Canning day with my Momma!!

     So I had the most amazing day with my mom last weekend. We decided to have a "canning" day!! We made a few jams, jellies and 1 can of pickled beets. (We thought the garden had more beets than it actually did.) Since I've never had beets, let alone pickled beets I was excited to make that one can so I could try them. I've been canning pickles at home with my Nana's recipe. I can't wait to can with Nana. I want to can some salsa and other tomato stuff with her. So I'm looking forward to tons more canning with my mom and Nana this summer. Let me show you some of the stuff we canned over last weekend. 

   We used the water bath method for all of these recipes so I'm not going to go into all that jazz about sterilizing the jars etc. I will share cooking times though of course!!!

  We ended up making blackberry jam, cranberry sauce, one jar of pickled beets,  jalapeño jelly, watermelon jelly and our own concoction that we named Triple Berry Threat Jam. 

  My mom had found a recipe for the watermelon jelly and we just had to try it!

      Process up some watermelon until you have 3 cups of liquid. Add the liquid to the pan with 2 cups of sugar and 1/4 cups lemon juice. Let this simmer for about 10 mins but make sure you don't simmer it where is reduces a bunch. 

   After you simmer it add about 3.5 tablespoons of powdered pectin. Let simmer about 5 more minutes. Now just add to your jars with about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of headspace. 

   Water bath for about 10 mins then let cool. Ours sealed within about 10-15 minutes. (The jars sealing is probably one of the best sounds ever!!!!) :-) 

  Yes it's that easy!! This recipe made us four 1/2 pint jars. So here's my review on this: it's different. It definitely tastes like watermelon which is delicious! I'm just not use to that taste in a jelly. If you love (or even like) watermelon you should give this a try. Especially when your craving it mid winter it will be a nice little treat!! :)

  Alright let's move onto the jalapeño jelly. 

If you've never tried it because your scared it won't taste good then you have to at least give it a shot! Especially when you spread a little cream cheese on a cracker and top it with a little of the jelly. YUM! Try that with summer sausage too! (We have deer sausage around our house and that's just as yummy!) 

   We started off with about 18 jalapeños. They were all different sizes. Take out all the seeds and ribs. We ended up leaving about 3 of them whole. Next time I will leave about half of them whole because we love spicy and the jelly wasn't quite spicy enough for our taste. Now process them all up with a cup of apple cider vinegar. After they are all processed up into nice and tiny pieces them add them to your pan. Add another cup of apple cider vinegar, 4 cups of sugar, a little pat of butter and 2-3 drops of green food coloring. Bring to a boil for about 10 minutes. The butter is only added to keep the foam down. 

 

   After you have boiled for about 10 minutes you can add 2 packages of liquid pectin. Boil for another 5 minutes. 

Add to your jars and water bath for 10 minutes more. 

And done!!! See how easy canning is?? 

The jalapeño jelly was delicious!!! I could have used it a little more spicy but it still turned out wonderful!! 

I'm going to make a separate post for the Triple Berry Threat Jam because I would like to get into that a little more further. So stay tuned for that post sometime tonight or tomorrow. 

Watermelon Jelly:

3 cups puréed watermelon

2 cups sugar

3.5 tablespoons powdered pectin

1/4 cup lemon juice

Jalapeño Jelly:

15-18 jalapeños

2 cups apple cider vinegar

4 cups sugar

2 packages liquid pectin

2-3 drops green food coloring (optional)

A pat of butter (optional)