Canning Jam: My first try!

One of my goals over the next few years is to learn how to can anything and everything. I want to be able to can vegetables, sauces & salsas, berries, local fish (you will never buy store bought canned tuna again!) and anything else I can muster, so we don't have to buy things from the store. Knowing where the food came from (our garden, a neighbors yield, u-pick farms etc.) and knowing how it was made is exciting and something Jeff and I appreciate. 

For our wedding we decided to have home canned jams & pickled beets for a wedding favor and I used this opportunity to learn one style of canning from my soon-to-be mother-in-law.

Here are some process photos!!

Step 1: acquire desired fruit! We used rhubarb from the neighbors, strawberries from the farmers market and huckleberries we picked last summer. So all in all, we made Strawberry rhubarb and Strawberry huckleberry jam.

Step 2: boil the berries and mix in all the goodies and pour into hot clean jars!

Step 3: put the boiled clean lids on and wait for them to pop!! 

P.S. don't touch the lids before they pop, apparently this is a not a good thing to do! ;)

So fun and yummy!!! 

I will be canning tuna hopefully in a month or so, so look for a post on that soon!!