use it up, wear it up, do without- Lessons in using the stockpile

 In my effort to use up what we have at home, I decided to make jam the other night.

Steph came over, and we made strawberry/blackberry jam, or as we called it "$6.00 Jam", since that was the grand total cost of the ingredients.

Sure Jell Pectin - I bought the liquid kind in pouches.  2 pouches in a box for 99 cents at 99 Cents Only. 1 pouch makes a batch of jam. .50 for Pectin.

5 cups crushed berries.  2 bags blackberries/strawberries mixed from 99 Cents only, and 3 baskets of blackberries from 99 Cents only, they were 3 for 99 cents. Total for Fruit: $2.97

Sugar:  I have a huge bag of sugar, we estimated it cost about $2.50 for the sugar. 7  cups of sugar.

Basically, you follow the directions of the package, which are:  Heat the fruit and sugar together until they boil so hard that you cannot stir the boil down, add the pectin while stiring.  stir frantically for a minute.  Remove from heat and ladle into clean, hot jars.  wipe the mouth of the jar off and screw on, clean, hot lids-TIGHTLY.  Immediately turn the jars upside down and set them on a clean, dry level counter overnight. The canning jars will vacuum seal.  If you are cooking a high acid food (tomatoes) you will need to process them in a hot water bath- read the directions on your recipe!!!

We got about 8 quarts of jam out of the batch.

If anyone would like to get together and make jam or preserves in the spring, it is a great activity to do with friends.  It's fun, it's in expensive, and everyone leaves with fun memories and something YUMMY!!