Anyone else super into burning their fingertips on a regular basis?

This weekend past I put together a spiced vanilla peach jelly and I'm suspiciously waiting for it to set up. My jellies never harden the next day. (Except my lemon one, but, lemon sets like a blink.) Last year's bosc pear jelly took like two weeks to set. D: But it's beautiful. Pear season is coming and I'm hoping to snag some juicy bosc pears for another batch.

I love jamming, canning, etc. Jellies are kind of my favourite since they're so frustrating. I want to pickle. I need a pressure canner.

D: Anyone?

Wow, that peach jelly sounds super yummy, what's your recipe? I would like to get into making some jams and preserves someday, maybe I should try something simple this Fall.

I wanted to try my hand at homemade dill pickles a year back. I got the seeds and set up container gardens on the side porch for everything. The dill and garlic and all the rest was growing just fine, but the cucumbers for the pickles went...strange. They grew just lovely to start, then over the course of a couple of days they just stopped growing halfway along. Instead of lovely, healthy looking cukes they kinda tapered on one end and started turning orange, we called them Cuke-commas and had to pitch all of them. No pickles for us that year.

It's not exact, I do mostly small batch that I create myself but...

Please know this is not for a clear jelly. No blue ribbons!

Four large farmer's market peaches with a tablespoon or so of sugar, and about a half cup of water all mushed up in a pot and boiled until I got them juicy. Blended, strained, I got about 3 cups worth of liquid. Put it back in the pot, 2 cups of sugar, 1 tsp of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp nutmeg. I boiled my mix until it started to coat the back of the spoon (testing it like you would a custard), then a generous tsp of vanilla bean paste, and a couple tablespoons of pectin granules. Boiled I another half hour or so while my jars heated up and then canned.

Sorry it's not more of an exact science. I kind of go off the grid. D: I'm sure REAL jammers out there are screaming.

I have to do up a bunch of apple butter this weekend. I bought the apples last weekend and need to jar some up. I ran out halfway through the year from last year's batch.

Aw, that's too bad. :( Last year we grew beans and tomatos on our porch and had a bumper crop of both. I jarred a lot of them. But no gardening this year. I go to the market instead.

Still sounds pretty awesome. We've been talking about hitting the orchards lately, will have to remember that for when we do.

Heh, i'm reminded of a few years back the husband and I were crazy for alcoholic dried fruit. Understand, we don't drink much, I can't stand the taste of beer or most wines, but for a two week camping trip with friends we thought it would be fun to have some boozytreats around the campfire. We 'pickled' dried apricots, blueberries, cherries, dried apple slices and other sundries in various flavors of vodka or bourbon for a month or so before the event. Most of it was wonderful but the dried pears turned into mush and nobody wanted to spoon them out! A friend asked to have the jar of boozy pear much and we gladly handed it over, a week later she showed up with the most awesome pear cake made with said much and it was amazing.