blueberry jam.

 

well the endless amounts of snow are certainly making me productive on the cooking and blog front. hopefully it's not reversing all my healthy efforts since we're getting little exercise besides a walk to 7-11 yesterday...

apparently, i forgot nelson's two blizzard necessities.

 

ew to both red bull and crab chips. you're on your own there dear.

anyway we got back from our winter walk and i wanted to make jam. i realized on friday that i bought this pint of blueberries a few days ago and they had very little life left to them. the only recipe i could find that wasn't totally going to add a muffin top to  my frame was jam, although i'm dying to try the blueberry boy bait!

maybe another time.

so a jam recipe has pretty much basic ingredients you would have around your house. fruit, sugar, lemon juice and water. except one. it's called pectin. pectin is basically a thickening agent that makes fruit jell, or in this case jam:D

so during the marathon grocery shopping event friday i had to pick up pectin. the packaging on this ridiculously adorable box of pectin totally sold me with its major anthropologie style...

 

how friggin' cute is this? it makes me want to be a jamstress!

ok so i adapted this recipe from allrecipes because i had way less blueberries then their original recipe called for, i had a lemon instead of a lime, it needed more water and the sugar just seemed WAY too excessive for me.

so i added almost 2 cups of blueberries to a sauce pan (probably about 1 3/4 cup), with about 4 tablespoons of lemon juice, half a pack of pectin and 1/4 cup of water.

 

looks totally nasty right? i thought so too.

put this on medium heat on the stove and stir frequently, about 10 minutes. i ended up adding at least another 1/3 cup of water to the pan as this cooked together. the blueberries broke down and i kind of mashed them with the side of my spoonula. the extra water was really necessary because the jam was sticking to the sides of the pan with extreme force! once it sort of comes to a boil you should add your sugar. i halved the recipe i cribbed from, so just 1 cup of sugar was added.

 

keep stirring for about another 5-10 minutes, but lower the heat a bit. 

add more water if jam sticks with too much gumption...

let cool a few minutes and pour into your jar. i just used an old salsa jar that i cleaned of course, and soaked in boiling in water for about an hour to ensure your jam has no green chili aftertaste.

 

i wish i'd had these little jar covers, but this was pretty cute on its own.

let jam cool in fridge at least an hour.

then sample on cute spoon.

and spread on toasted rye bread.

the uses for jam are plentiful, believe you me. when i lived in london during college i discovered the many uses for jam as i attempted to tighten the purse strings on my wallet that always seemed to want to open at H & M (this was 1999, H & M had not made it to the United States yet! So shopping their was a new world!), as well as Top Shop, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, etc. Jam was stirred into oatmeal, had pretzels dipped into it, was drizzled on ice cream, was topped onto scones (v. british of course) and always eaten on toasty toast.