I gots me some AMAZING jam!

It's no secret that I love bread. Toast in particular is a favourite of mine. Well, the toast I had this morning for breakfast was the best I've had in a long while. Why? Cause it was topped with some *awesome* jam exchange jam!

Thank you Steve for sending me so much amazing looking jam! I think he even said most (all?) of the fruit comes out of his So-Cal backyard garden. How cool is that?

I love the jars and I love the labels! And they all look so tasty! I had a hard time trying to decide which one to open first!!

I mean, don't they all sound amazing?? Green Fig Preserves, Apple jelly, Mulberry & Cranberry and Ginger-Plum. Which one would you open first?

In the end, I went for the Ginger-Plum. I have a crazy love for ginger so that tipped the scales. And while I didn't find it overly ginger-y (Um... maybe because I could probably eat ginger raw...) I did *love* the taste of this jam. I immediately went back for seconds. :)

So thank you Steve for sending such amazing jam! I'm so happy we got paired up. I can't wait to try the rest. I'm sure they will be just as great!!

Dishcloths and Jam

Blog? Hunh? What's a blog? Wait, I have a blog??

Oh yeah. ... totally forgot about that one.

Just joking. But it's been so long since I've blogged that it feels like I've forgotten about it. I have the general excuses of being busy. (My go to excuse...) But so many things have been keeping me busy and not blogging. Things like CAMPING! So much fun!! :) Things like my garden. Things like soccer 4 nights a week most of the time. Things like having a TON of tiny homegrown pears to use up. (Well, grandma-grown pears.)

I used some of those pears to make jam:

The pear jam is the one on the left. Doesn't it look yummy? It is! I'm so proud of it!! It's cinnamon/ginger pear jam. And once I was done my mom took the spatula to the pot and cleaned out every last drop. She loved it too!

So the jam above is for the Steph Chows 2nd Annual Jam exchange. Yay! I love jam exchanges. :) I'm sending Pear jam, peach jam, blueberry jam and cucumber sula. (Cucumber Sula is a family recipe that makes a relish. I don't love it, but the rest of my family does...)

And I'm also sending two granny square dishcloths. Com'on. I can't not send something I knit.

Not the cutest thing ever, but I thought they were cute in the simple old-fashioned I-just-made-jam sort of a way. Right? Plus, SUPER simple to make. I'm still liking simple these days.

So hopefully my jam exchange buddy enjoys my jam. Can't wait to see what I get! :)

Jam Exchange

"We all have a song that somehow stamped our lives, takes us to another place and time..." So says Kenny Chesney. And it's true. Music can totally snap you back to a time. I know that every time I hear the sweater song by weezer I think of the dance my friend from HS made to that song. Hilarious.

Well, I think the same can be said for food. Taste, just like sound, can trigger memories. Gingerbread to me (and probably lots of people) is almost like the ghost of Christmas past, reminding me of all of the Christmases of yon.

The same is true for homemade jam.

I *LOVE* homemade jam. Lovelovelove.

As a child, we almost exclusively ate homemade jam. I remember making it with my mom. Standing on a chair because I wasn't tall enough to see into the pot otherwise, wearing an old apron, stirring the big pot. Oh childhood. Good memories.

And maybe that's why I went a little bit overboard after I signed up to do stephchows jam exchange.

Sure. I could have just made one type of jam... but after I bought all these cute jars... and I saw all this yummy fruit on sale... there was just no stopping me! Besides, just like in my childhood, when I used to give jam to my teachers for Christmas, I figured jam would make great gifts.

So armed with fruit, sugar and lemons I was ready to go! And go I did.

These are the jams I gave in the exchange. And the dishtowel too. (post pending). I sent some strawberry (Don't worry W. Yours is safe and sound.), strawberry rhubarb (simply divine on TJ froyo), and blackberry blueberry.

I made those back when I signed up for the exchange.

But I couldn't stop there. No. That would be too easy. And, well, as I've already shown... I'm crazy. So this morning I made cherry and every-berry-I-had-left-in-the-fridge-plus-a-peach jam. Fabulous! If I do say so myself.

Um... I didn't really follow a recipe. (I hear those gasps out there. No. Really. It's okay.) For all of them I just cut up a lot of fruit, put it in a pot, added the rind and juice of one lemon (two for the rhubarb jam because rhubarb is naturally low in pectin... or so google told me) then added two cups of sugar and let it cook for 40-45 min, stirring ever so often.

(If you get bored, as I did, just go grab the book you're in the middle of to read while you stir. I'm so all about multi-tasking.) Once it passes the plate in the freezer test, I was done. (Don't worry... I did all those sterilizing steps too.)

But all in all, a fantastically fun and tasty experience. And I suggest trying it to anyone out there! It is soo good, and really very easy to do. Try it!

Now I can't wait to see what kind of jam I get in the mail. :)