Seasons of our Lives

When I was much younger and had small children at home I did a lot of canning. We were living in a small southern town where gardens were in every other yard and I had only to drive a couple of miles from my house to find a produce stand. Then I was all about saving money so I could afford to feed those hungry kids!

Today I don't have to feed hungry children, at least not in my home, but I find great satisfaction in "going back to my roots" and doing some canning, not because I have to, but because I want to. This summer I've been blessed with garden produce from two wonderful neighbors, Betty and Ross. They aren't wonderful because they give me produce, though I do love receiving it, but are wonderful because they are good Christian people and good friends and neighbors. In fact, I'm hoping God lets them live on my street in Heaven too.

This week they brought me a gallon bag of muscadines. Ya'll they were so sweet and good that we wanted to eat every single one of them at one sitting! We restrained ourselves, though it was hard, so we could make muscadine jam.

First we separated the insides from the outsides. :) I had to have some help with this because my hands don't have a lot of strenth since Arthur came to visit. That's what my grandmother always called arthritis. Anyway, Jerry loved helping me. Didn't you honey? Honey? You did, didn't you?

Then I cooked them, separately, for just a few minutes. I added some water to the peels but the pulp didn't need any. They had lots of juice. The pulp cooks up kind of clear but the peels cook up a beautiful purple.

After pressing all of it through a sieve and combining it this is what it looks like. I added sugar, lots of sugar, and pectin.

I poured all that beautiful jam into hot jars and gave it a water bath and ended up with.....

this gorgeous stuff! And ya'll it's so good it'll make you slap your mama...well not really, but you get my drift. Now don't you wish you had this to spread on my good homemade sourdough bread toasted with real butter? You are so jealous.