Making Jam

So it's been a few weeks but I thought I'd tell you all about making blueberry jam! I needed a way to use up some of the yummy blueberries we picked so I read all about making jam (a process called canning, even though it uses jars instead of metal cans) and tried my hand at it. Some of the books and internet sites I looked at have really scary warnings about how things can go wrong with canning so I was a little nervous, but it ended up being pretty easy, if messy and time consuming.

The first thing you have to do is sterilize the jars by boiling them for 10 minutes in a giant pot. This is what actually took the longest because it took forever to get the water boiling. Then you crush the blueberries, for this recipe I added a few spices, and boil that with sugar and pectin. Then you pour hot water over the jar lids to loosen the gummy part that will seal the jar. Timing is everything because you can't overboil the mixture, but the jars must still be very hot or you risk cracking them, and the lids have to have been loosened. You pour the hot mixture into the hot jars (very carefully! with tongs! or else you burn your fingers) and seal them up. Then the sealed jars have to be boiled for another five minutes. All this work, and the recipe only makes four jars....still, the jam is VERY VERY good! I love this recipe (I found it in a book I checked out from the library) which is called Spiced Blueberry Jam due to the spices you put in it. It is delicious! It's really good on toast or in a PBJ sandwich.

I have plenty so I'd be happy to share!