No Jam

Well, we packed the van (full to the brim I might add) and headed to Forrest City to make jam. I was looking forward to it, but knew it would be a long day. No sooner do we get there then my parents said the kitchen we use was with out power. It seems a transformer blew. Yay. Now to try again next week. Sad to say though, I won't have any jam for the opening day of MFM 2010.

Getting ready

Well, the market's starting soon and I have so much to do. I have so many aprons that are in some stage of being made. Neck ties to be sewn on, waistbands and ties to be cut out, rick rack to be added. Right now I have only 5 that are completely finished, but I have another 8 that are all partially finished. To top that off, I have so many that I have designed in my head that I haven't even started on. I need a great big workshop for all this stuff. There's bias tape everywhere and don't even get me started on all the fabric. I don't actually have a sewing room, but a dining room that's been taken over. And guess what?! We use our dining table every night for dinner! All of it gets moved before we eat, then put back after we're done. What a mess it tends to be.

Now it's time to start back to making jams too. We picked and picked - well mostly my dear sweet daddy picked and picked - lots of fruit and what we couldn't manage to use at the time got frozen. A lot of work it is, but it's worth it. The crabapples take ages to get ready for jam making. You first have to cut the blossom ends off and then remove the stems, then they have to be washed well and cooked down, slowly, with water to turn them into pulp. That has to go through a food mill to get all the seeds and skin off. We're talking tiny little apples, not a whole lot bigger than a cherry. You can't peel all of them. The food mill takes forever, but it's the best thing I've found for the job. Then you can finally get to the jam making. There is of course only so much jam that can be made at one time, hence the need for freezing the pulp. Needless to say, I still have some so I'll be making crabapple jam tomorrow, along with peach jam, persimmon jam & sweet potato butter. When the strawberries my parents planted are ready I'll be making some strawberry freezer jam. I was told by the health dept. that I could make it and sell it, but it would have to be sold to go straight into the fridge and not the freezer since it would have been frozen once already. Anyway, the reason for freezer jam and not regular cooked strawberry jam is the fact that it somehow tastes like the best strawberries ever if they haven't been cooked. The stuff is amazing! We love to eat it anyway we can, and it really does make the best filling for a strawberry cake too. The boys eat strawberry jam & peanut butter sandwiches and it's great on cornbread - or so I'm told (I haven't quite bought into that one).

One week to go - hope I get it all done!