The Domestic Adventures of....Sarah and David

David stirring our salsa, He's so cute!

I've really been wanting to do some canning. Don't ask me why but it has just seemed like a fun, productive, and easy thing to do. Turns out I was right! Canning is so much fun! It's my new favorite hobby and an awesome date! I know i sound like a complete dork but I'm ok with it. For any of you boys that are thinking "poor David, Sarah made him do this" I want you to know that he thought it was awesome too!

The end result of our amazing salsa!

The first thing we tried out was homemade salsa. Totally useful and so yummy! Back when i was in Young Women's (church program for girls 12-18) one of our leaders taught us how to can salsa. It was so easy! It only took a couple of hours start to finish and now we have great salsa! We gave some to Sukie and Carebear and had some for ourselves too! It turned out pretty mild but we will definitely be making more pretty soon so we can make it spicier. It was fun to make and have and almost more fun to give away.

De-pitting the plums

Yesterday we canned some plum jam! For anyone who doesn't know (which is probably most everyone who reads this) there are tons of plum trees on campus. The university doesn't do anything with the plums, they just fall on the ground and rot if no one eats them. We've been enjoying them on the way home from school for the past few weeks and now they are really ripe, perfect for jam! We picked a big bag full and brought them over to Carebear's to can (she has bigger pots than we do, the perks of being married :) The most tedious part of the canning process was getting the pits out of the plums. We didn't figure out a better way to do it than just rolling up our sleeves and doing it by had so we got all juicy. It was fun though!

Cute Alice

At least we had cute company while we were de-pitting! We gave Alice a plum in her little mesh Binky thing and she loved it! She sucked it dry and then wanted another. She also got all sticky from the juicy plums.

Domestica!

After we got all of the pits out we added lemon juice, water, and lots of sugar and boiled it all on the stove. Then we added some fruit pectin and cinnamon. After all of the boiling was done we poured it into jars. It made 6 pint size jars! Yay!


Then we put the jars in a "boiling bath" for 10 minutes to get them all sealed up! All of the jars sealed well and now we have a bunch of plum jam! We left a couple of jars with Carebear and we'll be giving some more away and i love it! I feel so domestic! Haha!

Our Finished Product!

I'm really excited to try the Jam! Actually it didn't Jell super well so it's more like syrup but that will be great on pancakes and we could still use it on bread or rolls so it's a win-win :) Like i said earlier, i think I'm addicted to canning! Carebear and i are already planning future canning projects like pickles, more salsa, and tomato sauce. I'm also really looking forward to having a garden and some fruit trees so that I can can a lot of stuff! Yup, I'm addicted but it's a healthy addiction right? Especially since it's so easy and productive. I thought that canning would be harder or take more time but it doesn't! Ok now i just sound like an infomercial so I'll stop. If anyone wants to can with me or wants the recipes let me know!