Inner cultural Mormon, Day 2

My darling little canning kit that my Mommy got me last Christmas.  It works in a regular stockpot, which is awesome since I have a flat surface stove and can't use the regular ridged-bottom canners.  But you'll notice it only has room for 3 jars - and it doesn't do anything bigger than a pint.  Pints are really perfect for me, but I may have to figure something bigger out if I really get into canning - doing 3 jars at a time is a lot slower than 7!

6 half pints of raspberry jam.  I know, I know - I said I was going to wait.  But raspberry jam is sort of driving this whole thing, and the raspberries looked so good today, and the price wasn't bad at all, so I thought I'd get some done.  You know, in case I decide I hate this some time in the next 24 hours.  I went half way between the regular sugar and low sugar amounts, and it's just on the edge of a bit tart.  I thought I'd blown it at first, but after a couple of bites I realized it was pretty darn good.  (I have about a pint more in the fridge that I kept out for now.)  Then I had some on a PB&J and realized it was actually really awesome.  You can really taste the raspberry.  I think I'm just so used to over-sweetened store stuff at this point.  So I taste tested with my open jar of Smuckers.  Man, I win, hands down!  Jam was a lot easier than I remembered it being - but then I started thinking that I don't remember Mom making me help with jam that much.  This is it from here on out - now that I've realized how stinking easy it is to do homemade, I'm not paying for that store stuff.

4 pints of cinnamon-vanilla pears and 3 pints of spicy pickled carrots.  I still have a bunch of pears to do, but I wanted to try the cinnamon-vanilla on just a batch to see if I liked it before committing with all the pears.  I do like it, but not with cottage cheese.  It's almost dessert like, even though there isn't much sugar at all.  And I definitely want some for cottage cheese, so the rest I think I will just do regular.  I have to clean the church tomorrow, then do two recruiting visits on campus, but I think I'll still get the rest done tomorrow - especially since I have the pears.  The 4th pint was a surprise - not exactly a welcome one, since I'd tried to plan everything out to go in sets of 3 to match the canner.  20 extra minutes of boiling water heat for one jar is not something I will do again!  On the other hand, I had even more, so I already have a tupperware container in the fridge.  The brown spot on the bottom is the piece of cinnamon stick - if I do these again, I may just put in the whole stick to look prettier.  Or maybe hide it in the middle.  Of course, I totally opted to chop them up for ease of use, even though that isn't as pretty, so I'm not sure why I'm worried about what the cinnamon stick looks like.  The carrots were an impulse.  I was having so much fun, and I had baby carrots in the fridge I had bought just to eat so I thought why not?  They aren't as pretty as chopping up carrot sticks to fit the height of the jar, but I just wanted to give pickling a try.  These were hard - not to make, but because you can't sample right away!  Also, I wanted extra of these to do some fridge pickles, and this is the one thing that I was right on about.  This certainly doesn't feel as bounteous as those marathon days of yore putting up bushels of peaches (I swear - do not believe my mother when she says it wasn't that bad!).  On the other hand, it didn't take as long, was actually a lot of fun, and is pretty reasonable when you consider that I'm not a family of 7.  I may have to expand on my initial list of things to put up - not peaches! - but maybe do some jars of tomatoes as well.  I'd forgotten how cool it feels to see rows (even short rows) of home-canned goodness just waiting for winter consumption.