Making Peach Jam #EveryBitCountsChallenge

 It's that time of year that I start preserving different things for wintertime use. This is the first thing I've canned this year. I tend to follow the insert that comes in the box of Sure Jell pectin when it comes to canning. Those recipes are tried, true and they never fail. They are tested for safety. They take the guesswork out of it.

I will tweak things slightly, like seasonings, herbs, etc., but I leave the main components alone.

I digress.

I'm getting in on the Every Bit Counts Challenge. I'm a bit late to the party, but better late than never. This challenge is that every day in August, you make something to put up for the winter. It doesn't matter if it is canned, dehydrated, freeze-dried, frozen or you are simply making seed starter pots out of toilet paper rolls. It all counts. The past few days, I was working my way through 20 pounds of fresh peaches. The majority went into the freezer except the one that I ate and the ones I used to make this batch of jam.

So, without further ado, here's how I make Peach Jam.

I love looking at these golden jars of peach perfection!

This recipe starts out with 4 cups of chopped/smashed peaches. Make sure to measure carefully. 

 
In a separate bowl, measure out 5-1/2 cups of granulated sugar. When I'm canning, I make sure that I buy pure cane sugar. I don't want to use sugar that is made from beets. I'm going to attempt to grow out sugar beets next year and make my own sugar, so stay tuned for that...but for this recipe, it's pure cane sugar all the way!

I had Bob get out my big pot. Unless I'm canning quart jars, I like to use this pot to can in. It's just easier to handle for me.

I mixed the chopped peaches with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and a box of Sure Jell pectin. This is a case where I deviate from the recipe. I don't use fresh lemons. I use bottled lemon juice. Every single time that I've ever bought fresh lemons to use, something has come up and they turn on me. I find that if I just buy bottles of lime and lemon juice, they can last in the fridge almost indefinitely. I may go through a bottle of each per year.

This gets combined in a large pan. I used my enameled cast iron Dutch oven. It is the perfect size to make a batch of jam in.

You cook the peaches, pectin and lemon juice with a scant 1/2 teaspoon of butter until it comes to a full, rolling boil. What that means is when you stir it hard, you can't stir the bubbles down.

After the mixture comes to a full, rolling boil, you add in all the sugar at once. Just dump it in. The sugar actually becomes a liquid. That's why you measure out the sugar before you start and put it in a bowl. That way, it's just ready to go.

You bring that mixture back up to a full, rolling boil and boil it for exactly one minute. I have a clock that has a second hand on it so I can be uber precise with the timing.

Before I got started cooking, I got out what I would need. I put some white vinegar into a dish. I got a couple of paper towels. I use the paper towels dipped into the vinegar to clean the rims of the jars.

I filled the jars leaving 1/4 inch of headspace. You can eyeball it. You don't have to measure. They do sell a gadget that will measure for you, if you're more comfortable doing it that way.

This is the homemade rack that Bob made for me. He used floral wire to connect the lids together. It works perfectly.
If you don't have this stuff, you can put a kitchen towel in the bottom. You just need something to keep the bottoms of the jars off of the bottom of the pan.

I put my lids into a pan of simmering water. Some people don't do this. I do this.
I don't see how it will hurt anything, to be honest.

I put the lids and rings on each jar and screwed them on until they are just finger-tight. You don't want to crank them down super tight. Just barely finger-tight is enough. I put these into the pot so that they weren't touching.

I put the lid on, turned the heat on and brought it up to a boil. Once it came to a full boil, I set a timer for 10 minutes. Once that was done, I turned off the flame and set another timer for 5 minutes. That's when I removed the jars to set on a towel lined baking tray. I put my jars on baking trays because it's easier for us to move them around that way. I covered them with another towel and within 30 minutes, I heard that sound that is music to a canner's ears...the ping of a lid sealing...6 times, one for each jar of peach jam.

I don't really use peach jam on toast or sandwiches. I use peach jam as a base for other things, like BBQ sauce, Asian sauces, etc. I'll make an odd piece of toast here and there, but I made this for other things.

Here you have these peachy jars of perfection!

If you want to view the full recipe, look at the insert that comes in a box of Sure Jell pectin.

#EveryBitCountsChallenge

My Weekly Grocery Haul

 I thought I would switch up a bit and share one of my grocery hauls with you all. I do not like to pay full price for anything. If there's a coupon to use, I'm going to use it. I like to get the most bang for my buck, especially now, with how grocery prices are running.

In today's haul, I bought 3 different brands of yogurt.

I've also been cooking for the crew at Cloud 9 Nine farms. The consensus is that they like it. I bought 3 cake mixes and 3 frostings that will work perfectly for desserts when I make lunch.

I bought a lot of zucchini. I plan on making zucchini relish to can up in the next few days. My plant is not producing yet and I'm not sure if it actually will or not.

This watermelon weighs in at over 15-1/2 pounds. This goes to Cloud 9 tomorrow for everyone to enjoy.

This is a 10 pound bag of juicing carrots. We're not going to juice them, however. These get set out for the deer and the rabbits.

Here are the cake mixes that coincide with the frostings.
I will take a bit of help from a boxed mix from time to time.

We eat a lot of chicken. I find that getting boneless skinless chicken breasts from the meat counter and having them package them up in pairs works out great for a quick dinner.

Sorry for the blur. Bob wanted some chocolate chip cookies, so he grabbed Chips Ahoy.

These are a new flavor of Chobani that I'm curious to try. They are raspberry-lemonade. We picked up some deli potato salad to go with our burgers tonight and I got my weekly ration of bananas. I eat one a day. The potassium helps with leg cramps. I don't like bananas at all. I love the flavor, but the texture is not my favorite.

Here's the run down of what I bought:

3 boxes Betty Crocker cake mix. These were 99 cents each if you bought 5 or more.

3 containers Betty Crocker frosting. These were part of the 99 cents deal along with the cake mixes. We're not sure if we could only get 5 at this price or if we got one of the frostings that wasn't part of the deal, but one of them cost $1.99.

Chips Ahoy cookies. These were 2/$7. It's overpriced junk, but Bob likes them, so whatever.

8 Yoplait yogurts. I downloaded a digital coupon onto my loyalty card. These were 27 cents each, with a limit of 8. I limited out on them.

2 Chobani yogurts. These were $1.49 each. If I would have bought a few more, I could have gotten for like 79 cents each, but I don't want that many yogurts hanging around. They have a tendency to get overlooked and go bad.

2 Icelandic skyr yogurts. These were on sale for $1.29 each. I had a coupon for $1 off of 2. That made these 79 cents each.

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts. These were $3.99 per pound at the meat counter. I prefer to buy them there because I've been stung too many times by that woody chicken breast stuff when I buy them in the value sized packages.

1.63 pounds of bananas. These are 65 cents per pound.

3.57 pounds of zucchini. These are 1.49 per pound.

10 pound bag of juicing carrots. The tag on the shelf said that these were $7.99. They rang up for $5.99.

15.69 pound watermelon. I downloaded a digital coupon onto my loyalty card. Any watermelon but the personal sized ones were 19 cents per pound. There was a limit of 1.

Deli deviled egg potato salad. I think this was like $3.69 per pound. We paid $4.65 for it.

I had a $1 off 2 Icelandic skyr yogurt coupon
I had a $3 off a purchase of $3 or more coupon
I had a $10 off $10 worth of produce coupon

My grand total walking out the door was $31.46. This is enough groceries to get the 2 of us through the week and I was able to stock up on some frivolous sweet items for future use.

That is how I shop for my household.
What about you? Do you have a budget? Do you shop weekly, every 2 weeks or monthly? Let me know in the comments below.

Tomato Garden August 2022

 I realized that I've yet to do a post that is solely about my tomato garden area. This was the first year that I've grown tomato from seed. If you haven't done that, I highly encourage people to try it out. It's not as hard as I had made it out to be. They are rather forgiving. Anyhow, I seeded them all in on April 1st and I got them all potted out in mid-June due to wacky weather. We had a super wet June here and most of my warm weather crops are a month behind. No matter. This is the most tomatoes that I've ever grown in a summer and we're already figuring out how to double this amount next year.

These are the tomatoes that are in the first row. I give 1 foot of space for each variety and I have them planted out in 5 gallon grow bags. We have 2 10-foot long, 6-foot high chain length fence panels secured on t-posts and I use plastic clips to secure the plants to the fence.

My first tomatoes are starting to blush. These are Isis Candy Cherry.

Yes, my plants are in various stages of yellow. Due to growing in fabric bags, we have to water more often. Since I have beds/gardens spread out all over the place, it would take hours to walk around to everything and water it. We opted to use sprinklers. It's not the most conducive way to get water to tomato plants as they don't like to have their leaves wet. We have found out that if we water at night, we get less burned leaves. So that's what we do. We put the sprinkler on them for about 30 minutes nightly.

These are Purple Russian tomatoes. They are a plum shaped black variety. The black tomato flavor profile has always been my favorite.

These are the Black Krims and the Red Dumplin Winner Pinks. 
Black Krims are, hands down, my favorite tomato as far as taste goes. I've yet to find another tomato that can beat the taste of a Krim.

Here's a closer look at the Red Dumplin Winner Pink tomatoes. This variety came from Tomato Jim Wyant.

Here's another shot of those Purple Russian tomatoes. They will sure look pretty once they start to blush.

These are baby Orange Jazz tomatoes. I have a particular fondness for orange tomato varieties. I love the flavor of them. Not the yellows so much, but the oranges.

Here's another variety that falls into the orange category that I'm anxious to try. This a Thorburn's Terra Cotta.

This is my group of the 5 tomatoes that I did not grow from seed. The Isis Candy Cherry is one that I bought and the 2 Black Krims, the Purple Russian and the Bonny Best are from my friend, Jean.

Here is Bob's hand for size perspective on these Isis Candy Cherry tomatoes. Like I explained, I know exactly why we have such yellow leaves on there.

Bob's hand for perspective on one of the Black Krims.

Another pair of Black Krims. One can never have too many Black Krim tomatoes to enjoy.

This looking down the middle aisle of the tomato garden from the side that I'm growing Sart Roloise on. Those bigger ones are Bulls Heart Red.

I believe that every single plant has set fruit now. This is a baby Dark Galaxy.

Here's a cluster of Cream Sausage. These are a determinate white paste variety. I'm very anxious to try them and see what a white tomato tastes like. I've never had one.

Everywhere I turn the camera in there, I'm finding more and more tomatoes. These are Cascade Lava.

Here are some of the Opalkas. I have 5 Opalka plants. I'm happy that I was able to get that many! These are for processing.

These are Prairie Fire tomatoes. I purchased the seed for these from Baker Creek. I planted these out to can up. The description said that they are very sweet, so I'm hoping that when I make sauce, I won't need to add very much sugar by adding these in.

Another shot of an Opalka tomato. Opalkas, due to their sheer production, will always have a place in my garden from now on.

No tomato garden would be complete without a picture of our volunteer er...tomato. I had Bob stand in front of it to show how big it's gotten. I don't think it will produce squat but, it's a determined little bugger, so who am I to pull it up? I'll let it go and see what it does.

These Opalkas are odd shaped tomatoes and that's what makes them so easy to identify especially when the names have washed off the tags. Next time, I'll use a pencil.

These are Pink Fang. The seeds came from Baker Creek. These are another paste variety that I planted to grow out for canning up.

Here's my tomato garden oddity. This is a Reisetomate. I've been wanting to grow this particular variety for the past 10 years. I cannot wait to see this ripe. If I like it, I'll grow it again next year to save seeds from. These are also called "Traveler's Tomato".
They are cool to look at because they look like a deformed tomato.

This is my garden beauty this year. This is a Sart Roloise. Once fully ripe, these are white and blue. I can't wait to see this fully ripe. I have 2 of these plants out there on the fence.

Here's another shot of the Reisetomate. It's just really cool and I can't quit looking at it!

Another Sart Roloise. I'm beyond happy that I was able to get these to produce.

This is a Bulls  Heart Red. This is another variety that I planted out for canning.

Baby Prairie Fire tomatoes. I'm pretty pleased with their production. I can't wait to taste these guys.

Here's another shot of the Cascade Lava tomatoes. These are a Brad Gates variety. I grew these out because of the name. I live in the Cascade Mountain foothills and I live very near Mt. St. Helens, so the name means something to me.

And yet more baby Opalkas. What can I say? I have 32 tomato plants and 5 of those are Opalka.

I am also growing 4 tomatillo plants. I planted 2 of them from seed and 2 I bought from our local farmers market because I wasn't sure if I would get the tomatillos that I planted to maturity or not. As it stands right now, I couldn't tell which are the ones that I grew or which are the ones that I bought.

This is a shot from the center aisle of my tomato garden looking out toward our cat pen. It's amazing to me that everywhere I point the camera, there are tomatoes!

Everywhere I look, I've got these small, stunted, sturdy tomato plants producing. It's a marvel to me!

One of my last parting shots of the Sart Roloise. It's just a stunning looking tomato, no matter how you look at it. That's why I put these right at the end of the row, closest to my deck. I want to sit here and look out my dining room window, while I type out this blog post, and look at them.

I did the same thing with the Reisetomate. I put them right at the end of the row, right in my line of sight.

If anyone is curious as to just how big Opalkas get, there's Bob's hand for perspective. Bob is 6'1" and has some catcher's mitts for hands.

 
Here's a more clear shot of my tomatillos. Again, I don't know if I grew this one or not. I just know that all four bushes are producing and they love the hot weather.
I will hopefully not have to purchase supplemental tomatillos for green salsa and enchilada sauce, but if I do, I know that next year, I need to double the amount I grow and I'll put them in the greenhouse.

Oh, yes, before I forget. We ordered another greenhouse like the one we have up, but it's a 20 foot long one.

Tomatillo blossoms. We still need to put a few things in place, such as our fifth wheel hitch.

Here's my tomato garden. I will always grow them up using a chain length fence as a trellis. It's super easy to throw a tarp over the top to protect them if we're looking at getting a deluge of rain.
I also like how neat and tidy this looks. My plan is to get another 2-3 fence panels put up to grow tomatoes on. I just need to figure out where to put them.

I could possibly just continue off the back of these and have rows of 20 instead of 10. We'll have to wait and see.

By garden time next year, that pile of metal will be gone. That's for our canopy that goes over our trailer. As soon as Bob gets a free few days, he's going to pay someone to come up and help him get that thing up over the trailer. I told him he can do it whenever just as long as it's done by this winter.

A parting look at my tomato garden this morning. I love these foggy, overcast mornings, when the sun just starts to push the fog out and then the fog fights back and covers the sun again. It's soothing to me as I sit and look at my tomato garden out of my dining room window, drinking my coffee and writing this blog post.

Thanks for taking the tour with me.