Monday, September 13, 2010

Title Says YUCK! Tongue Says YUM!

This past weekend I had A LOT planned, but didn't get it all done. I had passed along this blog post by Full Bellies, Happy Kids to my neighbor friend down the road a couple weeks back saying we should make it. Saturday she called me up asking what I was doing and if I wanted to come down to make the jam. How could I say no? Of COURSE I WANTED TOO! So I ignored all that was on my to-do list and headed down the road with Bug in tow. Not thinking though, I forgot the camera to document the whole process.


When I got there we had to pick apples off the trees, but the tomatoes were already picked.  Let me tell you something about their tomatoes...Besides being delicious they are HUGE! I mean HUGE HUGE, the size of a newborn's head HUGE! I'm not even lying. The best part is that they don't use any hormones or pesticides; it's all organic, baby. I like to pick on them saying they pump them with steroids, but this isn't the case.  The apple picking was fun and made easy with an apple picker. No climbing trees to pick apples today.(I'm really thinking WE need an apple picker, so I don't have to play monkey every 2 minutes)

Once we gathered all our ingredients, we started putting it all together. It was all going good except that at first we cooked it on too low of a heat and it took FOREVER to get ready to puree. The puree is where we had the most trouble. It wasn't because of the recipe's directions, because they were clear, but because Murphy Law was working full force. My neighbor didn't have a food processor, so we thought it would be ok to just a potato masher. WRONG! After about 10 seconds we could see it wasn't going to work and broke out the blender. Great idea, right? We thought so too and it did work good, EXCEPT that it spewed hot sticky puree EVERY PLACE! Not so good. We thought it was because we didn't have the top on tight enough and tried it again. This time it spewed it right on her daughter that is 11 months old. It was AWFUL! I felt like crying. Luckily she was only hit with a small splash and not the full out ones like the first time we tried the blender. The baby was out of the kitchen on the other side of the counter off to the right towards the living room where we thought she was out of reach. We both rushed over to her and then I quickly got some cold wet towels to put on her head. Thankfully she only had one little spot in her hairline that left a mark. Once the baby and chaos had calmed down we decided not to use the blender again. We got out the next best thing...Magic Bullet.  If you have a MB, then you know how small it is. We had to do 4-5 mix ups and then we were done. Bug even took part in this by pushing it down to mix it up.

Back on the stove the recipe went as we impatiently waited for it to jam up, so we could split the jam sea on a plate (see the recipe). After being tortured with the delicious smell it was ready to be poured into canning jars. I had never canned before and was useless. Maybe not useless, because I can and did follow directions very well. Before we knew it we had 7 jars of yummy goodness just waiting to be popped.

Pop!Pop!Pop!Pop!Pop!Pop!Pop!


The time had come; it was time to taste our work. We spread it on some toasted homemade bread and oh.my.good.ness. It is just as Full Bellies, Happy Kids says, "You'd never know it had tomato in it." It's a hit with the whole family too! 


 We're planning our next tomato apple jam day soon, because 3 pint jars each simply isn't going to cut it.

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2 comments:

Sandra said...

I'm SO SO glad you enjoyed it. It thrilled me to read your post and to hear of your adventures while making the jam, I'm so sorry things kept going wrong LOL

It really is an amazing jam, I only made 4 jars and I'm quickly going through those LOL

I'm adding your blog to my reader, love it :)

Hugs,
Sandra

J.L. BOSTICK said...

I bet that is delicious. I love quirky canning ideas like this on

I am a new follower from the Friday hop, I look forward to reading more of your blog!
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