This weekend there were a few moments when we both could’ve
easily just turned on the tv and plopped down for the evening for a few hours
on Saturday afternoon/evening and been perfectly content to watch a RSL game or
perhaps one of my favorite shows, Psyche.
Instead I pushed through the lull of the afternoon and thought of other
things I could do to with my time. One
of those things was jam.
And boy am I psyched (pun) out of my mind that I did
jam!
Over the past several weeks/month or so I’ve gone back to
eating healthy with just a few cheat days.
I cheat currently with cheese, dairy, processed foods, sugar on
holidays, birthdays, and one free day a month.
This way I don’t want to blow my brains out when there is a legit
celebratory event going on. I peaked
out on my weight gain at 176lbs right after the binge-eating spree I had for
the two-year anniversary on July 2nd. Since then and since going back to eating healthy this morning I
clocked in at 171 and touched a low of 170.5lbs. Our scale reads in half-pound increments.
What has sucked about my general healthy eating business is
that I miss out on sweet treats, which I’m kinda obsessed with as most who know
me can attest. One of those things has
been jam in general, but I’ve always been a strawberry jam kinda guy. Unfortunately jams we’ve bought with no
sugar in them at the store or the farmers market taste like crap or have crazy,
unsafe ingredients in them. The
ingredients thing is a big one for me.
Unless I know the ingredient or what exactly it is for and that it is
safe I don’t eat it…except when I cheat.
I quickly looked up the ingredients for a couple sugar free jams and got
the following lists:
Water**, Strawberries+, Polydextrose**, Maltodextrin**,
Contains Less Than 2% Of Fruit Pectin, Citric Acid, Locust Bean Gum**, Natural
Flavor**, Potassium Sorbate And Sodium Benzoate (Preservatives), Sucralose
(Splenda Brnda)(A Nonnutritive Sweetener)**, Calcium Chloride**, Red 40**, Blue
1**. **Ingredients Not In Regular Preserves. +Adds A Trivial Amount Of Sugar.
Allergy Warning: May Contain Traces Of Milk, Eggs, Anchovies, Peanuts, Wheat
And Soy.
Water**, Strawberries+, Polydextrose**, Maltodextrin**, Fruit
Pectin, Locust Bean Gum**, Natural Flavor**, Citric Acid, Potassium Sorbate
(Preservative), Sucralose (Non-Nutritive Sweetener)**, Calcium Chloride**, Red
40**. **Ingredients Not In Regular Jam. +Adds A Trivial Amount Of Sugar.
Apparently a “trivial amount of sugar” is
still sugar free on this last list.
What the?! That seems eff’d up
to me, especially with all the diabetics out there. Hopefully they’re reading the ingredients…sheez.
I googled homemade strawberry jam and found this
recipe.
http://www.foodstoragemoms.com/try-it-tuesday-how-to-make-strawberry-jam-a-healthier-way-with-honey/
So we made it this weekend.
Why? Cause I can still eat
alllll the sweet honey I want! Honey is really good for you in case you're wondering.
Six cups by the way is six pounds as far as it pertains to
which packages and how many you should buy of strawberries were you to make
this recipe.
So how did it turn out/look? It looked exactly like the link (I would’ve included our own pics
except I didn’t think to take any…duh).
Our blender worked just fine for pureeing the strawberries
so no you don’t need to go out and buy some fancy food processor just to make
this recipe.
I bought 12lbs of strawberries, or 6 2lb packages, as I
wasn’t sure before how much 6 cups of pureed strawberries would be needed
weight wise. Because of this we
essentially doubled the recipe, which made 8 pints* of jam so this recipe would
make you 4 pints of jam.
We cut off the stems, pureed them, mixed the honey in and
did the required boiling time, then mixed in the lemon juice and stored
overnight. We bought these jars to
store them in.
So here is the breakdown of our cost.
1 jar = $1.25 after tax
1 lemon is interestingly enough almost exactly ¼ cup of
juice and I think lemons are like $.50 per one.
I think 1 cup of honey is 1 lb and the honey we buy is like
$18 for a 5lb pail of it. So for each
pint of jam the cost was $2.70 for the honey. ($18/5 lbs = $3.60 lb. $3.60/lb X
6 lbs = $21.60. $21.60/8 pints = $2.70
per pint)
The strawberries I bought were on sale for $5 for 6lbs. So the breakdown to that on a per jar basis
was $.62.
So per pint the cost of ingredients would be like $5.08 a
pint.
What is nice about that from our perspective as repeat
offenders for remaking jam later is that our cost will go down to just $3.83
per pint.
Considering that the ingredients are very easy to recognize
and very very very VERY tasty this was a home run thing for me and the
wife. We’ve got 7 jars on jam in the
freezer to handle all our jam needs for the foreseeable future.
What I think I loved about this experience is 1) spending
time with the wife 2) finding a kick-a tasty/safe/super easy recipe to make
later with my wife and kids forever more and 3) being able to use this as a
real consumable needed skill in the coming collapse.
*1
pint = 16 ounces in case you wanted to price comparison shop…to me price doesn’t
compute when it comes to true safety and quality
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