Plum Jam Spice-Plus Recipe

Food in Jars provides a lot of great recipes for small-batch canning. I often size up because I have a bunch of something. Sometimes I have less than the quantity called for and adjust a recipe down rather than up. That was the case with the Spiced Plum Jam. I had some frozen plums, a few fresh, and a handful or two of honeyberries I threw in to use them up.

Ratios are my friend here. Fruit:sugar 1:1? No problem. Scaling spices down can be tricky if I end up with something like 1/3 teaspoon. I round down and taste since it's easy to add, impossible to take away. I look at how much lemon juice the recipe calls for as a contribution to pectin. 

But wait...

Two source recipes:

  • Spiced Plum Jam: Fruit:Sugar 4 lbs:4 cups. 1 lemon juice/zest, which means 2 T. juice. 1-1/2 t. cinnamon and 1/2 t. nutmeg, so 2 t. total spice for this quantity of plums.
  • Plum Jam with Cardamom: Fruit:Sugar 5 lbs.:4 cups. 2 T. lemon juice, 1 t. cardamom
Higher sugar ratio in recipe #1, higher spice too, and I want to combine these because I love all three spices and they mesh well.

I also have 2.75 pounds of plums plus honeyberries. Some of those plums are a bit on the green side.

Pro tip: If you're going to freeze a bunch of plums with plans for future jam, dice them first. When I defrosted my plums I had plum mush. I ended up using kitchen scissors to cut them into chunks in a bowl. This felt harder than chopping them quickly last fall would have.
Plum Jam Spice-Plus, No Pectin

The "plus" here could be adjusting the spice profile to suit your taste. Spice proportions don't affect the jelling process. It could also represent throwing in something besides plums if, like me, you have a small amount of something to use up.

Plums are relatively high in pectin. Between that and the use of lemon juice, you shouldn't need pectin to get a set.
  • Plums (plus): 2.75-3 pounds of pitted plums, sliced into thin half moons or chopped
  • Sugar: 2.75 pounds
  • Lemon juice: 2 T.
  • Cinnamon: 1 t.
  • Cardamom: 1/2 t.
  • Nutmeg: 1/4 t.
  • Cloves: Dash

Mix plums and sugar in a nonreactive bowl or post and let them sit for an hour or more to macerate. You could do this the night before if you remember. I didn't. It's fine. Honestly, if you forgot completely just start. 

Stir the spices together in a small dish, then sprinkle a bit and stir into the plums, sprinkle and stir, sprinkle and stir, until you've blended in all the spices. This extra step gives you more even distribution of the flavors. 

Alternatively, you can mix the spices into the sugar and add them all together.

Add the lemon juice. 

Cooking: Bring the ingredients to a boil over high heat, stirring. Lower to medium-high heat and cook at a low boil for 30-35 minutes, until the plums soften and the syrup thickens. When you hold the spoon up on its side, the syrup will run down in slow drips that run together rather than liquidy waterlike drops.

Canning set-up: Prep your canning jars and equipment. When you're ready to start cooking it's a good time to put a baking pan of jars into the oven at 200 degrees and get the big canning pot of water started heating up.

Fill and process: Using a funnel, fill jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Wipe the rims with a damp paper towel. Dip the lids in the boiling water to sterilize, then put them on the jars and tighten to fingertip tight (which means not screwed super tight because air needs to be able to escape). 

Process 15 minutes, starting the timer once the water comes back to a full boil after you lower the jars into the water. 

For full details on canning how-to, go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Yield: 3 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints

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Heating It Up: Hot Pepper Jelly and Blackberry Chocolate Chili Jam

I really love a sweet/hot combo, don't you? Or sweet/tangy, for when I go deep on chutney. I've had a couple of bags of peppers in the freezer for quite a while and it was time. One of them, a gift from a Buy Nothing friend, was a bunch of green, yellow and red bell peppers, already seeded and cut in half, ready to use for pepper jelly. I had bags of mixed peppers I froze from last year's harvest, now all a mystery because I don't remember how hot they all are. Oops. I knew some were jalapeños, some pepperoncinis (thanks to the wrinkles), those red ones might be Fresnos which are hotter. Basically, a mystery grab bag.

Off to Chili Pepper Madness, where I went down a rabbit hole of various thing I could do with all those hot peppers, and a side trip to Food in Jars. Linking to all these as future inspiration:

This time around, I want hot pepper jelly, ready to put on a cracker with some Cougar Gold cheese or to zing up a sandwich. Plus, that uses up all those bell peppers just taking up freezer space.

Pepper Jelly Recipe it was.

The recipe calls for 4-5 cups of chopped peppers in whatever combo you want, a mix of sweet and hot. Frozen peppers do kind of turn into mush when you chop in the food processor, which is the fastest possible way, but that's okay. I didn't want to go over the top on hot peppers either. I sliced the tip off a few of them to check hotness (okay, that one's a Fresno!) and ended up with 2+ cups of sweet pepper, 2 cups of mild to hot pepper.

Yield: 9 half-pints, one quarter pint. Good heat with a noticeable burn but not one that punishes you for tasting. 


On to my next adventure in putting a bit of heat in a jar: Blackcurrant Jam with Chocolate and Chili from Larder Love.

A couple of tweaks:

  • Subbed in blackberries for blackcurrants. I do have a currant bush but it produces too few to turn into jam. I live in western Washington so, y'know, blackberries. Since they're super seedy, I first warmed them up a bit, then mashed part of the batch through a sieve to do a "reduced seeds" (not seedless) jam.
  • Larder Love calls for shaving an actual bar of chocolate, 70% cacao, into the jam. I'd already made Chocolate Cherry Jam, which simply used cocoa powder, and it was fantastic. I thought about saving the dark chocolate for actual eating, but decided to make the recipe as written this first time around. (Because who could resist making something like this again, right?) I saved myself the shaving step because I got dark chocolate chips.
  • She doesn't do hot-water bath canning; she's in the UK. I do and just follow standard jam timing.

I had a really big quantity of blackberries. Two evenings of picking gave me 4-3/4 yogurt cartons (my standard picking container; easy to carry a few in my bike pannier and make a stop when I spot ripe fruit). This turned out to be 1,883 grams (weighed after I had put about one-third of the berries through a sieve to mash out some of the seeds). Adjusting Larder Love's recipe quantities and doing some tasting for heat, I arrived at this recipe. You can shift quantities by maintaining ratios or go back to her recipe.

Blackberry Chocolate Chili Jam

  • Blackberries: 1,883 grams, or around 10 cups
  • Sugar: 1,130 grams (60% of berry weight)
  • Lemon juice: 3-3/4 T.
  • Chili flakes: 2-1/4 t. (increased from 1-3/4 t. I started with, which was the multiplier of her quantity)
  • Dark chocolate chips or grated dark chocolate bar, at least 70% cacao: 226 grams
I worked over roughly 1/3 of the blackberries to mash them through a sieve to eliminate seeds. That's a lot of work, which is why the rest of the blackberries went in whole. Fiber's good for you, after all.

Mix together the blackberries, sugar, lemon juice, and chili flakes and stir until the sugar dissolves. Bring ingredients to a boil over high heat and mash them with a potato masher to break the blackberries up. Stir in the dark chocolate chips or shavings, then reduce the heat to medium-high and keep stirring until the jam shows evidence of jelling. It will turn syrupy, and a spoon held on its side will have blackberry syrup running off it in slower drops, not watery like juice. For me this took around 35-40 minutes.

Canning prep: Start this when you bring the blackberries to a boil. Put a baking pan of jars into the oven at 200 degrees and get your canning kettle water to a boil.

Fill and process: Using a funnel, fill jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Wipe the rims with a damp paper towel. Dip the lids in the boiling water to sterilize, then put them on the jars and tighten to fingertip tight. Process 15 minutes, starting the timer once the water comes back to a full boil after you lower the jars into the water. 

For full details on canning how-to, go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Yield: 6 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints

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Green Tomato Caponata Recipe

I realized/rediscovered that I had around 7 pounds of frozen green tomatoes left from last year's harvest. (This is what happens when your garage holds both a full-sized freezer and the old fridge with a freezer space you don't look into very often.)

I'm still more than fully stocked up with green tomato chutney and have full confidence that I'll end up with more green tomatoes at the end of this year's gardening. Last year I experimented with a chutney sauce and (unsuccessfullly) with green tomato ketchups (never again!).

This year it's caponata. I've made this before when I ended up with eggplant from a Buy Nothing source. It's delicious on pasta, rice, or bread as a chunky dip.

Sources: Two recipes, one not designed for canning that's essentially a caponata pickle, one that calls for ripe tomatoes and is tested for canning, made with different quantities of tomatoes.

Things I did:
  • Increased the sugar the Ball recipe called for because I was using green tomatoes instead of ripe. For 7 lbs. of green tomatoes I used 3 T. brown sugar, 4 T. white sugar, basically 1 T. per pound/cup of tomatoes.
  • Working with frozen tomatoes, most of them cherry or grape size, I gave up on the idea of removing the skins. I know, I know, you're supposed to take them off. 
    • Pro tip/note to self: In future freezing frenzy at the end of a long growing season, blanch tomatoes and pull the skins off, then chop before freezing. You'll thank yourself.
  • I wanted the balsamic of the pickle recipe. I checked my (store brand) balsamic and it's 6% acidity. In the step where I sauteed onion, bell pepper, and celery, I used 1/4 c. balsamic in place of the 1/4 c. water the Ball recipe calls for. I honestly don't know if the flavor came through, given the strong flavors of all the other ingredients.
  • Added a sprinkle of red chili pepper flakes, then another one. This honestly could be oomphed more.
  • I used the green Castelvetrano olives but I don't honestly love olives even though I cook with olive oil, so I reduced the amount. You do you.
(Green) Tomato Caponata 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prep a roasting pan by spraying or brushing it lightly with oil. Prep your canning jars.
  • Green tomatoes: 7 pounds, around 7 cups after smashing in the food processor
    • Feel free to use ripe tomatoes! If you do, reduce the sugar to 2 T.
  • Eggplant: 2 small ones, about 2 lb (1 kg) total, stemmed and quartered lengthwise
  • Sweet red peppers: 2, seeded and halved, or use 3 jars of roasted red peppers
  • Onions: 2 large, diced
  • Celery: 2-3 ribs, diced
  • Garlic: 6 cloves, minced or crushed, or 1 T. garlic paste from a tube
  • Water or balsamic vinegar: 1/4 cup for sauteeing step
  • Olives: Castelvetrano green olives or kalamata black olives, pitted and chopped, 1/2 cup up to 1-1/2 cups
  • Capers: 1/2 cup, drained
  • Salt: 1-1/2 T.
  • Black pepper: 1 T.
  • Red pepper flakes: 1/4 t., or more to taste
  • Red wine vinegar, or another vinegar 5% acidity or greater: 1 cup
  • Brown sugar: 3 T. (1 T. if using ripe tomatoes; feel free to start with less sugar of either variety and adjust to your taste)
  • White sugar:  4 T. (1 T. if using ripe tomatoes)
Oven roasting

Roast tomatoes, eggplants, and red peppers skin side up for 25-30 minutes, until skins begin to char. Remove and let cool until you can handle them without burning yourself. Remove skins. Chop tomatoes and set aside in one bowl. Chop peppers and scoop eggplants from skin (or peel skin from eggplant, whichever way you do it) and set those aside in another bowl.

Get the canning water heating and prep your jars: Depending on the size of your canning pot you may want to start it warming while the veggies are roasting. 

Once the vegetables are out of the oven, reduce heat to 200 degrees and put your jars in there on a roasting pan or cookie sheet to sterilize them.

Sauteeing

In a nonreactive pan or Dutch oven big enough to hold all the ingredients, saute the diced onions and garlic in 1/4 cup water or balsamic vinegar until onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. At about 8 minutes in, add the garlic (which can burn if you put it in too early).

Combining and cooking

Add the tomatoes and all remaining ingredients, except eggplant and peppers. Simmer over medium heat, stirring frequently (tomato can burn quickly), until slightly thickened, about 20 minutes. 

Taste and adjust seasonings; maybe you want a bit more salt or more red chili flakes. 

Stir in eggplant and peppers and cook an additional 5 minutes.

Canning

By now your big kettle of water is boiling and your jars are sterilized. Fill jars, leaving a 1/4 inch air space. Wipe rims with a damp paper towel. Dip lids in the boiling water and put them on the jars, adjusting to fingertip tight. 

Process for 35 minutes. When you take them out, set them on a towel on top of a cookie rack and wait for that satisfying ping/pop.

For full details on canning how-to, go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Yield: 5 pints, 7 half-pints

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Living, Every Day

"What are the things you do to make everyday life enjoyable?"

This question in the weekend thread on Ask A Manager, where we can talk about anything but work, sparked a reflection on the many ways I'm able to do just that. 

I have a morning routine that gives me a peaceful start to the day. I write in my journal, read some poetry, and if my schedule allows I do a short yoga practice and/or meditate. But first, I sit on my sofa with my cat on my lap, drink good French Press coffee my sweetheart makes for me, let my brain wake up. I read poetry because it won't ensnare me the way fiction will, and nonfiction so often feels like work or homework. Both of my daughters live far away and I often record a poem for them and send the link if it's online, or a picture of the page in the book I'm reading. If I go too long without doing that I get a "where's the poetry, Mom?" message.

As part of my morning routine I visit grateful.org and respond to the question of the day. The community there is warm and welcoming, and the question always reminds me of my generally great good fortune. I read responses from people who haven't been as fortunate and it's clearly helping them too, as we pause to pay attention the way I'm doing with this question.

An element of the journal—and if you stop reading after this paragraph you've gotten the most important thing I do: As I start each day's pages I set one part of a page apart and head it "Today's delights—" thanks to reading Ross Gay's The Book of Delights*. I enjoy doing some decoration of the spot and use a different color of ink so it stands out. And then I pay attention! Over the course of the day I find what I'm looking for, which is the small delights each day holds. It might be that first cup of fresh, hot coffee; the cat's warmth on my lap and the way he leans into my hand to have his chin skritched; putting together an outfit I really love for the color combination; seeing a deer on the sidewalk in our neighborhood (so far I've been lucky and they haven't jumped the fence to snack on my garden); the social energy of a community event; hearing the deep tones of the windchimes outside my office window when the breeze picks up. Whatever I find delightful, which happens when I pause and pay attention to that happy little zing.

Other things:

I got a walking pad that has made a real difference in my energy level over the course of the day. When I can I also go outside for brief walks between meetings. This isn't skipping work, this is work; the brain needs unscheduled time to process and make new connections. I live in a small neighborhood with a loop street and almost no traffic, which makes it easy to do 2 or 3 loops. If I had a linear street I'd probably pick a landmark as a turnaround point. 

I turn some meetings into walking meetings, too. I live near both a small park and a big park. Walking and listening makes me a more attentive participant than if I sit at my desk with three screens in front of me and plenty of emails awaiting a reply and inviting me to tune out the meeting. I love being in a green space hearing bird calls, seeing ferns and moss, winding along the soft trails.

When I go outside or when I sit at a table I have near a window, I look at the sky. I might watch clouds moving, which I can do right now, puffy white clouds against a blue sky; appreciate the deep blue if that's what I have; decide that all my walking will be inside because it's pouring rain. Whatever it is, the sky is always there and I feel as if I've ignored it more often in the past than I paid attention to it, once I outgrew lying on the lawn and looking up to identify cloud pictures. (A very delightful thing to do that I'm coming back to)

Thanks to my sweetheart I stay stocked up on dark chocolate sea salt truffles. In the evening I eat one, maybe two, for a touch of sweetness at the end of the day.

An important piece of this: I don't tell myself I've been "good" in what I ate and therefore somehow earned the chocolate. Food is enjoyable and I let myself enjoy it without any calorie-counting or nutritional analysis. (I'm fortunate not to have any health conditions that would require me to do this.) Giving up the societally created pressure to have a body that looks a certain way has been very freeing. My body can move and laugh and hug and that's what counts.

I ride my bike or take the bus for most transportation. I chose to (and could afford to) live in a location that lets me do this. I find driving stressful, whereas when I ride my bike I feel joyful and free and arrive happy. On the bus I see the regulars, look at the houses and yards we pass, maybe listen to a podcast. Either way I don't have to worry about finding or paying for a parking spot when I arrive at my destination.

I grow a garden and preserve a lot of food through canning, freezing, and dehydrating. It's such a delight to pull a jar of jam out in midwinter, open it up and smell the raspberries I grew in the summer. I give away much of what I can and it makes me happy to share the bounty.

I love this question. What's your answer? 


*Bookshop.org affiliate link. Go to your local independent bookstore if you can, or get it from your library, but the link is here if you need it.

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In Search of Mexican Chocolate Shortbread

On vacation in Port Townsend at the end of June I encountered Oaxacan chocolate shortbread cookies made by Makabi & Sons, a lucky purchase at Aldrich's. A delicious slow burn, a touch of cinnamon, chocolate shortbread—I was hooked. I wanted to replicate this experience at home if I could.

As with my various adventures in canning, I compared recipes to identify key variables. This led to the first baffling discovery: A big swing in the amount of cinnamon relative to the amount of flour and cocoa powder between the first two recipes I read. Why oh why? 

I didn't read every recipe I found and try to come up with my own proportions. Instead I decided to try the first two I found, with one small adjustment.

Recipe #1: Mexican Chocolate Shortbread from Viktoria's Table. It calls for the same amount of cinnamon as my second candidate but has only half as much flour, cocoa powder, butter etc.

Recipe #2:  Mexican Chocolate Shortbread from Averie Cooks. 

Recipe #3: Mexican Chocolate Shortbread from Rachel Cooks. This one's a little like Recipe #1 and Recipe #2 had a baby with a small mutation on the sugar gene. It has the proportions of #2 for flour, butter, and sugar, but only half the cinnamon; the addition of dark chocolate chips of #1; and it uses powdered sugar rather than granulated sugar.

I baked recipes #1 and #2, saving #3 for later. On #1 I reduced the cinnamon to 1 teaspoon, making the proportions more comparable to #2. The recipe calls for 1/8-1/4 teaspoon of cayenne; I went with 1/4 t. The recipe calls for 2 ounces of shaved dark chocolate. I had dark chocolate chips on hand so I used those, no shaving involved although maybe I should have chopped them to make smaller bits.

Taste test results: I wouldn't kick either of these to the curb, but recipe #2 is my favorite. I thought the addition of dark chocolate chips to #1 might give it the edge, but no. #2 has greater depth of flavor, probably thanks to the additional spices in the mix. I also think the thicker slices of dough in #2 gave a more genuine shortbread consistency. #1 might have fared better with that thickness but it called for thinner slices and I followed the recipe. That yielded a consistency a little more like a regular cookie, perhaps thanks to the dark chocolate in the batter.

The cayenne provides a nice slow, delayed burn at the back of the throat. Either recipe could stand a bit more cayenne for my taste. I was trying to come close to the Makabi & Sons cookies and didn't quite get there. I'm now curious about Recipe #3 and whether powdered sugar would yield the final dryness and snap of the store cookies that was part of the appeal along with the heat. Try those if you find them in the store; they're delicious! And they'll give you a baseline for your own adventures in baking.

ADDENDUM: Came back to add the either genius or over-the-top (or both) idea I had while munching on these. What about making a sandwich cookie with the chocolate cherry jam? Or a bowl of ice cream topped with the jam and the cookies adding crunch. I mean, you do you, but this all sounds decadent and wonderful to me. I'm planning to make a blackberry chocolate chili jam based on this Larder Love recipe later and that's another candidate, but possibly too much chili overall.


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Cherry Cherry Good: Pickled Cherries and Chocolate Cherry Jam

A farmers' market run yielded 6+ pounds of red cherries of unspecified variety, appearance similar to Bing. I had a plan: One tried and true recipe, one new one. And I have the purplish fingernails to prove I executed on all that cherry pitting. Good thing my friend Stefanie has the handy kind of cherry pitter with the little box to catch the pits and the spring-action pitting rod.

The Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries are on permanent repeat. The first year I didn't make enough to give any away. My precious, mine! The second year I added too much salt to one of two batches, then mixed up the jars, so I couldn't give any of it away because I didn't want to give away the batch that wasn't as good. Oh darn, I guess I'll have to eat all of those jars too....

This year I used the tall skinny half-pint jars so I can tell them apart at a glance, besides having the cue on every label that tells you what year I put something up.

Yield: 12 half-pints, and that isn't enough!

Close-up phot of 3 skinny half-pint jars with cherry halves floating in dark liquid. Oval label reads Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries From the Kitchen of Barb Chamberlain 2026

The Chocolate Cherry Jam, on the other hand.... It's hard for me to say the words "too much chocolate", but the amount of cocoa powder in the Ball Chocolate Cherry Jam goes some distance toward drowning out the cherries. It's delicious as a chunky chocolate sauce with fruit flavor, but next time I'd use about half the amount of cocoa powder and taste the results before committing any more. That won't affect the jelling.

[EDIT UPDATE TO CHANGE MY MIND! As my taste tester, Sweet Hubs said he could taste the cherries just fine. A couple of days later I put some of this jam on a bran muffin and was more than satisfied by the balance of chocolate and cherry. This jam is awesome. Make it.]

I started out trying to make it without pectin, ended up adding a pouch of liquid pectin when it just wasn't giving me any sheeting action after a fair amount of cooking.

Tiny tweaks:
  • I added a teaspoon of vanilla early on since that enhances chocolate (but I don't think that created the over-chocolatey results).
  • At a later taste test when I couldn't really get the cherry flavor I added 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract, being cautious so I wasn't making it an almond recipe, but knowing that the flavors of almonds and cherries show up in maraschino cherries and a bit of almond should enhance the cherry presence. Not by enough, though.
Yield: 3 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints

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Apple Mint Jelly, No Pectin Needed

What is it with the wildly varying proportions in recipes for making mint jelly?!

I made apple mint jelly once before, using a recipe from a Reddit thread because I had a lot of gleaned apples that year and could make the recipe that involved cooking the apples down, extracting juice, and adding vinegar. Yes, this is extra work, but a number of mint jelly recipes call for this approach. Apple juice as medium, essentially.

Right now it isn't apple season but boy, do I have mint (as one does), so I decided to make it using some bottled apple cider I have on hand.

Various recipes call for cooking the mint leaves in water or juice, then going forward with the recipe. I don't want to use pectin so I'm going to lean on apple juice plus some added lemon juice. I remember doing this with the previous batch and getting a good jell.

The proportions thing, though.... After cutting all the mint in the yard, stripping leaves, and setting the small leaves aside to dry for mint tea, I have 2 cups. Do I start with a recipe based on one cup and scale everything up accordingly? If I do that, which one-cup recipe do I start with—the one that has a 1:1 ratio of mint to liquid or the one that has 1:4?? (That one just sounds weak-ass, if you'll pardon the term.) The National Center for Home Food Preservation does a lot of testing, particularly for whether the ratios are food safe, so I'm inclined to stick with them and ignore their use of pectin. Below my recipe I list the sources I consulted with their varying ratios, what liquid they used, and whether pectin was involved.

Ingredients

2 cups packed mint leaves, roughly chopped
3 cups apple cider (I used commercial cider because I had it on hand and it's time to use it up; this could be apple juice instead)
2 cups sugar
2 T. lemon juice
~1 T. dried mint leaves, optional

So my starting ratio is 2:3:2, plus 2 T. lemon juice.

Instructions

Read the National Center for Home Food Preservation on canning basics if this is your first time on the merry-go-round.

Sterilize your canning jars and get everything ready. 

  • I put my jars on a big roasting pan in the oven at 200 degrees for at least 10 minutes. Timing this right gives you warm jars when you're ready to put hot product into them, which is important; hot jelly going into a cold jar can crack it.
  • Put a small plate in the freezer to use for your jelling test.
  • Get that big pot of water warming. If you're using a full-sized canning kettle it will take a while. I sometimes use my soup pot for a smaller batch, placing a metal trivet in the bottom to keep the jars from touching the heat directly. I may also speed things up by using my hot-water kettle for a faster heating of a smaller quantity and pouring that in, maybe doing this a couple of times.

Extract mint-flavored juice. Bring the chopped mint and apple juice or cider to a boil in a large pan such as a Dutch oven. You can muddle the leaves a bit with a potato masher if you like. Once the juice has come to a boil, cover and set off the heat to steep for 10 minutes or so. Strain the leaves out and toss them in the compost.

Make the jelly. Place the minty juice in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy pan. Stir in the sugar and lemon juice. On high heat, bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Cook until the liquid runs together when you lift the spoon, or test on that plate you put in the freezer to see if the liquid will wrinkle when you run the tip of a spoon through it. This will take a while because we're not using pectin in this recipe. I used a thermometer, but I find that even when I don't hit the recommended 220 degrees if I've gotten over 205 my products will set up.

Optional mint intensification. Taste the liquid early on (carefully! It's very hot!). If you'd like the flavor to be a bit more minty (mintier?), place the dried mint leaves in a teaball and put that in the liquid to steep while it's coming to the jelling stage. I did that for this batch and my official taste tester said it's the perfect mintiness, meaning it's very minty.

Canning step. Pour the hot jelly into hot, sterile jars, leaving ¼ inch headspace. Wipe the rims with a dampened clean paper towel; put the lids on. Process 10 minutes in boiling water, timing it from when the water returns to the boil after putting the jars in.

Yield: 5 quarter-pints that jelled beautifully with zero pectin. Picture below only shows four because one has already been used up by Chief Taste Taster, aka my Sweet Hubs.

What I don't do that you may find in other recipes. 

  • I don't add a drop or two of green food coloring because I like the natural golden color. That commercial mint jelly looks like Jell-O to me. If the bright green is important to you, by all means go for it.
  • I don't save some fresh mint leaves to chop fine and stir in at the end as the jelly goes into the jars. Some people like little things floating in their jelly. I don't.
  • I also skip skimming the foam in some recipes. I stir it down and mix it in. If it really looked foamy all across the top of the pan I might skim it. When I do, I put the foam in a little jar to go in the fridge because it's perfectly good! In peak canning season I might end up with a jar of mixed flavors from three or four different recipes and it can be delicious, a sort of bumbleberry jam by proxy.

Photo of 4 glass quarter-pint jars holding a golden jelly, label that reads Apple Mint Jelly From the Kitchen of Barb Chamberlain 2026

Mint Jelly Recipes

List below has the recipes I consulted and the proportions, along with whether or not they add any lemon juice or vinegar (another element that varies widely) and whether they use pectin.

Ratios listed are in cups for mint:water:sugar, with a note if the recipe calls for apple juice instead of water. I'm listing them in order by the volume of mint leaves and liquid. If the recipe calls for apple juice then it shouldn't need as much sugar for sweetness, although it needs it for jelling action.

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Mixed Citrus Ginger Marmalade Take 2

Keeping a bag in the freezer labeled "Future Marmalade" ensures that citrus doesn't go to waste in my household. The mixture grows in its own good time, at a pace determined by meetings that offer mandarin oranges, Arnold Palmers and other beverages that come with a slice of lemon, an orange slice decorating a dinner eaten out somewhere. It grows in its own eclectic direction based on what I'm cooking, or think I'll be cooking; this year's mix included 2 limes, a couple of lemons I know I bought for a recipe I didn't get around to making, and a blood orange I don't quite remember acquiring, along with the usual oranges and miscellaneous slices.

Photo of a large blue Dutch oven holding a bright orange-yellow mix of citrus peels and flesh.

This year I used a different technique, following Food in Jars' technique of boiling the fruit and then letting it cool rather than macerating overnight, then slicing the peel into tiny ribbons. I also took her 1:1:1 fruit:sugar:water to heart. When the water you use is the water you boiled the fruit in, it's retaining all the citrusy goodness.

Ingredients

~4 lbs. citrus peel and flesh (I neglected to measure volume; I'd guess this was somewhere around 6 cups)
6 cups of the water the fruit boiled in
3-1/2 lbs. granulated white sugar (this was chosen based on coming close to matching the citrus by weight and not exceeding it; the last batch was a bit too sweet)
2-1/2 ounces crystallized ginger, chopped
2 T. ginger paste from a tube (feel free to grate and chop if that's your thing, and you can leave this out if you don't want much gingery goodness)

Instructions

Honestly, read Food in Jars for good instructions, or the National Center for Home Food Preservation. This is my abbreviated description of what I did and the options I considered. 

Prep the fruit: Your choice on handling the fruit. You can boil it all together in plenty of water for an hour, then let it cool. If you do this, you then slice the zest into tiny ribbons, save the seeds and pith in cheesecloth so they can go for a swim in the cookpot to provide pectin, and chop the flesh. 

Or you do the zesting/cutting/etc. beforehand and soak the prepared fruit overnight in the water. You still have to boil it at that point so I don't know that you're really far ahead; it's more a question of whether you remembered to set things up the night before the day when you'll have time to cook and can the marmalade.

If you really want to spread the labor out, do the zesting and separate the pith and flesh as you acquire citrus, keeping the zest, flesh, and stray juice in one bag, the pith and seeds in another, both in your freezer. Defrost all, put the seeds and pith in cheesecloth that will soak in the cooking peel/flesh combo, then proceed with boiling for an hour to soften before adding the rest of the ingredients.

Prep jars and water bath: I sterilize my jars by putting them on a pan in the oven at 250 degrees for 10 minutes or more. At about the halfway mark of cooking the marmalade you'll want to get that going. You want the jars to be warm or hot when you put the hot marmalade in them to avoid a big temperature differential. 

I've also made use of the hot water bath, dipping one jar at a time in with the canning tongs, but that's slow. I mostly do this when I end up with a bit more product than I'd anticipated and need a couple of additional jars.

Or you can run them in the dishwasher, in which case you started that well before this point because you read the whole recipe before starting to make it, right?

Boil the marmalade: Bring all ingredients to a rapid boil in a heavy pan such as a Dutch oven with plenty of surface area. Stir frequently and keep it boiling.

At about 25 minutes start testing the temperature. You're aiming for 220 degrees. I didn't quite get there with my 2024 batch and it jelled just fine. Do a bit of a taste test here for the balance of bitter, sweet, and gingery. You may decide you want it a bit sweeter or hotter.  Add sugar or more ginger accordingly and cook a bit longer. Toward the end, pull the cheesecloth bundle of pith and seeds out and squeeze it carefully; tongs come in handy here. That pectin-producing fruit stuff is now ready for the compost pile.

Put in jars and process: Set your jars up on a towel or baking rack. Ladle the hot marmalade into each jar, leaving about a quarter-inch (halfway up the threaded portion of the jar). Wipe the edges of each jar with a damp cloth so there's no product to interrupt the seal, put on the lids so they're firm but not screwed super tight. Process in the boiling water for 15 minutes, starting your timer after the water returns to boiling once all the jars are in.

Yield: From the quantities listed above I got 12 quarter-pints and 7 half-pints.

My small-batch trick: I have a really big canning kettle. Holds a bunch of water, deep enough to process quart jars, has the nice rack for lowering the jars in. And it takes forever to heat to boiling even if I speed it up by using my hot water kettle to quickly boil 4 cups at a time and dumping that in. 

If I'm not going to spend the whole day making multiple things to can, I use my soup kettle instead. I put a metal trivet in the bottom so the jars won't sit directly on the kettle. I have to handle each jar going in and coming out individually with the jar lifter. That takes a bit of time and care, but I figure I'm saving energy by not heating more water than I really need for quarter-pints and half-pints.

Photo of a line of glass canning jars, mostly quarter-pints with a few half-pints, sitting on a wire baking rack over a red towel on a white countertop. In the upper right corner, two brightly colored metal birds oversee the canning, one a short owl and the other more of a bluejay, both painted in bright blues, oranges and yellows.

Related Reading and Recipes



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Green and Growing: More Poems about Gardens and Gardening

The 2025 gardening season began for me in February when I pruned the raspberries and tayberries (oh, those wicked thorns!). I wasn't yet truly done with the 2024 season, in the sense that I still had berries and vegetables in the freezer waiting for me to turn them into something despite the complete canapalooza canathon canstravaganza I put up in jars in 2024.

I created a big garden bed full of poems I harvested along the way that same year. They just keep coming, the way the world keeps turning, the sun keeps rising, rain keeps falling, seeds keep doing their amazing thing and turning into plants that make more seeds. 

Now it's 2026 and I'm deep into another year of gardening. Heirloom seeds courtesy of my neighbor's generous daughter populate my raised beds. She shared her large stock and even started some plants for me: peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, five varieties of basil (Genovese, sweet, mammoth, Thai, ruby). Volunteer potatoes showed up early, telling me I didn't get all of them dug last fall. I relocated plant after plant into one raised bed that's now filled with a mass of greenery, the soil beneath where I hilled up the plants completely hidden. The new garden beds I created around a couple of trees give me more space for flowers. One of them bloomed with bulbs that I planted last fall. Those green shoots of hope poking through the soil shouted "Spring!", then died back as a reminder that I need to do more if I want color throughout summer and fall.

"Happiness"
Paisley Rekdal

I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth:

Maya Stein

There are outlines of what will unfold in the beds.
That first tiny, ripe tomato. 


Curled carcasses of leaves all over the paths, kale stiff and starchy,
the basil stalks skeletal. What if, she wonders, I do nothing? A whole season
could pass this way, every death taking its own putrefying time and she
on the other side of the window, warming her toes on the hearth.

Joy Sullivan

I waited so long for love
and suddenly, here it is
standing in the garden, hands full
of heirlooms hot from the sun.

"In the Garden"
Fabiana Fondevila

There’s zeal ripening in the tomatoes
and purpose in the pumpkin vine
trampling its way to freedom.

There is inner city grit in the hydrangea
struggling to bloom
in its chewed up dress and tortured feet.


It is important for me to be down on my knees,
my fingers sifting the black earth,
making those things grow which will grow.
Sometimes I save a weed if its leaves
are spread fern-like, hand-like,
or if it grows with a certain impertinence.

"In Time"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

In soil not yet worked this spring,
two perfect rows of parsley emerge 
in a curly leafed celebration of green, 
vestiges from last year’s planting.


I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence
And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that
They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense
In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear
She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street

"Making Sense - or I Pledge Allegiance" (scroll down on the page to find the poem)
Carrie Newcomer

I lift up my face to the summer sky
The sound of larks
And the feel of dirt
To all that keeps making sense
In senseless times.

Related Reading
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A Rose Amidst the Thorns: Poems about Beauty Balancing Pain

In the face of horrors visited upon our world daily, in the struggle to protect our loved ones, choosing to let in joy is a revolutionary act. Joy returns us to everything that is good and beautiful and worth fighting for.
— Valarie Kaur

Poetry often gives us implicit messages. The takeaway is there if you think about it, as many an English teacher tries to convey, teaching us to read between the lines.

At other times it's right out there. This collection of poems falls into that category: poems in which the poet reflects directly on the stark contrasts between the many beauties in the world and its many agonies and cruelties.

John Ruskin, a prolific English author, poet, painter, philosopher, and social critic, wrote a book he titled The Duty of Delight. Critical of the Victorian Christians of his time, he wrote that they “dwell only on the duty of self-denial but exhibit not the duty of delight.”

Social activist and writer Dorothy Day used this phrase often, including as the title of a collection of her journal entries (*affiliate link). From a footnote in the book: "this phrase came to serve for Dorothy as a call to mindfulness in the face of drudgery and sorrow."

Or, as the Buddha said, "No mud, no lotus."

Sojourner Truth may have said it best: “Life is a hard battle anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life’s light to be determined by the darkness around me.”

These poems remind me of how incredibly fortunate I've been for the majority of my life, and how many don't have that same good fortune. 

They remind me to recommit to working for justice.

They remind me to pay attention.

As always, I've shared a brief excerpt from each poem. Follow the link to read the complete work.

"A Brief for the Defense"
Jack Gilbert

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.

"The News"
Emilie Lygren

Each morning we listen for what is breaking—

the sound of a thousand tragedies fills the air,
shattering that never stops,
headlines, a fleet of anchors tangled at our feet.

"Everything is Plundered, Betrayed, Sold"
Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz

Why then do we not despair?
By day, from the surrounding woods,
cherries blow summer into town;
at night the deep transparent skies
glitter with new galaxies.

"Testimony"
Rebecca Baggett

I want to say, like Neruda,
that I am waiting for
"a great and common tenderness,"
that I still believe
we are capable of attention,
that anyone who notices the world
must want to save it.

"Adrift"
Mark Nepo

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat.

"Fear and Love"
Jim Moore 

I wish I could make the argument that a river
and a sunset plus a calm disregard of the ego
are enough. But whatever comes next must include
tents in the parking lot, that homeless camp
on the way to the airport,
and the hole in your cheek
from the cancer removed yesterday.

"September, 1918"
Amy Lowell

Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.

"Prayer"
Teddy Macker 

dear lord in this time of darkness
may we be unafraid to mourn and together and hugely

may dignity lose its scaffolding
faces crumble like bricks

dear lord let grief come to grief

and then o lord help us to see the bees yet in the lavender
the spokes of sunlight down through the oaks

"Sometimes"
David Budbill

I know in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be
taken from me, and therefore I've got to say, right now,
what I feel and know and see, I've got to say, right now,
how beautiful and sweet this world can be.

"Sweetness"
Stephen Dunn

Often a sweetness comes   
as if on loan, stays just long enough   

to make sense of what it means to be alive,
   then returns to its dark   
source. As for me, I don’t care   

where it’s been, or what bitter road
   it’s traveled   
to come so far, to taste so good.

"Please"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

We need you to remind us we can
be furious and scared and near feral
over injustice and still thrill at the taste
of a strawberry, ripe and sweet,
can still meet a stranger and shake
their hand, believing in their humanness.

"Thanks"
W.S. Merwin

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

A question for you: Do you have a favorite poem, or one that's painful to read, that belongs on this list? I have the memory of reading another one that has been reprinted many places that I now can't find so I'd love to get more titles and links.

Related reading

*Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you purchase through this link I receive a teensy tiny commission. Any commissions received will be donated to nonprofit organizations working for social justice and transportation equity.
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Canstravaganza 2025

Food in Jars blogger Marisa was holding a canning challenge that started in January. I happened across it after I'd already inadvertently completed the February assignments: frozen fruit and freezer excavation. I love that she includes a community-building item in each month. She also notes that this is all in fun and we should feel free to mix things up. I can say that I did at least one of the two challenges for each month at some point during the year, just not necessarily in the month she listed them.

January
  • Food in Jars challenge: Root vegetables and brassicas. I didn't check this box. I've made banh mi mix in the past (shredded daikon and carrot in vinegar) and it lasts forever in the fridge so I'll come back to this at some point. Community-building assignment: Share a jar. Definitely did that; I took jars to meetings and gave them to friends. That happens just about every month, actually.
February
  • Tayberry Jam Recipe by Chef Heidi Fink. 11 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints
  • Classic Raspberry Jam Recipe by Creative Canning. 7 quarter-pints, 7 half-pints
  • Blackberry Roasted Plum Preserves by Southern Fatty. 8 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
  • Blackberry Plum Fruit Leather: No recipe needed. Pureed blackberries and plums in the food processor, dropped in dollops about the size of a Nilla wafer on the dehydrator trays, and dried overnight to produce little fruity coins by the next morning. Those went into the freezer.
  • The Food in Jars challenge was using frozen fruit, the community challenge was freezer excavation. For me, that came up when the freezer defrosted later this year. But I did make all of this month's jams from berries and fruits I'd harvested last year and stored in the freezer.
March
Working with green tomatoes frozen in 2024, 12 pounds of tomatillos frozen in 2023, I made:
  • Tomatillo Lime Jalapeño Jam: 8 half-pints, 12 quarter-pints. I added 3 jalapeños to the recipe, wanting it to have a bit of heat because that felt like a fit.
  • Green Tomato/Tomatillo Chutney: 12 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints. I linked to the recipe although I think in future I'll use my own Green Tomato Chutney recipe whether I'm using green tomatoes on their own or mixed with tomatillos. I can attest that the spicing mix in that is really, really good.
  • Food in Jars challenge: Make a mix. I didn't make a mix in the sense of a muffin mix or salad, but I did mix green tomatoes and tomatillos. Community challenge, contribute to a community fridge or pantry. I think we did drop something off at the food shelves by the community garden on Yew, and I gave away some herbs when I had more than I could use later in the year.
April
  • No canning, but the Food in Jars community challenge was to plant something and I did that. The canning challenge was herbs and alliums. I collect and dry herbs when the pots cry out for harvesting, so that happens when it happens.
May
  • No canning. Food in Jars challenge was berries. Mine are still growing at this point. The community challenge was to learn from a friend. I swap canning recipes with my friend Stefanie' we have different pickled cherry recipes and I like mine.

June

  • Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries,: 26 half-pints (I'm not messing around this year. It took a great deal of discipline to stretch last year's cherries to this spring!)
  • Food in Jars challenge: Jam. I cover that in other months. The community challenge was to attend a potluck. Our neighborhood potluck is in August and I went to that.

July

  • Tayberry Rhubarb Jam: 9 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
  • Food in Jars challenge: Pickles, and I made those pickled cherries in June. Community challenge, support a local farmer or grower. I do that with regular trips to the Olympia Farmers' Market, and I buy eggs from the "farmette" stand down the street.
August
  • Apple Cardamom Rosemary Jam: 4 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints. Read my notes on seasoning adjustments in my piece on making lots of use of apples
  • Froze 8 pounds of sliced apples for future apple-pear butter; the apples are ready ahead of pears this year
  • Food in Jars challenge: Sauces, which I'd thought I would make this year. I ended up doing this in November when I experimented with ketchup (never again!) and ended up making a chutney sauce. The community challenge was to gather or glean, and this time of year I'm picking blackberries. I also get apples as they ripen from a couple of publicly located trees.
September
  • Last September was a canning frenzy. This September wasn't. I went on a two-week vacation starting Sept. 27 and needed to get things done to be ready for that.
  • Food in Jars challenge: Condiments, and host a swap. I did the ketchup effort in November. A canning swap sounds like a fun idea; maybe I'll organize that one of these years.
October
  • Also not a canning month, but the "October Surprise" of a defrosted freezer guaranteed I'd be canning in November.
  • Food in Jars challenge: Drying and dehydration. I did that back in February with fruit leather, and over the course of the summer I harvested and dried some of the herbs I grow. Community challenge, share your knowledge. I write blog posts to capture and share my recipe explorations so check, did that.

November
  • Blackberry Jelly: 15 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints.
  • Tayberry Jam: The tried and true Chef Heidi Fink recipe I used last year. 
  • Sour Cherry Amaretto Jam: I used the no-pectin sour cherry jam recipe from Sourdough Brandon, enhanced by the amaretto suggestion in the recipe from DishNTheKitchen.
  • "Razzbuzzy Jam": 7 quarter-pints. Followed the Classic Raspberry Jam and stirred in 3 T. of raspberry liqueur. Not very buzzy, but tasty!
  • Spiced Blueberry Jam: 7 quarter-pints.
  • Smoky Spicy Tomato Jam: 3  half-pints, 11 quarter-pints. This Food in Jars is on repeat from last year and it's my go-to.
  • Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce: 8 half-pints, 11 quarter-pints.
  • Salted Caramel Pear Butter: 2 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints
  • Cranberry Orange Jam with Crystallized Ginger: 3 half-pints, 13 quarter-pints
    • Read my comments on the Serious Eats site. Allow for more cook time to get softened citrus and cranberries. Try reducing the sugar a bit. You don't need pectin.
    • This is also the point in the year when I start thinking I should have put up more half-pints, ordered more quarter-pint jars, or both! I like the quarter-pint size for gifts.
  • Spiced Apple Butter: 4 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints, 1 6-oz jar, an experiment in reusing a commercial jar and lid that went into the refrigerator because I wasn't confident about the seal.
  • Food in Jars challenge: Apples. Yep, got that covered. Community challenge, barter with a friend or neighbor. I do a lot in our Buy Nothing group, both giving and receiving. That space doesn't permit bartering but it feels as if it's in the general spirit.
December
  • Food in Jars challenge: Use it up! Is she kidding? I make far too much to use it up in a year! Community challenge, bake for others. Yep, did that.
Not the blowout year that 2024 was, but then I still have jars of product from that year on the shelves. Anyone want some jam? Chutney? Green tomato sauce? Anyone? And I did actually end up hitting the mark on the Food in Jars challenge, just in different months.
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