Making your own jam is actually not that difficult.
Even I was surprised at how much jam we got out of about a kilo of cherries. When you see a full cherry tree you tend to wonder how many it would take to make a jar of jam. This big tree should more than likely produce a thousand jars of jam ! Of course if we could only get to the top more easily...
So, the amount you see in the bucket, was what we used. It was a sort of trial run. If we had made a mistake, at least we would have learned from it ! We started to pit them. Imagining it is harder than actually doing it. Bob and I just used an ordinary knife and before we knew it, they were done.
The fun part was mixing the cherries with the sugar and getting that mass to boil. You can buy a ready made mixture of sugar for making jams. We used the 3 to 1 mixture. At first it looks like a glump of something but in time it does melt into this syrupy mixture. Because I don't like to many fruit pieces in my jam, I thought I would liquidize it a bit. As usual, I overdid it and it turned into a smooth ( no cherry shape in sight ) mixture.
While I was stirring the pot ( he he ) Bob had to sterilize the jam jars in boiling water. Teamwork !
The next bit was quick and easy. We scooped the hot liquid into the jars, put the lid on and placed them upside down. Just following instructions on that one, as I don't know why they need to be upside down. A few yelps of pain were emitted by both of us, because hot jam mixture on your fingers is not nice !
As we were filling and jamming, we had such fun. Who would have thought that we would get so domesticated ? We have many more cherries, peaches and plums to pick and hopefully will create a mountain of homemade jams...We are rather proud of our first batch of homemade cherry jam.
Biggi
Amazon.com:Homemade Jelly and Jam Recipes - 35 Recipes To Make Delicious Jams and Jellies from Scratch (Hillbilly Housewife Cookbooks)
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