Rhubarb-Orange Marmalade

So this marmalade came into being because we have a LOT of rhubarb. Last year, at the beginning of spring, my husband and I split our plant into 8 smaller plants. We gave away 4 of them, and kept 4. Those divisions were fairly large and now I have 4 huge plants.

My rhubarb is green. It's a Victoria-type that's very sweet, very tender and tends to have thinner stalks that get very long. The bottoms are red, but the lengths are a celery green.

Those oranges are fairly large oranges.

There are a lot of recipes for orange-rhubarb marmalade on the internet. They call for various cooking methods and varying amounts of the ingredients. Sometimes they have nuts or spices in them. Our recipe is fairly simple, but it's really tasty. My daughter did the cooking. I did the harvesting and gave her the recipe.

Rhubarb-Orange Marmalade- makes 3 pints of marmalade

You will need:

7 cups of  rhubarb  (12-15 stalks)
2 large navel oranges
6 cups of sugar
2 cups of water

Wash your fruits. Anything that you grow yourself and you know what gets on it, you can decide how best to wash it. For oranges from the store, wash with a bit of soap and water. For store bought rhubarb, dunk it in 1:4 vinegar water mix, scrub lightly, then rinse.

Zest the oranges into a bowl using a paring knife, microplane or vegetable peeler. After that, cut the orange into quarters, and cut off the peel and pith. Then cut the quarters in smaller pieces and put them in the bowl.

Cut the rhubarb into half inch pieces. This might require cutting them in half length-wise then chopping them into smaller pieces.

Put the rhubarb, oranges, sugar and water into a heavy bottomed 5 quart pan and bring to a boil. Turn it down and let it simmer for about an hour stirring frequently. It will thicken. Check it by lifting the spoon, when it sheets off the spoon, it's ready.

While you're doing that, prepare your jars. We used a combination of 4 oz jars and those gorgeous Ball Canning Elite Jelly Jars that are in the photo.

Fill the jars leaving a 1/4 inch headroom, remove bubbles, wipe rims and process jars (hot water method) for 10 minutes.

This makes a lovely, tart and sweet marmalade that is delicious on pancakes according to my daughter who is eating some just that way right this moment. Me? It's hard not eating it just by the spoonful, but I'm looking forward to trying it on chocolate ice cream.

International Can-It Forward Day 2016!!!!

It's that time of the year again! When our gardens and the U-Pick-Its are starting to really produce. When it's time to start canning! When Ball® brand has there International Can-It Forward Event with lots of opportunities to learn and win  Ball® products!

So a little personal history before I start reviewing and talking about the AMAZING jam my daughter made...

I canned as a kid with my mom, and when I was invited to be a part of International Can-It-Forward, used the opportunity to teach my daughter to can. Since then, we have not bought any jams or jellies. That's one way I canned it forward- by learning from my mother and teaching my daughter.

This year, my garden had enough excess from my perennials that I was able to give plants to my friends to grow their own berries and rhubarb. That's another way to Can-It Forward- by sharing plants that you know are good producers with friends who like to can.

My daughter and I can a lot of jams and jellies and give them to friends and local charities. That's another way to Can-It Forward. Friends from hotter states see my raspberries and get excited knowing they will get some of the amazing jam made from it.

You can also teach people to can, give them a basic supply kit to start in small scale canning. That's another great way to Can-It Forward.

You can take the pledge here to learn about canning and share the love of canning and learn what Ball® brand is doing for charities in the spirit of Can-It Forward. You will also get a 5.00 off coupon for the Fresh Preserving Store for taking the pledge!

This year, the fine people at  Ball® brand sent me their new cookbook, The All New Book of Canning and Preserving, a case of those gorgeous blue wide mouth jars you see in the background of this photo and a $5.00 off coupon for the Fresh Preserving Store and will give the same thing to one of my lucky readers in the U.S.A.!!  Leave a comment to enter and we will pick a name at random to win on the 24th! Shipping will be directly from the prize supplier, and I'll need a way to contact the winner to get the information- email, FB page or Twitter account. 

So the book? We went through the recipes and there are a lot we are planning to try. My son is particularly enthused about the Fiery Fermented Hot Sauce recipe that uses habanero peppers. I like the idea of making my own Worcestershire sauce because we use it a lot. But it's the jellies and jams that we always look at first. We made the Strawberry-Rhubarb jam on page 30. There are soup recipes, instructions for making kombucha and other fermented goodness, sauces, seasoning mixes and all sorts of other yumminess that makes fantastic gifts or ways to save money and provide good food for your family and friends. 

Just as an aside, a couple weeks I commented on a photo on Ball Canning on Facebook  that I can never grow enough strawberries to can my own. A lot of people liked the comment so apparently I'm not the only one! We bought strawberries, but rhubarb, that amazing plant, we have plenty of that. So we chose between this and a rhubarb-orange marmalade. 

The jam is fantastic!! If you like Strawberry-rhubarb pie, you'll love this jam. It's like having dessert for breakfast. As soon as the photo above was taken, my daughter grabbed the English muffin. I think her face says it all. 

The book is full of great recipes that are clearly written with the steps written out very well for beginners. Like any of the Ball® publications, it has photo step by steps for canning methods.

If your a more visual learner, be sure to tune in on the Ball Canning Facebook page on Friday July 22nd for videos from 10:00AM – 3:30PM ET. Each hour, viewers will have the chance to win a giveaway prize!

During those hours, there will also be experts answering questions on their Twitter page- @BallCanning  #canitforward

You can also post things on Pinterest and Instagram using #canitforward and check out their Pinterest page here- Ball® Canning on Pinterest, BallCanning on Instagram.

Ooh..  I just opened this book at random and found a recipe for Summer Bounty Zucchini Relish that looks fantastic. I need to check my garden and see how my zucchini is doing.

National Can-It-Forward Day!

It's National Can-It-Forward Day! A great day to learn how to can and talk to other people about canning.

Ball®'s  FreshPreserving.com  is having all day webcasts, there is a Twitter event going on (#CanItForward) and other ways to participate.

Can-It-Forward TV

Here's the webcast schedule- there will be chances to win giveaways as well as all the great things you'll learn!

Broadcast Schedule:

10:00am-10:45am: Jam making and water bath canning demo by Jessica Piper
10:45am-11:00am: Craft Corner with Jordan DeFrank
11:00am-11:45am: Pickles Demo by Rick Fields 
11:45am-12:00pm: Craft Corner with Jordan DeFrank
12:00pm-1:00pm: Special Guest Host Ted Allen canning and cooking demo
1:00pm-1:15pm: Cocktails in Ball Jars hosted by Mason Jar NYC Restaurant
1:15pm-2:00pm: Jam making and water bath canning demo by Jessica Piper (repeated)

3rd National Can It Forward Day- Super Easy Jelly Making

Tomorrow is National Can-It-Forward Day! YAY! A lot of my readers are enthusiastic canners, and a lot have never canned before. Tomorrow I'll be posting video links AND a giveaway! Be sure to come back for that.

My daughter, before this year, had never canned before. She enjoys homemade jellies and jams made by me, and by some of our family friends. But it was kind of intimidating for her. Part of National Can-It-Forward is encouraging people to try it.

Ball® sent me a current Ball® Blue Book, a Ball® Home Canning Discovery Kit, a case of the gorgeous Heritage blue jars, labels, pectin and a  Ball® FreshTech Automatic Jam and Jelly Maker free for review purposes. The Ball Blue Book and Canning Discovery Kit are reviewed here.

So why can your own jelly and jams? Well, the most obvious answer is that if you grow berries and other things, you may want to preserve your harvest to enjoy through the winter. But even if you don't, there are still good reasons to can. You have absolute control over the ingredients. You can pick the flavors and types of things you want to can, your home canned goods won't contain high fructose corn syrup or other ingredients that are used to cut costs commercially. You can save money by canning too. The jars and bands are reusable. The only thing you need to replace every time is the lids themselves. That's because the compound on them to seal your jars is one use only.

All of those were made by The Amazing Turnip Girl. From left to right are stewed rhubarb (rhubarb from our garden), raspberries (also from our garden, and jelly made from store bought juice.

Yes. Store bought juice. Because jelly making can be ridiculously easy. So easy you'll wonder why you ever bought jelly. She used the FreshTech Jam and Jelly Maker to make everything but the rhubarb. 

Go to FreshPreserving.com for a bunch of great recipes!

Using the FreshTech Automatic Jam and Jelly Maker, you can go from fruit juice, pectin and sugar to jelly in a half hour in only a few steps. You add your juice and pectin, then when it beeps, add in sugar. It will make 4 cups of jelly at a time. So you can make 1 pint jars, 4 half pints, or 8 little 4 ounce jars to give as gifts. It has a non-stick surface and cleans easily. It got TG's seal of approval, she's just thrilled with it. Use your favorite 100% juice, it can be made from concentrate, or canned juice. She chose Juicy Juice Fruit Punch for her first jelly. 

You can freeze or can the jelly to preserve it. For my family, we go through about a pint a month.  Because this is so easy, with no standing and stirring time, I asked her if she wanted to make jelly regularly that way. She said "Oh yes!" and started considering other juice flavors. 

So I broke out my pencil and paper and worked out the cost. Remember, Alaska is a little more expensive than that lower 48 states, so chances are good you can make your own jelly even more thriftily.

The recipe in the included booklet calls for 3 cups of juice, 4 tablespoons of pectin, 3 1/3 cups of sugar and a 1/2 tsp of butter. 

Costs are rounded up.

Bottle juice at 4 dollars a bottle- 64 ounces= .0625 per ounce, a cup is 8 ozs, 3 cups is 24 oz= 1.50

Sugar- 4 lb bag is 3.49, 8 cups per bag- .44 cents per cup = 1.45

Jar of Flex-batch Real Fruit Classic Pectin is 4.49 regular price (it's on sale this week at my local Fred Meyer for 3.69)- One jar will make 4 batches-  1.13 per batch

Butter= .20 per tablespoon

So at premium prices for the sugar and juice instead of buying frozen concentrates or canned juice, and getting a name brand juice- it's 4.28 to make 32 oz of jelly! Can't beat that for something you know is the flavor you want and made without high fructose corn syrup or any of the other things that might be hiding in a jar of store bought jelly. You can make savory jellies to use as glazes. 

If you've ever made jelly the old-fashioned way, with the mashing, milling, straining, standing, cooking, etc, you can appreciate that it's a wonderful way to make jelly, but it's time consuming. Using fruit juice will cut a lot of time from it. 

When I mentioned it on Facebook, how much fun she was having making jelly- my friends came up with a whole bunch of suggestions including seasoned cider jellies to use on pork, pom/cran for poultry, and cranberry to use with cream cheese for the best ever turkey sandwiches. 

So did we like the FreshTech Automatic Jam and Jelly Maker? Absolutely. We are planning to put up a lot more batches of jelly, and she's looking forward to giving some of her friends jelly. Now, mine turned out super easy because I didn't have to do even open a bottle of juice. But that's because TG took over very enthusiastically. Your experience probably won't be quite that easy, but it will still be easy. 

I recommend it to people who haven't made jams or jellies before because it's so easy for small batches, but I also really recommend it for people like me who just can't stand to stir anymore. It takes a lot of the standing time out of the process. 

Rhubarb labels and coloring sheet

After posting the strawberry labels, a friend said " Now if only you had an adorable rhubarb printable for my rhubarb compotes ;D" - long, skinny things are harder to make cute than strawberries. Strawberries have a natural amount of cute going for them! But I told her I would try.

Same thing as the strawberry labels. These are 300 dpi, the circles will fit a 2 inch punch. I like using Avery Sticker Project Paper (Amazon.com affiliate link) for labels because I can do custom layouts. For people who prefer other methods, you can download the labels individually and use them in your word processing or graphics software to make your own label sets. Each label is 300 dpi, the rectangles should work in 3.33 inch tall x 4 inch wide 6 labels per sheet templates. They are 3 inches tall by 3.66 inches wide at 300 dpi. Click on the images for the full sized versions.

Here's my layout. Also 300 dpi, click on the image for the full sized version.

And a coloring page/embroidery pattern for people who really like rhubarb. My daughter loves the stuff, and recommends using it in lemonade.  100 dpi, click on the image for the full sized version.

Check out #canvolution on Twitter.

Strawberry Printables

I'm planning to make strawberry jam soon, so I made up some labels. I like using Avery Sticker Project Paper (Amazon.com affiliate link) for labels because I can do custom layouts. For people who prefer other methods, you can download the labels individually and use them in your word processing or graphics software to make your own label sets. Each label is 300 dpi, the rectangles should work in 3.33 inch tall x 4 inch wide 6 labels per sheet templates. They are 3 inches tall by 3.66 inches wide at 300 dpi. Click on the images for the full sized versions.

Here's the layout I'm using with the sticker paper.

Quick note about the Avery project sticker paper, back in January, I posted this template and Pokemon themed printable Nintendo DS Lite "skin", it's been on my son's DS lite since then. Yes, it is repositionable and easy to remove, but if you don't pick at the label, it lasts where you apply it. With his DS lite, I spray coated the paper with clear acrylic spray and let dry before peeling and applying. It's still in fairly good shape. However, if you don't want to buy the paper, you could also use a spray adhesive on the back of plain paper then apply labels that way. I've had better luck with repositionable spray adhesives than any other kind of glue on slick surfaces.

While I was drawing the strawberry, I decided it needed a peanut for the start of one of the world's great love affairs.

Coloring page 100 dpi