My First Canning Adventure

I remember my mom and grandma canning batch after batch of tomatoes. Enough tomatoes to last a lifetime, it seemed. And jams. And who knows what else. I've always wanted to do it, but after being food safety certified and listening to several canning horror stories from educators at UW Extension I was a bit paranoid.

Then, canning became cool. It was everywhere. Target, blogs, newspapers, etc. One of my favorite blogs, by the way, is Food in Jars. Check it out if you have any interest in canning. I got a bit more confident after reading more and more.

I drug my son with me and we picked 3 pints of raspberries at Blue Skies Farm. We had beautiful weather, yummy fruit and a great time. If you are local, visit Blue Skies. They are great and their farm is organic. Awesome!

I decided to turn this



into some jam.

The recipe I use for raspberry peach jam (yum!) came from this blog, Fiber Fool. (Thanks!)

So, I went from the berries (and peaches) to this:

">

Yeah!! Sorry for the bad pic, but all I had was my phone. Anyway, success! I took the jam out and heard the jars pop right away--sweet sound of success. I let them sit for the recommended 24 hours and then noticed that there was some condensation on the top of the lid inside the jar. What?!? Anyone reading? Do you have any ideas on why that happened? I ended up opening them all and freezing. That was sad, but I think I'll still try again.