away from the fruit and soften the fruit a little.

oh, and don't think you have to pick a massive amount of apricots to make the jam!  a few buckets full goes a long way.  my family and i took 15 minutes the other night and picked off a low-lying tree.  the kids each had a sand bucket full and we had a large bucket slightly full.  all in all the apricots filled one side of my kitchen sink.

how much jam did this yield? 15 pints!!!!

photo from the {idea room.}

fresh apricot jam: yields 10 1/2 pints or 5 pints

10 C. chopped fruit

2 T. lemon juice

2 C. sugar

7 1/2 T. low-sugar fruit pectin

1) wash fruit well and pit.  

2) chop into quarters and put into a large pot.

3) add in lemon juice over the top and sprinkle with 1 C. of the sugar.  do not mix.  cover and allow to sit overnight.  

4) in the morning or the next day, bring fruit to a slow boil or med-high heat and add in pectin, 2 T. at a time, stirring to incorporate.  

5) add in 1 C. sugar, stirring to incorporate and allow mixture to thicken.

6) as it thickens, transfer large ladles-full to a blender and chop/puree until desired consistency.  add back into the pot and continue until you have the total desired consistency for your jam.

7) transfer jam to hot, sterile jars and top with hot, sterile lids (i boil mine to soften the gel and sterilize them).

8) process for 15 minutes for pint-size in a hot water bath canner.  adjust for altitude.  in utah and idaho for the elevation i have to increase my processing time by 10 minutes. so total process time is 25 minutes for pints.

9) after processing, remove from hot water bath and set on a single layer of towels on the counter top to cool for 24 hours. test lids for seal.  if unsealed refrigerate and use within 3 weeks.

tip: i would use old dish towels if you don't want staining from fruit when canning!  learned that the hard way!

in the end you have a beautiful, as-close-to-the-fruit-as-you-can-get, thick jam!

photo from {leites culinaria}.

photo from {love and olive oil}.

i love images of canned goods! they are so simply beautiful!

i'll continue to post a few more apricot recipes in the following days.  i like my recipes to be simple and as healthy as possible, so i don't get extremely creative or inventive.

because i'm about 3 weeks from my due date i'll be limiting my canning this year.  there are some things i MUST have, like peaches, pears and applesauce.  those are family staples here.

if you don't already follow my pinterest boards you can see other apricot recipes that i pin on there to maybe try next year. apricot jam is all this girl will be making for this apricot season.  next year i'd love to bottle a bunch of apricots, make apricot jabanero jam and do some baking etc.  eventually it would be wonderful to have my own apricot tree.  i can picture myself canning away and having the kids run a road-side stand to sell extra produce!

but there will be a few for you and yours to enjoy if you wish!

happy halloween and the band of pirates.

*disclaimer: if you missed the previous post i am in the process of updating!  continue scrolling down to see all new posts!*

have you ever noticed that my poor husband is the one who has to either shave or dye his hair...or wear a ridiculously ugly wig?!  this year was busy, busy, busy.  there was no time for making costumes.  no extra money for ordering online (and gasp, would i really do such a thing?)  so...dig through the dress-up box, raid closets and come up with something that EVERYONE in the family can pull off using ONLY items we ALREADY have.  the only thing i splurged on was the before mentioned ridiculously ugly "Jack Sparrow" wig $7.99 at Walmart. gotta love that!

i rubbed some black eyeliner in under chris' eyes (you know, going for the Captain Sparrow look)...however, chris sort of just ended up looking like Ozzy, and quite frankly i couldn't wait to get him home, yank that wig off his head and clean off those eyes.  it was spooky.  (as is this really bad picture of my family trying to look like the misfit band of pirates we were going for...just look at those poor little faces...)

the kids played dress-up as pirates for about the whole month before the actual shin dig.  they just couldn't get enough.  there were various assortments of ways we could assemble our costumes.  brady was a spectacular pirate at school.  i mean really, it was quite impressive that we had everything already in our closets!  

the boys upstairs played pirate all month as well.  it made for lots of fun treasure hunting, map making, and "ARG ye matey!" talk all around the house!

                 

and what do you do when the festivities are all over, costumes have been thrown back in the closets and jammies have been donned?  daddy hurries and gives the kiddos a piggyback ride to bed!!!  

                     

on a side note:  i made delicious canned pumpkin.  i just couldn't bare to see all of the lovely pumpkins on my porch go to waste, so before the frost hit and claimed them for good i hurried them inside and started scooping the guts out of them.  now, there is a disclaimer here.  it is not recommended that you can pumpkin, due to the density of the flesh; however, after many hours researching this particular subject and finding many homesteaders who home can pumpkin year after year with no problems, i decided to go ahead and try it.

it was a messy project and somewhat time consuming, but i think all in all worth it.  i plan on growing my own pumpkin patch this year and can't wait to make pumpkin-flavored goodies all fall and winter long!

this year's canning bounty.

some of my friends think that my house always looks perfect.  here's proof that it often doesn't.  whenever i have a big project going on it consumes almost the entire house.  what's the down side of having a large kitchen- LOTS of counter space to fill up with junk!  can't wait to have a garage again!

this is what my kitchen looked like during the two weeks that i was busy canning!

this year i tried some new things to can and was quite pleased!  chris' parents gave me a bag of apples, not enough that i wanted to make applesauce, but i wanted to make good use of them.  so, intro apple butter!  i grew up eating apple butter and loved it, so when i came across this crockpot recipe i knew i had to try it!

canned apple butter
40-50 apples
3 C. brown sugar
2 T. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. allspice

Rinse apples well, core and quarter, leaving skins on.  Boil in large pot with about 2 inches of water on the bottom and lid on. Steam until soft.  Process into applesauce (can use blender or food mill).  

In crockpot blend 5.5 quarts of the applesauce with 2 C. brown sugar, cinnamon and allspice.  Mix well.  Heat on high 2-3 hours.

Stir again and reduce heat down to low, vent lid with a wooden spoon and cook overnight or for 8-10 hours.

Add remaining applesauce and 1 C. brown sugar, mixing well.  Cook on low for another 2-3 hours.

Puree until smooth (if applesauce was still a little chunky).  Fill 1/2 pint or pint jars and process in a hot water bath canner for 10 minutes.


i got about 16 1/2 pints out of this and have been able to give several away to family and friends as gifts.



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i canned potatoes, carrots, applesauce, cranberry applesauce, corn, beets, tomatoes, peaches and pears this year.

carrots: 25 lbs. 
potatoesZ: 60 lbs.
peaches- 4 boxes
pears- 3 boxes

i discovered some interesting carrots along the way, and just to amuse myself, gave them funny names:

"the nubbin" 

(like, as in friends!)

               "the right angle" 

                "twisted sister" 

                "the corkscrew" 

peaches- 36 quarts

beets- 6 pints 

(next year i plan to do much more and grow them in my garden!)

canning. canning. canning. canning. canning.....

This post is LONG overdue but I needed to get it on here....

I canned like a crazy woman this year.  Something about free food...at the hottest point of the summer I thought it would be fantastic to can a bunch of apricot jam and apricot puree because my friend Rachel scored me a 5 gallon bucket of FREE apricots.  I had never canned apricots before and I quickly enlisted the kids at the kitchen sink.  They removed all of the pits and helped me quite a bit!  They even thought it was fun!  I heated up my already scorchingly hot kitchen (no A/C in this rental house) and by the end of the evening thought I was going to DIE of heat exhaustion....BUT we ended up with DELICIOUS apricot jam (14 pints) and apricot puree (10 pints) to be used in smoothies, sauces and as baby food.

One of my goals with this baby is to buy very minimal store-bought baby food.  Not only is it healthier but a lot more cost effective. 

I also canned strawberry jam for the first time.  I was not planning on this undertaking but when I stopped by the farmer's market one day these beauties cried out to me and I could not resist!  1 flat gave me 12 pints of beautiful jam and I used a reduced sugar recipe which tastes like the fresh berries.  I like this jam but for the sake of money and time IF I do jam again I will do freezer jam.

Earlier I canned 12 pints of cherries picked from Chris' parents cherry tree.  I plan on using these in desserts and also in oatmeal this winter.  Next year I'd like to try canning cherry pie filling and drying some...

I learned that I WILL NOT can tomato sauce (spaghetti sauce) ever again!  This is VERY VERY time consuming and I like Prego just fine...I ended up with 18 quarts and unless the tomatoes are from your garden this is not saving you any money either.  I have also decided that MY TIME IS WORTH MONEY!!!  I would rather spend some few extra cents at the store than 2 DAYS making sauce!!!  AND, my hubby and kids were not huge fans...we like Prego around here.

In the future, I'll stick with canning diced or whole tomatoes, tomato juice and salsa.

Peaches and pears are an every year staple for our family and I will can them every year no matter what, even if I don't do any other canning.  I love home-canned peaches and pears so much!  The taste just doesn't compare and I use a very light syrup so I feel like they are healthy too. Next year I am going to try either sugar-free apple or white grape juice though.

I canned 36 quarts of peaches and 43 quarts of pears!!! (thanks mom and dad Graf for FREE pears!!!)  I had already bought and canned 20 quarts of pears earlier in the month but when we went down for General Conference to the Grafs we loaded up on more...enough for 23 more quarts!!! And that was just from the pears that had dropped on the ground that my kids collected!  I will have plenty of pears for the year, for the baby, for smoothies and for giving!!!

AREN'T THEY BEAUTIFUL?????!!!!!!

I also got FREE plums from mom and dad Graf and these made beautiful plum puree.  I made about 12 pints of pureed plums which I'll use for baby food, as a substitute in baking (for oil) and also for fruit leather.

Because we moved so late in the planting season the only thing I planted were some tomatoes and a garden full of beans!  We had a great crop, although we would have had twice as much if I was able to plant them at the first of spring.  I canned about 12 quarts of beans I think and thought that they would be awesome to have since olivia ONLY eats green beans for a vegetable (yeah, I know, we REALLY need to work on that).  However, after HOURS upon HOURS of toiling in the garden all summer and then the actual labor of picking and canning the beans...alas, my lovely 3 year old has procalimed that she doesn't like "fuzzy beans" from the garden and refuses to eat them.  She, like her daddy, only likes green beans from a can!  What in the world did I get myself into?!?!

I just finished up my canning by doing 24 quarts of plain appleasuce canned and 24 quarts of cinnamon spiced applesauce for the freezer.  Again, thanks to mom and dad Graf for the wonderful fruit!  We have already enjoyed several jars of applesauce and I am just hoping that we have enough to get through the year!  Applesauce is very labor intensive.  I literally spent 2 whole days making applesauce and that was with my mom's help too!!!

Here's the kids helping puree the apples through the mill:

Now, I will rest for a season and enjoy the FRUITS of my LABOR!!!