Jelly from Juice

For my second canning experiment, I chose Pomegranate Jelly.  My boyfriend loves pomegranate juice, so it's something we have around the house quite often.  Using juice from a bottle rather than squeezing it out of a gazzilion tiny seeds appealed to my sense of immediacy, and I figured, why not?

Again, I changed the recipe, though.  I used Splenda rather than sugar, and I certainly didn't use 7 1/2 cups!  One thing I've noticed in a great many of the canning recipes I've looked at is that they use an incredible amount of sugar.  I prefer jellies and jams that taste more like the fruit they're made from and less like fruit-flavoured sugar syrup, so for this recipe I went with 3 cups.  I also used low-or-no sugar pectin rather than regular.

It set up really well!  I got 9 4-oz jars out of it.

Me: 2, Canning Gremlins: 0.

I was so excited by my canning prowess that I gave several of them away to friends.  My success here caused a problem, though:  I got cocky.

Learning to Can

Why exactly did I decide to learn to can?  I have wonderful memories from my childhood of strawberry jam and apple butter my mom used to make, of sweet picked mixed vegetables my mom used to call "chow chow", of Razzleberry jam my aunt used to make for me.  Neither of them can anymore, so if I wanted any of the tasty treats I remember from my childhood, I guessed it was up to me.

In true geeky style, the first thing I did was buy books.  Lots of them.  I started with Canning For Dummies, Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving, and BH&G's Can It.  I've bought many more since then (I'm nothing else if not obsessive), some I've liked better than others, and I'll review them later.

Secondly, I bought supplies.  I bought both a pressure canner and a hot water canner, two sets of canning tools (so I have a fail-over set, naturally), two candy thermometers, and jars... lots and lots of jars.

Next, I planned.  My boyfriend calls me a "planny-planner", and he's probably right.  Maybe it's the geek-thing.  I went through the books in my arsenal, and I scoured the web, looking for the perfect first recipe to try.  Even though it was the middle of winter here in Central NY, I found pickling cucumbers, so I decided to start with dill pickles.  I chose the recipe Blue Ribbon Dill Pickles, and I followed it.

I was hooked.  Me: 1, Canning Gremlins: 0.