Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Camera, Canning & Caves

Last night I had a four hour adventure in canning some grape jam. This is the only pic I have of it and I didn't know this pic had even taken until I uploaded it to the computer. Why is that?? you ask.
Oh, because my husband decided to take the camera to this hole in the earth...
...and take pictures of him and his firefighter buddies spelunking. Then proceeded to drop the camera on some rock and crack the screen. I wasn't sure if it still took pics so I tried this morning.
And that's why this is my only pic of my big canning adventure:
And BOY was it an adventure. I used a recipe out of Better Homes and Garden cookbook. "Prep time 65 min. Cook time 5 min." ACTUAL prep time: 3.5 HOURS. ACTUAL cook time: still 5 min but did two batches AND you start timing the 5 minutes when it's at a full rolling boil which takes up to ten minutes. REALLY?? Better Homes and Garden couldn't have suggested a prep time of 65 min. to 3 hours?? Here's why...you de-skin half the grapes, you soften the grapes in pot on burner, sieve the grapes to remove cooked skin and seeds, measure pulp and juice, pour back into pan, heat up, add water and sugar and bring to full rolling boil. Upon full rolling boil, you time it for 12 minutes OR until the mixture has reached a gelling point. One hour and fifteen minutes of rolling boil time later....STILL NOT GELLING!! At 10:10pm we called it quits. I say "we" because my neighbor came to assist and stayed the whole four hours. She was a trooper! Can you imagine how long it would have taken me had I been doing it alone?? So, we jarred it, lidded them, put them BACK into a bath of hot water, brought them to ANOTHER boil and timed 5 minutes. Whew! By the time we finished the second batch and covered them with a cloth to cool the night on the counter, it was 11pm. INSANE! AND, no pictures to show what I did...but here's one of our un-amused kitty:
Yes...poor camera....broken lense cover, broken screen...it's had a rough life.

Next up...salsa!! Just need a few more tomatoes to ripen up. Like how the yellow squash had to squeeze into the pic??

1 comment:

lajamison said...

The jam looks great.

Marc is crazy for getting into a cave like that.

I love the look of canned foods. I will be doing saurkraut this weekend.