Cranamon Jelly

Good morning Jammers!  I trust you all had a “hearty” thanksgiving, we sure did.  From food, to spirit, to laughs and good times, “hearty” describes our weekend well.  We have so much to be thankful for.

I have so much to catch up on from my canning day with the ladies a few weeks ago.  Just a reminder, I did not really have a good working camera that day, I’m sorry.  Use your imagination, heheheee.  My last post was for the Crapple Jam and this one is for the second of the cranberry recipes.  It’s a cranberry cinnamon jelly and it was the first time I was getting to use my “make shift” jelly bag.  To set the mood for the energy you want to enhance your recipe with it is helpful to know and attune yourself with the properties of the ingredients you are using.  I am trying to cover as many of these as possible but am also trying to not repeat too much information at the same time.   If you want to know the associations of something that is not listed in a particular recipe, check out the “Labels” section to the right and look for the ingredient in the list and click on it.  It will take you to a previous post that discusses that particular aspect or ingredient.  Also, remember, an ingredient may have several properties but you can focus and draw from any one or more of those you wish.

For this recipe, I drew on the cinnamon for power and spirituality and the cranberries for protection and to ward off negativity.  I can imagine strands of cranberries with a few cinnamon sticks strung in sideways being added to a long pine garland and strung around the front door during the holidays.  What better way to protect and empower that warm Yuletide spirit that you create all around your hearth and inside of your home this season.  I can smell it now, can’t you?

Cranamon Jelly

2 pounds fresh cranberries
2 cups water
4 cinnamon sticks
2 cups sugar for each 2 cups juice

Put the cranberries in a nonreactive saucepan with the water and 3 cinnamon sticks, then simmer until the fruit is very soft and the cranberries“pop”, stirring occasionally.  Remove the cinnamon sticks and squash the cranberries with a potato masher to extract as much juice and flavor as possible.  Spoon the fruit and liquid into a scalded jelly bag or cheesecloth suspended over a large bowl, and let the juice strain through without forcing, for a few hours or overnight.  Do not squeeze the bag or the jelly will be cloudy if particles of fruit escape into the liquid.    

                                     

The next day, preheat canner, sterilize jars and prepare the lids. Measure the juice into a nonreactive saucepan.  Add the right amount of sugar and the remaining cinnamon stick.  Stir the mixture over low heat until the sugar dissolves, then boil rapidly until the setting point is reached, 220^o.  Stir from time to time to prevent the sugar rich mixture from sticking and burning.   

             

Remove the pan from the heat and skim any foam from the surface and remove the cinnamon stick.  Pot the jelly into the hot sterilized jars.  Wipe the rim of the jar with a damp clean cloth and add the lids and rings and place jars in preheated canner.  Bring canner to a boil and process for 10 minutes.  Remove the jars and place on a towel on the counter and leave undisturbed for 24 hours.  Check the seal before storing. Use within 12 months.

Now notice, that in this recipe there is no added commercial pectin.  That’s because cranberries, like apples, have a very high natural pectin content.  The consistency came out beautiful.  There are other things that were left to be desired with this one, though.

I did not have a jelly bag so I improvised with 4 layers of cheesecloth clipped to a mesh strainer suspended over a bowl.  Now, granted, we did not let this one sit overnight but it did sit almost 4 hours and I was very disappointed in the juice results.  I know what happened and why…we let the berries simmer too long and the pectin came out and the whole mixture was gelled when we put it in the cheesecloth.  Another thing was that I forgot to soak the cheesecloth in hot water (called scalding).  For 2 pounds of berries we only yielded 2 cups of juice, which made only 3 half pints.  I figure, I came and I tried and the next time I will make it easier on myself (and cheaper) and go with a bottled organic 100% cranberry juice and see what my results are like. 

The flavor and texture are lovely and this will be gorgeous in my Yule baskets.  I will be making more of this one in the next few weeks and I’ll let you know how it comes out.  Till then…Be Blessed and Be Sweet!

Triple “A” Butter

G’mornin Jammers!  I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween/All Hallows Eve/Dia De Los Muertos.  It’s the time of year around here that we like to honor our ancestors and all those that have walked this earth before us.  I spent lots of time thinking and remembering all the great times I had with my great-grandmother, my Grannie.  She would love all the new jams and flavors out there now.  I would have loved to have sat with her just one more time and munched on one of her fried pies or maybe a bowl of her wonderful sour cherry cobbler.   I’m gazing at her picture hanging here in the office, right now…love ya Grannie!  Gasp…..I just remembered that I have one of her handmade bonnets and matching aprons in my keepsake box that she made for my mom.  Grannie would always put on one of her bonnets to go to the garden and a matching apron.  Maybe I’ll pull them out for a picture or two.

I wanted to post the last recipe that I made, weekend before last.  My inspiration came from a fellow food blogger, Tigress.  See her post at http://tigressinajam.blogspot.com/2010/10/ancho-apple-butter.html .  Her apple butter recipe is different from mine, so, I decided to stay with what I like and just modify my own.  Did you know peppers have a heat scale they are rated on? It’s called the Scoville Heat Index and it ranks peppers from zero (Green Bell Peppers) to one million (an extremely rare Ghost Pepper is rated at over one million and is the hottest pepper in the world). Usually one of the hottest that is used on a day-to-day basis is a Habanero Chili which rates at 150,000 - 350,000. Jalapenos usually rate around 2,000 to 5,000+.  Anchos, like I used in this recipe, rate under Jalapenos at around 1,000 - 1,500.  I love their smoky flavor and always keep a pouch on hand from our favorite spice shop in Old Town, St. Augustine.  We’ve been known to drive the 45 minutes there just to pick up various salts we ran out of.  They have an amazing Alderwood Smoked Sea Salt that is fabulous on meat and my son loves his big block of Bolivian Rose that he uses a tiny grater with.  Back to the chili peppers though, did you know that the term Ancho refers to the dried version of the Poblano Pepper (just like to chipotle being the smoked version of a jalapeno)?  I didn’t.  

The associations related to the apple butter part of this recipe are the same as before.  The properties of my apples are choices, (they are used in many ways throughout different cultures and periods as tools for divination), health (haven’t you heard the old saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away?), and love (apple bobbing was originally for boys to bite into the apple of his true love as the girls had polished and marked the apples on the bottoms before floating them in the tub).  The cinnamon was for power and spirituality, the allspice was for health and prosperity and the cloves were for health, kinship and love.  Apples were one of the main things used back in Victorian times for love charms.  Did you ever twist the stem of an apple while chanting the alphabet and what ever letter you were on when the stem popped off was the first letter of the person’s name that you were going to marry?  We did it all the time…oh the memories.  Peppers, in general, are for protection against negativity.   Have you ever seen those long bunches of peppers, usually dried, red ones, strung together and hung in kitchens?  Now you know the reason why some folks may choose to hang them in their kitchens.  The Ancho along with the Mulato and the true Pasilla form the "holy trinity" of chiles in Mexican culture.  In honor of their association as part of a trinity, I am naming this creation my Triple A Butter.

Triple “A”  Butter

4 pounds tart apples (I used Granny Smith)
2 cups unsweetened organic apple juice
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons ground Ancho Pepper powder
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon unsalted butter

Rinse apples in cool water and drain well.  Core, peel and chop the apples.  Preheat canner, sterilize jars and prepare the lids. In an 8 qt pan combine the apples and apple juice.  Over medium heat, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer until the apples are soft, about 30 minutes.  Remove from heat. Press apples and juice through a fine meshed sieve.  Return the pulp to the pan and stir in the sugar, butter, Ancho powder, cinnamon, allspice and cloves.  Over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, heat the mixture until the sugar is completely dissolved.  Increase the heat to medium and bring to a simmer, stirring frequently.  Reduce heat and simmer until thick, about 30 minutes.  As the butter thickens, stir constantly to prevent scorching.                                

Remove pan from heat and skim off any foam.  Fill hot sterilized jars with the butter, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean damp cloth and add the lids and rings and place jars in preheated canner.  Bring canner to a boil and process for 10 minutes.  Remove the jars and place on a towel on the counter and leave undisturbed for 24 hours.  Check the seal before storing. Use within 12 months.

Makes about 6 half pint jars.

This butter had a perfect texture and will taste wonderful as a final glaze over a slow roasted pork loin.  We enjoyed it with peanut butter on sandwiches this past weekend at the Boy Scout event we attended.  The heat is perfect and is really more of an aftertaste in the back of your throat.  It is a perfect addition to really spice up your traditional apple butter recipe.  Again, as with so many of my other creations, this one has MANY possibilities.

I have a blank slate right now as far as my next batch goes.  I have quite a few in my book that I want to try but I am getting special requests, too.  I want to get the beer and sangria ones made as a trial for holiday gifts but the requestors are adamant for an apple-rum something or a pomegranate something.  Guess I better get busy! 

On another note, I was at the grocery store this past weekend picking up supplies for my first scratch cheesecake and saw peaches on sale so I picked up enough for a small batch to can.  They were pretty firm so I thought they would have a few days to ripen, which was perfect since I was so busy.  Well, last night I realized they were quite soft so I picked on up and gave a good long whiff and…nothing, nada!  None of them have any fragrance at all.  Living in Florida we have some unusual growing seasons compared with the rest of the US, so I thought I may just be picking up a late batch.  Boy was I wrong!  I will be talking to the produce manager next time I see him.  These are simply awful.  I decided not to waste jars on fruit that has no smell so I thought I would chop them up and throw a cobbler together tomorrow.  I have a basic recipe passed down in my family called Cuppa-Cuppa-Cuppa and peaches are usually my first choice for it.  As I chopped them up last night half of them were very brown all the way through but, yet, not spoiled and there was hardly any juice to them.  I added some fruit protector and lots of sugar, hoping to make it syrupy enough to use.  I covered the bowl and popped it in the fridge…we will see what it’s like later. 

Till next week, Be Blessed and Be Sweet!

Mojo Banana's Foster Jam

Good Monday morning Jammers! What did you get into over the weekend? Me, I got into some bananas, well a LOT of bananas and a few apples too. I lucked out and found all the bananas I needed, fully ripened, for half price (notice the black tape on them).  They were perfect and ready to use!  I wish the weather had cooperated a bit more, especially on Sunday. I made some spicy apple butter and was really feeling into the fall season EXCEPT that it was 87 degrees outside! It was too hot in the kitchen with the windows open so I had to crank up the AC to try to cool off. We are supposed to be unseasonably warm the rest of this week, too. Boo! My son hates it when he goes trick-or-treating and ends up sweating buckets with a mask and costume on. Hopefully it will cool-off for him. For his first few years he actually thought that folks decorated their houses and handed out candy because it was his birthday…he finally caught on that he shared his birthday WITH a holiday when he was 5 or 6 years old. Then for a few years he would tell each person that opened their door that it was his birthday and he would usually get extra treats. He’s stopped all that now and I wonder when he will stop trick-or-treating all together, he will be 12 this year and still wants to go with his friends. The funny thing is, he never cared for much of the candy, eating very little of it. It usually sits in a big bowl on top of the fridge till around Christmas then we throw it out when the stockings get emptied into the same bowl. He’s never been much of a sweets eater. I guess we are lucky that we don’t have a huge dentist bill! Our city council is going to vote on Tuesday night as to whether to change trick-or-treating to Saturday night so there won’t be a conflict with folks attending church on Sunday night. Most folks in town are livid about this for a few reasons. What happened to separation of church and state? It’s not been changed before when it was on a Sunday, so why now? Saturday is a HUGE college football game downtown at the stadium, Florida vs. Georgia, and the tailgating has already begun (7 days in advance, RV’s are already pouring in). I really don’t want kids out trick-or-treating on one of the biggest nights for DUI’s around here! Some folks are concerned that only some kids will go out on Saturday night and others will still go out on Sunday so they will have to deal with 2 nights of it, while others say some kids will choose to go out both night. Personally, I don’t think it should be changed. Halloween in Oct. 31, period! I have been surprised at how many other cities, counties and states change which day it is observed on every year. Our niece in Ohio sent us this snip “Here in Columbus they only allow Trick or Treating Mon-Thurs so if Halloween is on Fri-Sun it gets moved! This year Halloween is on Sun but trick or treating is on Thurs. Last year Halloween was a Saturday and trick or treating was on Thurs.” How bizarre is that?!?

So, for the first banana recipe that I did on Saturday morning I decided to re-do my Banana Rum Jam and make it a Bananas Foster Jam. The recipe was so close and Bananas Foster is my all time favorite dessert, I had to adapt it and go for it. It came out DIVINE! I was instantly transported to Royal Street, a block off Bourbon Street in New Orleans, the home of the world famous Brennan’s Restaurant, where Bananas Foster was created in 1951. I’ve ordered it in many places but none is as good as Brennan’s, where it is prepared and served tableside. The only thing missing in this jam would be the vanilla ice cream it is traditionally served over but you could always heat a bit of it in the microwave for a few seconds and then pour it over a scoop of your favorite vanilla bean ice cream. Now, something else I love to do when I am in New Orleans is to tour all the cemeteries. I always stop and see the tomb of the Voudou Queen, Marie Laveau, and then I will head to her namesake tourist shop on Bourbon St. where you can pick up all kind of mojo trinkets and souvenirs. In honor of my old New Orleans traditions I am naming this one my Mojo Banana’s Foster Jam. When I made it before, as just the Banana Rum Jam, I mentioned that bananas are associated with fertility, potency and prosperity and are most often associated with a masculine energy as opposed to feminine energy. A good internet search will show that women in Hawaii were once forbidden to eat bananas, by law, go figure. I substituted some of the sugar with brown sugar and added a bit of cinnamon. The cinnamon is for power and spirituality and any kind of sugar is for love, of course! Remember to keep your thoughts and intentions clear in your mind when you are crafting your delicacies. A little mood music playing in the background and a candle or two lit near your workspace can make for a great Jammin session and some tasty treats.

Mojo Banana’s Foster Jam

3 ¾ cups peeled and diced ripe bananas (about 9 medium)

6 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon Fruit Fresh (or you can use antioxidant crystals or ascorbic acid crystals)

3 cups granulated sugar

2 cups light brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon unsalted butter

1 3oz pouch liquid pectin

1 ½ teaspoons rum extract

Preheat canner and prepare jars and lids. In an 8 qt pan combine the bananas, lemon juice and Fruit Fresh. Stir in the sugars, butter and cinnamon. Over med-low heat, stirring constantly, heat the mixture until the sugars are completely dissolved. Increase the heat to med-high and bring to full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Stir in the entire contents of the pectin pouch. Return the mixture to a full rolling boil and boil, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes.

Remove pan from the heat. Skim off any foam. Stir in the rum extract. To prevent the jam from separating in the jars, allow the jam to cool 5 minutes before filling the jars. Gently stir the jam every minute, or so, to distribute the fruit. Ladle the jam into the hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean damp cloth and add the lids and rings, turning the rings until just finger-tight. Place the jars in the preheated canner and bring canner to a full rolling boil. Process jars for 10 minutes (adjusting according to your altitude, if necessary) then remove canner from heat. Let canner sit for 5 minutes, then, carefully remove hot jars from water with a jar lifter and place them on a towel on the counter and leave them undisturbed for 24 hours. Check the seals before storing and use within 12 months.

Makes about 7 half pint jars.

This jam is beautiful and oh-so-yummy-licious! The cinnamon really adds a richness that it was missing before and it tastes just like the dessert I remember so fondly. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am. I don’t know if I will be gifting any of this one…there may not be any left when I am finished!

Stay tuned, I also made a Banana Nut Bread Butter from a recipe I found on the Sure Jell (the pectin) website. I will have it up at the end of the week. I made a yummy loaf of banana nut bread with my leftover ingredients and hope to have it posted to the other blog mid-week, or so. Yesterday I was inspired by a fellow blogger, Tigress, to modify my apple butter to include ground ancho chilis and boy did she hit the nail on the head! I can’t wait to serve this on over a slow roasted pork roast. It was a huge hit with my honey, who has been requesting a spicy or savory type jam. Lots to write about so keep checking back, on both blogs!

I have also created a store over at Amazon. I have recommendations for some great canning books (I have a great friend that co-wrote one of them, check it out) and also some canning supplies. The link to the store is over on the right side of this blog. The holiday’s are coming up…these are some great gift ideas for new or seasoned canners alike. Many of my recipes are in these books or are based on recipes in them.

Till next time, Be Blessed and Be Sweet!
　
　

"Pick Me"-Up Apple Butter

Welcome back Jammers! Have you all entered the drawing for my first giveaway? Make sure to check the previous post for the details…who wouldn’t want a gift certificate for $35!

Gather round the hearth, I want to share my first experience in making apple butter with you. As I’ve mentioned before, I work an overnight shift so my hours are quite a bit different than most, okay, fine, I‘ll say it, I have a weird schedule, there. A weird person needs a weird schedule to complete the whole persona, LOL,just kidding. On weekends, I try to sleep like the rest of the house does, in bed by midnight and up around 7 or 8. It can be difficult for me, I usually fall asleep fine, it’s staying asleep for more then 3 or 4 hours that’s tough. So I typically am up around 4am or so on Saturday and Sunday mornings then I will REQUIRE a 3 hour nap by 2pm or so. It works out ok and I wouldn’t trade my work schedule for anything…it is perfect for me and the activities we are involved in, from home schooling to Boy Scouts. Anyway, this past Saturday morning I found myself up before 5am and I was sure I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon. All of a sudden it came to me…head to the kitchen and get on it, girl! I opened the windows (great cross breeze in my kitchen), lit some candles, pulled out “the” book (remind me to tell you about what basically translates as my Kitchen Bible) and started washing jars. I plugged the music in to the portable speakers and I was set. It was a beautiful morning making my butters as the sun came up. I have already posted the pumpkin butter that I made first, that morning. My second batch was apple butter. I had high hopes and it came out delicious and just like I expected.

A cinnamon or vanilla candle is nice to have burning when you are working with apples. If you put it right on your work board the combined scent of the candle and the fresh apples is wonderful and quite invigorating. I had a tall glass of the apple juice while I was prepping the apples and with the windows open and the sun fully up it was a magical start to the day! That day, I chose to associate the properties of my apples with choices (they are used in many ways throughout different cultures and periods as tools for divination), health (haven’t you heard the old saying, an apple a day keeps the doctor away?), and love (apple bobbing was originally for boys to bite into the apple of his true love, the girls had polished and marked the apples on the bottoms before floating them in the tub). The cinnamon was for power and spirituality, the allspice was for health and prosperity and the cloves were for health, kinship and love. One-half teaspoon of cloves has more antioxidants than one-half cup of cranberries or blueberries. I am naming my apple butter “Pick Me”- Up Apple Butter. Pick Me, obviously is for the love side. Apples were one of the main things used back in Victorian times for love charms. Did you ever twist the stem of an apple while chanting the alphabet and what ever letter you were on when the stem popped off was the first letter of the person’s name that you were going to marry? We did it all the time…oh the memories. Pick Me Up is for a big boost of good health from the apples, allspice, cloves and apple juice.

“Pick Me”-Up Apple Butter

4 pounds tart apples (I used Granny Smith)

2 cups unsweetened organic apple juice
2 cups sugar

1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground allspice

¼ teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon unsalted butter

Rinse apples in cool water and drain well. Core, peel and chop the apples. Preheat canner, sterilize jars and prepare the lids. In an 8 qt pan combine the apples and apple juice. Over medium heat, bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until the apples are soft, about 30 minutes. Remove from heat. Press apples and juice through a fine meshed sieve. Return the pulp to the pan and stir in the sugar, butter, cinnamon, allspice and cloves. Over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, heat the mixture until the sugar is completely dissolved. Increase the heat to medium and bring to a simmer, stirring frequently. Reduce heat and simmer until thick, about 30 minutes. As the butter thickens, stir constantly to prevent scorching.

Remove pan from heat and skim off any foam. Fill hot sterilized jars with the jam, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean damp cloth and add the lids and rings and place jars in preheated canner. Bring canner to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Remove the jars and place on a towel on the counter and leave undisturbed for 24 hours. Check the seal before storing. Use within 12 months.

Makes about 6 half pint jars.

Again, maybe it was the day or the energy that I was putting into my work that morning but this one came out absolutely PERFECT, just like the pumpkin did. I know my Mabert would be so proud. I am going to make sure she gets a jar of this for the holidays. There is one memory I would love to create in a jam or butter, hummm. I spent most Saturday nights with Mabert and Papa and would go to church every Sunday morning with her until I was about 11 or 12. Well, every Saturday night we would sit at the kitchen table and share “coffee” together while she prepared for her Sunday School lesson the next day. I would pretend to work in my bible too, underlining passages with a pencil, like she was doing. There was no rhyme or reason to which passages I chose to underline, I just remember underlining them because it seemed to add power to the words that were printed on the page. I didn’t really read the actual words it was more about marking it up so it looked used and worked in. We would have both had our baths, my bangs would be taped down and filled with Dippity-do and we would have on our matching “Grannie Gowns” which was a style, by the way, of nightgown as opposed to who actually made them, even though it was usually Mabert’s mom, my Grannie Winchester, that would have made mine. Anyway, she would have a small cup of hot coffee and a windmill cookie and my “coffee” was actually her blend of Russian Tea and a vanilla wafer or two. Every time I smell orange and clove combined I am instantly transported back to her kitchen on Saturday nights. Her Russian Tea was a blend of instant tea, Tang and cloves…I just saw Tang in the store, the other day, too. Has anyone out there seen a jam recipe that would be close to this?



Apple and Pumpkin Butters

 Have a great weekend everyone. I will try to get the next post done before Monday, which will be Lavender Jelly…it’s beautiful in the jar! Till then, remember to Be Blessed and Be Sweet!

 

Apple Butter

Plentiful Pumpkin Butter

Good morning Jammers, hope you all slept well. I am LOVING this weather. I think I will head outside tomorrow and give the grass one final mow for the season then put the mower to bed for the winter. Maybe I’ll find a beach towel to cover it with, in the shed, kind of like a blanket for it to sleep with for the few cold months that we get. I want it to be happy when we pull it out in the spring. We just bought it earlier this year, so it‘s still new to us. I guess you could say, we take good care of what we have around here, which is something else I learned from Mabert. Things last so much longer if you really take good care of them. On that note, I have noticed that the rack inside the new canner is already becoming discolored (it is metal). It looks like oxidation and is blackening and almost rusty is some spots…I wonder if it’s the vinegar that I am adding to the water? I dry it out each time. The canner itself is coated and it looks brand new, still. So, any thoughts from my scientific readers? Suggestions, tips?

One of my favorite jams is actually a butter, pumpkin butter. Butters do not have actual butter in them (other than the ½ teaspoon that I add to every batch I make to help the foam issue) but instead the term refers to a texture that is achieved by cooking it a long time. Lots of recipes I have seen use a slow cooker to cooking them in. When I decided to start this journey down the canning road, I checked out tons of books from the library and copied and compiled all the recipes that I wanted to try out. One thing I noticed that was missing from most of those books was pumpkin butter. It did appear in some of the older books, but not in the newer ones. So I turned to the web for some research, my normal response to any question I have, anymore. There are plenty of recipes out there on the web but I also found why it is not listed in the books. Apparently, the USDA changed it’s recommendations on canning mashed or pureed pumpkin (and winter squash) back in the late 80’s and revised them in the early 90’s. Now they do not recommend it at all, due to the varying viscosity, acid levels and water activity in each individual batch. Pumpkin and squash are low acid foods and are capable of supporting the growth of Clostridium botulinum bacteria, which can cause botulism, if not carefully stored. Hummm, debates are all over the web about this topic and apparently have been for years. I would never want to make anyone sick so I thought my solution was pretty smart…I’ll use canned pumpkin! I checked the label and it said it was pasteurized so that should help. I did find a recipe that calls for canned pumpkin and it was the easiest and fastest of any of the recipes I have done so far and WOW, it tastes great too. Perfect, just like I remember it.

Remember, when crafting anything in your kitchen, to properly focus your thoughts and intentions and infuse your creation. Light a candle, get in the mood and REALLY want to be making whatever it may be, at that time. Trust me, no one will want to eat it if you didn’t want to make it! Yucko. Now, the properties of pumpkins include fertility, abundance and being plentiful and lighting a Jack-O-Lantern on All Hallows Eve is said to bring luck to your home. They symbolize harvest and bounty, bringing to mind the fall season and Thanksgiving. They remind me to be thankful for everything I have and everything I am. The spices in this butter all carry many properties but I focus (for this recipe) on the cinnamon for spirituality, power and healing. The nutmeg for health and fidelity and the ginger for power and success. I like burning an autumn spice candle on my prep board while working with pumpkin but a vanilla one will do, in a pinch. My patron Goddess of my hearth is always thanked and acknowledged with the quick anointing of my wrists with pure vanilla or I have some perfume-oil that is vanilla. My son LOVES the smell and many times I will find him right beside me for this part. His grin goes from ear-to-ear just sniffing vanilla and his eyes will almost roll back in his head…he almost gets dizzy looking. I blessed my jars of this yummy butter with abundance, among other things, and am calling this my Plentiful Pumpkin Butter. May your cupboards never be bare and you always have plenty of NOT what you want but plenty of just what you need!
　

Plentiful Pumpkin Butter 

3 ½ cups canned solid pack pumpkin

1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

4 cups sugar

1 ½ cups firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon unsalted butter

1 3oz pouch liquid pectin

Preheat canner and prepare jars and lids. In an 8qt pan combine the pumpkin and spices, stirring until smooth and well blended. Gradually stir in both sugars and the butter. Over medium-low heat, heat the mixture, stirring constantly, until the sugars are dissolved. Increase heat to medium-high and bring to a full rolling boil, still stirring constantly. Stir in contents of pectin pouch and return to a boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring all-the-while.

Remove pan from heat and quickly skim off any foam (mine did not have any) from the top. Ladle the butter into the hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean damp cloth and add the lids and rings, turning the rings until just finger-tight. Place the jars in the preheated canner and bring canner to a full rolling boil. Process jars for 10 minutes (adjusting according to your altitude, if necessary) then remove canner from heat. Let canner sit for 5 minutes, then, carefully remove hot jars from water with a jar lifter and place them on a towel on the counter and leave them undisturbed until the seals have popped and the jars are cooled. Store them in the refrigerator use within 4 months.

Makes about 7 half pint jars.

This came out FABULOUS! Perfect texture and blend of spices. The color is beautiful…now, MY pictures do not do it justice. The one thing I am beginning to see is that I need a better camera for photographing my shots. I need to work with better lighting, too. The flash is too bright and if the flash is off, they are fuzzy looking. Now, I have to learn to be a photographer to be a writer…go figure!

I’m considering some of the debates that I saw about the safety of canning pureed pumpkin and one thing that all, pretty much, agreed on was that you CAN make it. It just has to be kept refrigerated (or frozen) and used within a few months. This sounds like a good recommendation, to me, so I made it part of my recipe.

Another consideration I’m giving is hosting a giveaway. I’ve seen other bloggers doing this and it seems to be a real hit. I was contacted today by the company that does it, thanks to a new co-blogger friend, Andrea (a big shout-out to her, of http://andrea-thekitchenwitch.blogspot.com/ ). I will post the details as soon as I make a decision. Do any of you have any experiences with hosting or winning a blog giveaway? I’d love some feedback. Email me if you want or post your feedback to the Facebook page.

Ok, keep your eyes open and check back often. I still have the apple butter to post and I spent today trying 2 new batches, lavender (wait till you see the color on this) jelly and raspberry lavender jam. I’ll be busy typing them out over the next few days. I swear, this is like an addiction for me…I can’t stop! I found a recipe online for beer jam (yes, dark beer) posted at justgotcanned.com that I want to modify and try. I think the guys may like it, maybe a Guinness? Seasoned with citrus, cinnamon and cardamom. Head over there to check it out and I will post my version after I make it. What a collection it will make…sangria jam, Riesling jam, white zin jam and beer jam…what’s next, I ask?

Apple butter will be posted next, so, till then, remember to Be Blessed and Be Sweet!