Raspberry Jalapeno Jam

First I picked my jalapenos and raspberries from my garden. 

Of course, can buy them if you didn't grow them :-)

 

Then I rinsed them in cold water.

 

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cups raspberries
• 2 large jalapenos with seeds, chopped (less heat if no seeds)
• 6-1/2 cups sugar
• 1 packet Certo (liquid pectin)
• 7-8 1/2 pint Ball canning jars (sterilized)

Get out your big water canning pot. Fill with enough water that will cover the jars 1-2 inches. Start that boiling because that takes time.

Now on to the jam. I do things a little differently. I like to make my jam seedless. I put the chopped jalapenos with seeds and raspberries in a 6-quart pot on the stove and cook them down a bit, making them soft and extracting some juice as well. Cook for maybe 5-10 minutes on medium low heat. Pour the raspberry/jalapeno mixture into a blender. Blend it on high for a couple of minutes. You may need to do it in 2 batches. While blending, wash out the pot. When finished blending, place a fine mesh strainer (like the one above holding the washed raspberries) over a big bowl. Pour the juice blend into the strainer. Take a spoon and stir the juice. The juice goes through the strainer and the seeds stay. And I'll say, there is a big pile of seeds! Raspberries have a LOT of seeds. I throw the seeds away. You do what you want with them. Anyway, pour the juice from the bowl into a measuring cup. Actually, I'm lucky enough to have a BIG measuring cup so I use that as my bowl. You must have 4 cups of liquid. If you need to, add some water. You can get away with adding 1/2 cup of water. If that still falls short, you'll need some more fruit! Now pour that 4 cups of raspberry/jalapeno juice into your clean pot.

Pour 6-1/2 cups of sugar into the juice mixture. Stir until sugar dissolves. Cook on medium heat until there's a rolling boil (stirring all the time).

Have your Certo packet ready, open and standing in a cup because things can go fast! When the juice is at a rolling boil, pour the liquid Certo into the juice and stir for 1 minute. Then take it off the heat.

Time to ladle the jam into your jars. Fill to 1/4" from the top of the jar. Wipe the rims clean, and place the sterilized, heated lid on top. Take a ring and twist to finger tight on the jar.

Hopefully by now your water canner is doing a good boil itself. Using the jar lifter, carefully place your jars into the boiling water. Make sure the water is 1-2 inches over the top of the jars. If not, add water. If you do, make sure the water starts boiling again. Place the lid on the canner and heat in the boiling water for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, take out your jars carefully with the jar lifter. Don't shake or tilt. Let the jars sit for 24 hours. I love the sound of the "ping" when a jar seals. If a jar doesn't seal within an hour, refrigerate it. I know, a jar can sometimes take a couple of hours to seal, but since that doesn't usually happen to me, I would rather err on the side of caution and be safe with my canned food.

Enjoy!

Seedlings First Day Out!

Temperatures in the Chicago area hit the 70's today for the first time this year. It was time to put my seedlings outside to start and acclimate them. I put them in the shade so as not to shock the living daylights out of them since they've never been outside before. I would hate to have the sun scald them before we even begin! It must be done slowly. One year, I mistakenly put them in the sun right away and they just keeled over. I caught them in time as I put them in the shade and gave them water and told them to man up. Can't be having weak plants! They perked up. Nice to have something listen to me for once. LOL!

These are my giant jalapenos outside on the deck.

Cayenne, habanero, cubanelles, poblanos and brussels sprouts.

My seedlings are outside and just loving it. Tomorrow is set to be another gorgeous day as well. But my little seedlings better get as much sun as they can because they are calling for possible snow Monday morning. Got to love the midwest!!

My Seedlings are Growing! Indoor Seed Update 3/27/2014

It started out at 30 degrees this morning with a little snow coming down. But we are expecting temps close to 55 today! Up and down with the temperatures. Makes you wonder how summer temps will be.
Let's check on how my seedlings are doing.

Above is my tray of giant jalapeno seedlings. They are growing so well. Most of my seedlings have grown to over the height of the cup. They all have their second set of leaves in. I added about 4 tablespoons of new dirt in each cup to help strengthen my seedlings. They are all standing tall!

My second tray of seedlings carries brussels sprouts, cayenne, habanero, poblano and cubanelle peppers. Sadly, one of my cubanelle pepper seeds didn't come up. That's ok, I still have 3 more which is plenty for us.
Oh, and my habanero seed never came up either, so I replanted and have two small seedlings growing in the same cup. That's ok too. They will catch up once they are in the ground. I found that out last year. My brussels sprouts were the first to come up of all the seeds and are looking mighty fine.  All these seedlings are not as tall as the jalapenos yet. But I did add 2-3 tablespoons of dirt in each cup to help them out.

Here are some closeups of my seedlings.

Giant jalapenos growing extremely well. Aren't they looking good? I love the giant jalapenos because we stuff them with cheese and herbs, wrap in bacon and grill them. I can just taste them now. Bring on summer!!

Above far right and the plant in front are my 3 cubanelle peppers. Growing well. In the way back to the left are my 2 little habanero plants. My 2 poblano plants are between the cubanelle and habaneros. Certainly not as tall as the jalapenos. But they will get there.

In the far left hand corner is my one cayenne pepper. It was the first pepper seedling to come up. Still kind of short. This is the first time growing this pepper. I'm hoping for lots of cayenne peppers so I can make my own cayenne powder. We use that quite a bit here.

And here is my biggest brussels sprout plant. I have 3 of them. One is kind of puny, and the other is big, but doesn't stand up straight. First time growing these as well. Always interesting growing something new.

Keep on growing! You'll be in the ground one of these days, my little pretties!

Pepper update

As I still bemoan the fact that I started seeds late this spring, with my seedlings being planted when they were only 7 weeks old, I'm hoping that my plants will start to grow taller soon. In the past, I've grown my seeds indoors for at least 12 weeks. So at this time, while my pepper plants look great, they are on the very short end to what I'm used to seeing. They've been planted in the ground for 30 days now, and many starting to blossom. While, I'm sure that the slowness of growth is because of the strange cold weather we have had this spring, I'm hoping the heat we've had lately will start to make our peppers shoot up in height. I'm used to seeing 3-4' jalapeno bushes!

Cubanelle peppers. According to analytics, people come to this blog by searching mostly for information on cubanelle peppers. We're growing 16 plants this year in two different garden spots. Ten of them in our usual pepper patch against the back of our house. And six others out in the tomato garden which has much more sunlight exposure. I'm conducting my own experiment to see which grow better. Always fun to experiment!

Habanero peppers. Something new for our garden. We're growing two of these this year because my husband wanted to try them out. Not my type of pepper. I like heat, but not that much. The husband and our son like the hot stuff, so we're trying it. So far, very short, but as you can see, there are some blossom buds starting to come in. 

Giant jalapeno. We grew these from seed last year for the first time. Fantastic jalapenos! These are the ones you see at the grocery store that are 3-5" long. They are thick-walled and perfect for stuffing and grilling. Our giant jalapenos are growing pretty well so far. They are taller than the cubanelle peppers and have many buds ready to blossom.

Giant jalapeno.

Poblano peppers. We love our smoky tasting poblano peppers. Last year, we were disappointed for the first time at the plant yield. Maybe it's because we had five of them? But we only got maybe four poblano peppers altogether. This year we are back down to only two plants with more room to grow. Hopefully we will see more results this year!

Cilantro. OK, it's not a pepper plant, but it sure is growing crazy!
Time to cut some of that to be used with dinner tonight.

Happy Growing!!