I recently admitted that we'd begun trying to can food. I love the idea of popping open a jar of jelly and actually knowing what's in it.
We decide to start with something supersimple, something hard to screw up. But on the off chance we did screw up, we didn't want to be out a lot of money.
We settled on peach jam when I saw peaches for sale for 99 cents. (Organic would be a much better option because peaches are a big offender for soaking up pesticides. But, again, as this was likely to go south, I didn't want to be in for big money.)
We made it harder than it needed to be, with thermometers and rulers.
And really, canning's a pretty simple concept, not the sort of thing that requires conversions and math.
We ended up with seven half-pints of pretty decent jam. This was after we realized we'd sealed them too loosely and only four had sealed properly. Luckly, the kindness of canning includes a roughly 24 hour do-over period in which you can pull everything out, scrub out, heat up and bottle 'em again.
It's more sugary than I would like, but I've never been a big fan of sweeteners for fruits.
So it took a lot of time, some money and I ended up with a product I don't absolutely love.
But it was satisfying to do it and, aside from the errant pesticides, I know what's in it: peaches, sugar and pectin. Compare that to my Jewel brand apricat "fruit spread," made with white grape juice concentrate, apricots, apricot concentrate and citrus pectin. Why is there grape juice concentrate in my jam?
Plus, when I finish each jar of my home-canned jam, I'll wash it and store it for the next year. The Jewel fruit spread jar will go in my recycling bin, into a carbon-emitting truck, to a sorting station, then to a glass smelter who will use more energy to melt it, before someone else uses more energy to form it into another jar.
My jam might be a little too sugary, but it's green.