Fog and Raspberry Jam

For about 3 weeks in October we experienced constant fog.

On  the occasional day the sun would peak through and try to burn off the fog

The photos here are on a late afternoon as the sun was heading to bed and managed to shine a bit under the fog cover.


It was a mystical time - all sound is muffled as it is in a snow fall, at times I had to call the goats as we couldn't even see the pens from the house. The cold damp got into everything and let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I was a year older and wiser - and bruised.

We stayed inside and cooked up jam - fogging the windows on the inside of the kitchen as if to taunt the fog outside.

Just spent this Wednesday morning re-cooking some of the raspberry jam - hadn't thickened up enough. Back in the pot with another package of certo and boiled once more will solve the problem.

I did look up how to make my own pectin. Tart/unripe apples and crab apples, cleaned/sliced (skin on) boiled down, strained and the juice becomes your very own liquid pectin. You can test as this point for gel-ablity, cooking the juice more if needed. Then you refrigerate or pressure-can the juice/now liquid pectin for next year's jams. If you didn't want to bother and didn't want to use commercial certo-type products you could probably add a couple apples to the fruit & sugar and cook it in that way as well - depends on the berries or fruit you are jamming. Those "old wives" knew what they were talking about. 

Have a good one,
Jaki A.