Hi, I am Wendy - Paul's wife.  I thought I would add to the blog this week considering Paul has been busy.  We have a booth at the Hillsborough farmers market to sell shrubs.  Paul suggested I make jams and preserves for our booth as well so I have been doing it this year but not without learning a few things.  I had canned some vegetables a few years ago with pretty good success so I figured how much different and harder could this be.  It has been an adventure in and of itself. 

I went out and bought all the equipment such as a canning pot, funnel, and sure gel.  I had a ball canning cook book from my vegetable canning days which has a great section on jams and preserves, however, I decided to go on the internet for a recipe first.  Bad idea.  The recipe was just that and nothing else.  I had forgotten about preparing the jars in advance so I started on down the road of preparing some apple and peach preserves without having jars in boiling hot water and ready.  By the time the jars were boiling hot and ready the preserves were cold.   That batch was ruined so I had to use the fruit for dessert instead of preserves.  I decided I should read up on all the tasks before getting started on anything with the recipe.  I did it again using pears in the right order and it worked out great and a lot faster that time.

The next great experiment was an orange marmalade.  I chopped all the oranges and orange peel but they were relatively large in size.  The recipe didn't say to chop them down very small but it did say to put everything except the sugar in a pot, bring to a boil, and let sit overnight so that the peels get soft.  It didn't say whether to put it in the refrigerator or not - which was confusing?  Does anyone know if you are supposed to refrigerate it or not?  Anyway - the next day the peels didn't look that soft and I was thinking I didn't recall seeing large peels in marmalade jars so I put the entire concoction into the blender.  I still have orange on my ceiling of my kitchen!  Word of warning - don't fill liquids up to the top of a blender and make sure the lid is secure.
I boiled what was left from the blender with the sugar in a pot for a good while reading the section of my ball recipe book on gelling (yes - I didn't read the task ahead of preparing the recipe).  It wasn't very clear on what temperature gelling occurs and had several tests.  No matter how many of these I tried - it never seemed to be gelling.  I figured after a full 5 minutes of boiling, it had to be done so I ladled the marmalade mixture into the jars, boiled the jars to seal, and then let them sit over night only to find that they were still liquid the next day!  I was very upset.  I dumped all of it out in bitter frustration saying I was never going to attempt it again.  The next week - I was totally focused that I was going to try one more time before throwing in the towel.  This time it worked - I didn't do anything different (other than chopping the peel smaller up front) but for some reason it gelled.  It was the best marmalade I had ever tasted on top of it!
Does anyone know why some recipes use pectin to gel and others don't?  I have no idea and would prefer just to use it with everything 

Now that I have more confidence in the basic recipes, I have been making more exotic things like Peach Mango jam and Orange pineapple marmalade.  We have the flavor of the week at the farmers market booth each week and folks have given good feedback which is important so that I can improve or make more of what they like.  If you have tried my jams and have feedback or suggestions - feel free to provide them here as well. 

Also - if anyone has any good recipes for unusual jams - feel free to send them my way.  My current list of tried and tested recipes are the following:

Strawberry Jam
Peach Jam
Triple Berry Jam
Strawberry Peach Jam
Peach Raspberry Jam
Peach Mango Jam
Blueberry Lime Jam
Apple preserves
Pear preserves
Peach Preserves
Orange marmalade
Orange Pineapple marmalade
Strawberry lemon marmalade