Jammin!

Canning combines some of my favorite hobbies, including cooking, couponing, and gardening.

Since it's March, I'm not doing much gardening these days. I'm dreaming of days when my tomatoes are growing like crazy and taking over my yard.

Until then, I have to watch sale prices at the store if I want to can. When I went to the store the other day, blackberries were on sale for 99 cents. Jalapenos are crazy cheap, and are under $1 per pound.

Blackberry jalapeno jam, here I come!

I started following one recipe, then I scratched that and followed another. I added some of my own touches in the middle, because I thought it'd taste better and I'm a rebel like that.

Namely: The recipes told me to mash the blackberries with a potato masher. I tried that, but nothing really happened. Maybe the blackberries weren't quite ripe enough for that?

You can't really stop canning in the middle of a canning session, so I improvised. I pulled out my blender and stuck the piping hot mixture in it. That's stupid dangerous, but I made do. Plus, I still have all of my fingers and toes. (Score.)

This jam is the most gorgeous color of red I've ever seen. It's my favorite color of red, that deep, dark red wine color.

I made two recipes. I spent $5 on blackberries, 79 cents on jalapenos, and around $1 on lemons. I already had the sugar, pectin, jars and lids.

For a grand total of around $7, I made 17 cans of jam.

...you could say I'm jammin!

One of my favorite things to do is to stay in my kitchen after I take the cars out of the water bath. Those sweet 'dings' are music to my ears.

Pure happiness.

Stuff you need vs. stuff you don't need

My kitchen and my life are slowly looking like normal again.

Last night, I moved my jars of sugar, flour, and brown sugar to the kitchen counter top. They had been sitting on a chair in my dining room for the past week.

The curtains were actually hung in the kitchen, instead of sitting on my couch.

The cabinet doors are not on yet. It turns out, paint doesn't dry particularly fast on days when it's 50 degrees out, 80 percent humidity and rainy.

That means that for the next few days, I will be able to see every single thing in my cabinets. My silverware, wooden spoons and other utensils are sitting in a cardboard box in the middle of my kitchen.

But let's talk about the glass jars that I've collected over the past year.

I knew I had a glass jar hoarding problem, but I didn't realize how bad it was until this week.

I had two large grocery bags full of glass jars, only I didn't have them stored in one spot. They were in a cabinet here, a cabinet there, and underneath the sink. Some were in the bathroom.

I thought of using them as center pieces. For what exactly, I'm not sure. But they were pretty! They were interesting shapes! And, I was going to re-use them and change the planet by not throwing them away!

I thought I'd get on Pinterest and find a use for them.

I'm happy to report that I did find a use for them. Yesterday, I took them to the recycling center.

I do not need two grocery bags full of empty glass jars. What I do need is more kitchen storage space and less junk.

That space will probably be used for something more practical, like storing canning jars that I can actually use.

Tomorrow night's low is 33. I've got tomatoes to pick, freeze, and can eventually.

Having however many empty glass jars from store bought products will not help me can. What will help me is watching an episode of Hoarders and realizing that I have to get my life together.

(Ps, all is well and normal in the stomach/colon/intestines front. I downed pizza last night for dinner. I might have even had a piece for breakfast this morning. I love food. Not being able to eat solid food is not a problem I want to ever have in my life again.)

I do need to go through my kitchen and find more items to donate...like the cat butt keyring holder I took off my kitchen cabinets.

It didn't make the cut.