Peaches! Peach Jam! Aunt J-Me's Jam part 2!

Taking a page from our adventure in jam making way back when, I am going to modify the recipe for strawberry jam to make it peach jam! The blue birds and squirrels have been ravishing my peach tree this year (first year, nothing but blooms and no peaches; second year, blooms, grape-sized peaches, tornado knocked them all off; this year, early bloom, early peaches, all look almost burgundy in color but are the size of golf balls).

Last night, Hubby Dearest and I harvested 20+ peaches that were small but almost ready. We had to chunk quite a few that had been pecked to pieces or fallen from the tree and were covered in ants...Hope eats all that are ripe and Faith thinks they are balls to chase. I swear, we can't be all home-grown and farmy for all of mother nature taking advantage of us! Nevertheless, I have put the less than ripe little gems into a brown paper sack to ripen and will use the following recipe to make them into gold.

Recipe for Homemade Peach Jam

Makes: about 10 cups (about 10 half-pints)

Prep: 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 3 quarts fresh peaches, pealed and de-seeded
• 1 1 3/4-ounce package regular powdered fruit pectin
• 1/2 teaspoon butter
• 7 cups sugar

Directions: Place 1 cup of peaches in an 8-quart heavy pot. Crush peaches. Continue adding peaches and crushing until you have 5 cups crushed peaches. Stir in pectin and butter. Heat on high, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a full rolling boil. Add sugar all at once. Return to boiling; boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; skim off foam with a metal spoon.

Ladle at once into hot, sterilized half-pint canning jars, leaving a 1/4-inch headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids. Process in a boiling-water canner for 5 minutes (start timing when water returns to boil). Remove jars; cool on racks.


Tip: Jam may need to stand for 1 to 2 weeks after canning to become fully set. Also, if your fruit separates from the liquid in the jars, invert the sealed jars once or twice a day. Continue inverting until fruit is well distributed.


OH...and so you can JAM! get it? ;-)