Pretend to be Surprised

Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire Batman!  That's a lot of jam!

I went and bought jars this morning and a few more peaches because I wasn't sure if we had quite enough.  Turns out the extra peaches were unnecessary...  Three batches of jam later: 

This doesn't include the 6 jars of freezer jam -- pint size jars.

The recipe I read said to put in 8 cups of sugar.  I'm not convinced that I read it correctly.  I did not use that much sugar.  For every 16 cups of peach mush I used slightly less than 3 cups of sugar.  It's really tasty, with just a little bit of tartness in the aftertaste.

YUMMY!  We didn't nibble while we cooked, but it took great restraint.

Tamara was great help and loaned me her kitchen, extra pair of hands, and pots/pans/utensils/etc.  Neither of us had ever canned before (well, not since we were kids anyway) so I had to call Mom to verify some of what we were doing -- thanks Mom!

We didn't add any spices, but you could have added cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, etc.  We also talked about adding chili flakes and doing a chutney kind of jam.  In the end I decided that the first go around should probably be less experimental, but next time...

 
I also ended up buying a waterbath canner and assorted supplies so I'm ready to can any time.  Tamara will be canning most of her garden produce so we're planning on getting together again to do that.

So let's see, cost:
* $15 for peaches on Thursday
* $4 for peaches this morning
* $20 for jars
* $1 for sugar
* $25 for reusable supplies (canner, funnel, hot jar lifter, etc.)

So that's roughly $1.30 per jar of jam.  Not too shabby.

All in all it was a lot of sweaty work, but very satisfying.  Especially hearing the sweet music of the jars sealing -- ping, ping, ping! 

Next time I'm going to bring some facial mud though -- seems like a good idea to put it on while my pores are waaaaay open.