Peach jam, for the masses

The peaches were a special answer to prayer for me. While picking the raspberries I realized there were not going to be as many this year as usual, and I started wondering what would be a good substitute for jam this winter. By this late in August the peaches in the store are usually all sold or overripe, but when Leah mentioned she had seen someone with good peaches as recent as a week ago, I gave the store a call. What do you know but they had 3 lugs left! I only wanted 2, which strangely enough came up to almost exactly as much money as we had in the jar from milk. Turning our milk into jam I think you could say. :D I was still worried that the peaches were going to be overripe, or so close to ripe that after sitting in the box over Sunday I would lose a bunch of them. I figured it was worth a try anyway, and, just like God is apt to do it seems, they were a tad green yet. By Monday they were perfect! We do serve a God who cares about the little things, even jam! I really enjoyed making the jam this year, the peaches were so beautiful and in spite of spreading my operation all over the house I was able to get them all done by 7 pm. Please find below an illustrated guide to making peach jam, a lot of peach jam...

Step 1: Prepare peaches for their trip into hot water (which makes the skins slip off). This constitutes putting some in a wire basket, putting others on the table, and trying to get a nice picture. This step also makes you wish Hillary were here to take the good picture...
Step 2: Dunk the peaches. In this step it is vital to not only be extremely careful not to dump/splash/spill hot water or peaches on oneself, but also to loudly announce the level of danger you are about to encounter and make sure everyone takes one last look at your beautiful face, just in case. Oh, and making concentrating faces helps too.

Step 3: Put the peaches in cold water and remove the skins. If you happen to be lucky enough to get a helper for this part, try to avoid any peach skin fights at this stage. It is way to early on to start throwing food at each other...

Step 4 (aka the first snitching stage): Dice the peaches. This is best time to start tasting the peaches, just to make sure they are going to make good jam. I forgot to mention back during step 1 that waiting for the water to boil is a great time to get a little school done. Seeing Linus in the background of this picture reminded me to always keep your homework handy when canning, because there might come a chance to do a few quick things here and there.

Step 5: Put in the magic, very sour, white powder. It is very important to avoid tasting at this step, unless you REALLY like sour stuff. Side note, even though the pectin instructions insist that your jam will implode and your computer will get a virus if you even slightly deviate from their exact recipe, using a little less pectin than is called for makes a jam of slightly more spreadable consistency we really like. Just a side note.

Step 6: After the jam comes to a boil with just the pectin, add the sugar. I am really rethinking putting this picture up here, since it shows just how much sugar I put in there. And I did not even put in as much as it called for...

Step 7: Call in backup to stir the jam (now sugared) until it boils again. Leah very cheerfully stirred for at least 45 minutes, all the while listening to her Hebrew CD. She followed along in her English Bible, as you can see. In the mean time I washed jars, evaluated a teaching situation for school, and got the lids and rings ready. It is almost done!!

Step 8 (which oddly resembles step 2): Fill the jars. This is also the best tasting step. After the jars are full, put on the lids and rings and boiling water bath for 10 minutes. And, tada, you have jam!!

There is something really beautiful about peach jam. Especially when I know I have it because my Father cares enough to provide even peaches. Anyone up for a taste? Stop by and visit sometime and we will make you some famous biscuits to go with it...