Accomplishing Goals: Finishing up the Canning!

  Now, if I was Martha Stewart I would just say, "Tada!  I canned and here is what I did!", but I am NOT Martha Stewart and my story is always more complicated then it was supposed to be! If you remember, the night I left off of jam making I had realized that I had not enough pectin. I'm starting this night off right with the proper amount this time!!

  I stirred the pectin into the strawberries and brought it to a rolling boil.

      The instructions then said to pour all the sugar in at one time...that is 14 cups of sugar folks.  WOW!

    Things began to go wrong when I endeavored to pour the sugar and take pictures of the process at the same time.  Turns out I am no Pioneer Woman when it comes to taking pictures while cooking!  Some of the sugar, which I had been cautioned to measure exactly missed the dutch oven and landed on the hot surface of the electric stove.  Sugar began melting, smoke began rising, the strawberries were supposed to be continuously stirred at this point, I moved a pan from the stove and set it on a towel as a pot holder, the towel started smoking, I was taking pictures, stirring violently boiling strawberries, and attempting to get the sugar off the stove!

The camera was kind enough not to pick up the full amount of smoke from burning sugar.

     I quickly went from happy to sweaty/stressed.

 
    Well great, now I had less sugar in the strawberries than I was supposed to have...I just added a little bit more and prayed my jam would still turn out okay.

     After all the commotion died down I thought to myself, "Hey, your eight months pregnant and barefoot attempting to bring really hot jam to a, "violent boil",..maybe you should put some shoes on!? (idiot)".

    Okay, shoes on, strawberries reached the point of boiling violently.  Let me show you what that looks like.  (I keep using the word "violently" because that is what the instructions told me to let happen.  "Violently boil".)

    After the violent boiling is done you have to skim the scum off the top of the strawberry/jam/pectin mixture as best as possible.

 
   Now, finally, it was time to take the jars out of the hot water and put the jam into them!  Now we were getting somewhere!  I did one first without taking pictures of the process so that I wouldn't have a "sugar spilling on the hot stove incident".

     Okay, since that happened safely enough I'll take pictures and show you what I'm doing!  First, using tongs, take one of the jars out of the simmering water, drain it and place it on the towel.

    Then scoop some of the hot jam out of the pot and pour it carefully into the jar using a wide mouthed funnel.  You want to fill the jar, leaving a 1/4 inch space at top.  I then slid a knife around the edges of the jar to encourage air pockets to be filled.  Place the round part of the lid on the jar and screw on the lid!

     At this point everything fell apart again.  Ugh.  The water bath canner I was using is for quart sized jars.  I put the first jar in the hot water and it immediately fell sidewise and slip slided all over the place.  Ugh!!  In total frustration I called Yvonne and asked her to come over and help me.  Here I am waiting again for Yvonne to save me, feeling totally fed up.

  Yvonne brought over a calender with the brilliant idea of placing the jars inside the calender rather than on the rack.  She was a bit worried about it not being far enough off the bottom of the pan so I utilized a technique my friend Carla, over at SixLittleDucklings, taught me to lift the jars up.  I used the rings from some cans to give it added lift!

     I had to wait quite awhile for the water to reach a rolling boil at which point I set the timer for 10 minutes.  After that, I lifted out the jars one by one, setting them on the counter.  I began to hear the sound every person that undertakes the process of canning waits to hear!  The symphonic popping of cans being pressurized! Exhausted, I turned off the burners, left the cans to pop and cool, and fell into bed.  I could only hope that the jam was good.  After all my mishaps I had my misgivings. 

  The following morning Yvonne stopped in for breakfast and we open my first ever jar of canned anything.  Strawberry Jam.  I spread a little bit on an english muffin and bit in.  I have to tell you all.  I cried a little.  It was GREAT!  I didn't realize until that moment how AWESOME it would feel to create something wonderful from fresh food, put it in a jar, and have it sitting on the table next to you!  I felt so proud!  It made everything worth it.  I am TOTALLY going to do this again and I know the next time it will go smoother!  And so I present the fruit of my labor!