July 30, 2012

homemade peach jam

I may have a new hobby. Yes, another to add to the list of 1,345,215 things that I enjoy doing. Canning! Travis and I ventured into canning when we were trying to make his barbecue sauce shelf stable. So we packed the mason jars full of sauce and boiled them, then sat back and listened to the "ping, ping, ping" and they self sealed. So gratifying to hear that little sound.
My sister in law recently bought a new house in the area and was lucky enough that the property came with 3 mature fruit trees, two apricot and one peach. We feasted on apricots (one of my favorites) prior to out adventures in canning, otherwise i'd be slathering apricot jam on every food item at every meal. 
Don't get me wrong, when we visited the new place a few weeks later we were lucky enough to pull about 20lbs of beautifully ripe peaches from her tree. She didn't want them and sent them home with us. I immediately knew I wanted to try my hand at making peach jam and canning it, and so I did!
We followed the directions on the back of the Sure Jell pectin package. "If its not broke don't fix it" was our first time jam making motto. And it turned out SO GOOD!!! I made a whopping 21 jars of jam and our tiny family of three has already gone through almost three jars. 

I also had to have labels for the jars. Im kinda obsessed with sticker paper and making custom tags and labels and stuff. It makes it look so much more official. I came across this amazing site called the jam labelizer where you can customize different designs and print them. Super easy, super cute. I named my jam after the little one-of course. 
I also DIY'ed a little something extra to go with the jam I gave to a few friends. There's a sneak peak below, but I'll share more about that later this week. Now don't be intimidated, go make some jam!