Peaches and Strawberries and Jam, Oh My!

I've been making jam and canning fruit with my mom for years. She taught me how to prepare the fruit and the jars and we have canned peaches, pears, applesauce, pear-sauce, strawberry jam, raspberry jam, apricot-pineapple jam, tomatoes, salsa and a whole list of other things!

I've made freezer jam on my own before (it's really hard to screw up freezer jam) but I had never canned peaches before or made cooked jam without my mom right there. Well, Eddie and I have tried to bulk up our food storage and truly heed the prophets' advice to be prepared, so when the e-mail came through our Ward Cannery Specialist that we could get a 25-pound box of peaches for $12, yeah, we bought 3 boxes for us and one for a friend. Then Monday night after work, we started canning peaches...at 7PM. A bit crazy, yes. In fact, we were still canning until after 1AM and yes, I had to work the next day!

But it was so much fun! My friend had never made jam or canned anything so it was an adventure for the both of us! We started with her box of peaches; cleaned them, blanched them, peeled them, pitted and sliced them, then stuffed them in jars. We made some simple syrup for the jars, cleaned the tops, sterilized the lids and sealed them all in the canner on the stove top. A long process, but definitely worth it; check out the yield just from one box (aren't they just pretty??):

Ok, so after canning a couple of boxes, we moved on to freezer jam. By this time, it was after 11PM and we were getting a bit silly, but again, hard to screw up freezer jam. We again cleaned, blanched, peeled, pitted, and sliced the box of peaches. Next came blending them a bit so they were smaller chunks. From there, all you do is add the pectin and sugar (in this case, we added some peach Jell-O too to help the jam set) and funnel the jam into the jars. I tried a little bit in the bottom of the bowl when we were done - SO YUMMY! I can't wait for that first peanut butter and jam sandwich, or waffles, or pork roast (yup, peach or apricot jam - along with a few other spices - makes for a tasty pork glaze)...

As for the strawberries, well, they've been in the freezer since I bought huge buckets of them last year. I finally got around to making something out of them. Eddie and I decided to try cooked jam this time so we didn't have to occupy valuable freezer space. Also, you never know, in case of a disaster, there may not be power so everything in the freezer would just go to waste anyway. We canned the cooked jam using the inverted preservation method - you know, it's where you boil the jam, put it in the jars, tighten the lid on them and turn them upside down to seal them. Worked like a charm and now we have 18 or so jars of strawberry jam!!

Isn't canning fun?!