A decision is made

When the new semester starts and I can visit the farmer's market again, I am canning everything I can for winter. No joke.

Ever since my boyfriend and I discovered this amazing jam-making site (well, hub), we've been a tad obsessed. Admittedly, we have only made two batches of jam, but we hope to someday make all of the recipes there. Plus, I really want to make my own ketchup because there is probably no way that the store-bought stuff is safe, and also because it would be awesome to recreate that opening scene from Meet Me in St. Louis (I'm a movie nerd).

I started to remember how many amazing fruit seemed to go to waste at my hands. I would buy a small package of plums thinking that they would be a snack through the next week and then the last third would be left to sit and go soft. I would still eat them, but without the relish that I had when I first bought them. Then when winter came  I prayed for some sort of fresh fruity flavors. That's when Beaumont's came along. The Beaumont's jam lady came to know my boyfriend and I by sight and it even came to the point when she knew we were after her strawberry rhubarb jam.

The canning funnel: the one kitchen accessory I never knew I needed

So why can't we do it too? We could even preserve tomatoes or other veggies through canning or even freezing them, which is how some of the farm stands were able to sell peppers during the drudgery of March (that month should secede from the calendar year). Since my boyfriend is rather committed to eating only in-season foods (i.e. no grocery store veggies), this might be a way to save some peppers or plums when we crave them.

Plus, it will be fun. Both times that we've made jam have been wonderful experiences. My boyfriend and I are still amateurs, so when we made dandelion jelly we forgot to increase the amount of pectin needed to thicken the amount of the dandelion infusion we made. The result was a thin mixture closer to Jell-O than jelly, but it was still great. It's just little mishaps like this that indicate more practice in determining when the jam is thick enough, but at least we'll have some delicious things when we're done.

I think the most interesting thing I've noticed while perusing the jam sites is the fact that a bunch of recipes include rosemary. Here I was thinking that it was merely the perfect spice for beef or potatoes, but I guess it also compliments those plums I'll buy once I get to the market!

(image from here)