Friday, February 11, 2011

18 bottles of jam on the wall, 18 bottles of jam ...

I've been reading everything in sight, including cookbooks. I came across a few recipes to try and today, I got the ingredients. After three hours, I had 10 bottles of lemon pineapple jam and eight bottles of white grape jelly made. The ingredients cost about $14 so that works out to around 77 cents per eight ounce bottle - definitely a bargain, if you don't count labor costs. Plus, homemade jam is always better - even if it looks like the grape jelly isn't gelling - grrrr. And I even followed the directions for a change ...

4 comments:

  1. Yum, sounds delicious!

    And the low price surprises me, I always thought it would be more... you'd pay 4-5 times that at the store.

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  2. Well, a single bottle of Welch's grape jelly is $3.77 here. Jam making can be inexpensive and surprising as long as you already own the bottles - you can reuse them for a long time but buying them at first can be pretty expensive. I bought tons of bottles years ago so I'm set for life. The surprising part comes from where you get your ingredients - the pineapple came from cans (it's preferred that you use canned and not fresh for pineapple) and the grape juice for the jelly came from bottled grape juice that you buy at the grocery store. Of course, if you have fresh produce, you use that when it's in season.

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  3. I love to make jams and jellies. One of my grand kids is in love with the mango jam we made. I also love to do pickles.

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  4. If I do say so myself, I make a really good strawberry jam and the best grapefruit marmalade! I'll never go back to store-bought jam. But my pickle-making abilities are limited - I've never made any really good ones except for the occasional batch of freezer pickles. I think the problem is with the fact I like 'em sour and my sweetie prefers them sweeter.

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