Making jam

We are watching my little cousins for a few days, so I am taking the opportunity to pass of the joy of jam making to the younger generation, or rather, the younger half of my generation. We are currently suffering the "problem" of too many tomatoes at my house, so we are making lots of relish and tomato jam. With the little girls, though, I made jalapeno jam. The recipe calls it jelly, but it isn't jelly, it's jam.

They were such a joy to work with. They chopped everything themselves, without any complaining about how long it took. The only negative part was when J squirted herself in the eye with jalapeno juice, but I would cry too, and I'm not nine years old. I rinsed her out with the sprayer in the kitchen sink and she kept on going.

Here are a few pictures. Since neither girl is mine, I won't post pictures where you can really see their faces. If you know me in person, you can see the rest on my facebook page.

 They wanted to see the sugar soak up the vinegar, so they waited to stir until it was all absorbed.

 I had the idea that soaking a paper towel in milk would help J's eye. I don't think it did, but it did bring some amusement to an otherwise bad scenario.

This is our yield, minus the half-pint jar that C took home. We didn't sterilize enough jars, so we had to use a pint jar that didn't get used for relish.