weekly round-up & product review

Well, despite my recent posts about cats, turkeys and puffballs, life has been busy here at Keepsake Acres...

More raspberries were picked by Coop this week. Some frozen, some made into cobbler and some into jam. I also made my first trial batch of homemade castile soap and it seems to have come out right. I am letting it cure now. I have city mouse to thank for inspiring me because it was his homemade soap that impressed me. I added oatmeal and patchouli essential oil to it and am definitely anxious to try it.

Some of our Detroit Red beets were ready for pulling and were they ever tasty!

I love beets, no matter how you cook em’! Friday’s lunch was hot buttered beets! We finished them up as a cold side at dinner time. All gone! Did you know you can eat them raw, also? It never occurred to me until our Amish friend Fanny mentioned it. Not quite as tasty in my opinion, but an option.

Friday I ended the week by having canned another 10 half pints of raspberry jam. I now have 19 half pints of black raspberry jam put up. If you’re wondering what the two of us will do with all the jams I’ve made this summer, the plan is to use many of these jars as gifts later in the year at holiday time. Part of being frugal minded requires thinking and planning ahead! Plus, as is typical, more than one person has walked out of my kitchen already with a jar of jam in hand.

This jam and the batch prior were made with Pomona’s Universal Pectin.

I purchased this product at my local bulk/health food store. I will never go back to any other brand of pectin.

What I absolutely love about Pomona’s is that you can cut way back on the amount of sugar in a recipe and make just about any size recipe you like. Other pectin requires that you make jam or jelly in small batches and using a lot of sugar is essential to the pectin working correctly…trust me on that one. With Pomona’s you can adjust ingredients for the amount you want to make and you can adjust the amount of sugar used. Or you can use honey in place of sugar.

This last batch of jam I made yesterday morning has 12 cups of fruit and only 3 ½ cups of sugar. I use raw or organic sugar which a lot more costly than refined sugar so I have a significant savings in cost using Pomona brand. Not to mention that sometimes jam can be just too darn sweet for my taste. With the sweetness of the fruit, who needs so much added sugar? I am in love with this product and will never use Sure Jell or Ball brand again!

Pomona’s Universal Pectin goes further than other pectin, too. With brands like Ball or Sure Jell you use an entire package for one recipe of jam or jelly. With Pomona’s you get 2-4 normal batches. So, despite Pomona brand pectin being a little costlier on the “per box” basis it’s really a lot less costly. When I factor in the decrease in sugar necessary to make jam, the savings is huge! Btw, I am not being compensated for recommending this product (I wish), just telling it like it is.