A to Z Challenge 2020: J is for Jam

J is for Jam

I love jam. My favorite types are the ones that have pieces of fruit in them, some might call them preserves. 

For the last 30 years or so, I spend time during my summers making my own jams. It usually starts in late May/early June when fresh strawberries come out at the farms. I go out and pick the berries myself, or with my wife and gather enough so that we can have some fresh with our cereals and fruit bowls and some for making jams. 

I particularly like making low sugar jams, so I use powdered pectin called Mrs. Wages Lite Fruit Pectin. The difference between Lite and Regular pectin is that regular Mrs. Wages Fruit Pectin uses about 7-8 cups of sugar per batch, which usually makes about 7 half-pints of jam and her lite version uses only 2-3 cups of sugar (not sugar substitute) for the same amount of finished jams. The final product still tastes very sweet. 

As the summer goes on, I build my jam collection by using different fruits as they become available and mixing different fruits to make combination jams. 

Flavors that I have made include strawberry/rhubarb jam, apricot jam, sour cherry jam, red (black) raspberry jam, blackberry jam, raspberry (blackberry)/peach jam, triple berry and ultra berry jam (these involve some combination of raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries), apricot/pineapple and apricot/mango (which requires me to use some store-bought fruits), pineapple/mango, strawberry/mango, and blueberry/peach. There are others that I have experimented with. Whenever I go to a farmstand that sells jam, I’m always looking for ideas by checking the flavors they sell. 

These jams usually last us an entire year, sometimes longer. We not only eat them ourselves, but we also use them as gifts to neighbors, friends, and family.

There are times when the jams that I make don’t quite end up the way I want them to. Kiwis, for example, do not make a good jam combination. 

This past year in particular for the first several batches of jam, I mistakenly used Mrs. Wages Fruit Pectin instead of the Lite version. I didn’t realize that I had purchased the wrong one and didn’t read the directions since I already knew how to make it. As it turns out, it is the sugar content that impacts the gelling of the jam. So when you only put 2 cups of sugar into a batch that calls for 7 cups of sugar, you end up with a final product that is more syrupy and pourable. They still canned properly and tasted the same, but were more suited for ice cream, waffle, and pancake toppings. It also worked well in yogurt. Luckily after 3 batches of this loose jam, I realized my mistake and the rest of the summer’s batches were normal. 

A couple of years ago we had to replace the oil burner in our basement. The installers carting the new boiler into the basement from the garage were kind of careless and bumped into the shelving unit that held all of our jars of jam, knocking a quantity of them onto the concrete floor, decreasing the number of jars we had that year. The following year when we had to have our hot water heater replaced, I moved all of the jars on those shelves, before the same people from the year before rolled in the new heater. 

We still periodically purchase store and farm jams, but we prefer homemade ones. Farm and supermarket jams/preserves are too sweet for my taste.

I’m looking forward to the summer canning season again. This time on top of the usual kinds, I want to explore some new flavors, like cranberry and sweet cherries. Time will tell. At least this time I know to read the box of pectin I’m using more carefully.