Jam!

With all this lovely free time (oh sweet, sweet summer) Ian and I have been making jam. This is the first time that we've done with solo and, if I do say so myself, we seem to be rather good at it. And good at making lots of it. I realized that by buying fruit by the box one can get quite a deal. So I bought a box of apricots. What I didn't realize is that one simple box of apricots will make way more jam than we can eat.
This didn't stop us from making it. And then making an apple butter. The apples were off the tree and totally free! Then on the way home from the west side we bought a box of plums and made some plum jam and plum/apple butter.

This is us working with our fancy new toy; the food mill. The top pot in the pot double stack is not actually a pot! It is a slightly arcane device that separates the tasty fruit meat from the not so tasty skins. For an apple butter the skins are cooked for a while so that they release pectin (I think) then run though a food mill. We couldn't find an old-fashioned one at the store new (only expensive plug in the wall kind) but did manage to pick one up at the antique store.
We went a little crazy (not with the food mill but with the jam making) and now we have tons of tasty jam on our hands. My favorite is the plum. For this reason none of it will be exported. You must visit to taste it. Ian loves the apricot best. But maybe we are not done. Maybe we will be ambitious and turn the huckleberries in the fridge into jam. Either way I think we're onto something here.