Though sunshine is never in short supply in Colorado, it’s still too chilly to grow most things in the garden. Today is the first day of winter so it seemed especially fitting to be able to bring some tropical sunshine indoors via storebought pineapple cooked into jam.
I have to admit it, even with time on my hands I’m a lazy jammer – I never process the jars of hot jam in a water bath. I do boil the jars and heat the lids, but I’ve never worried about anything nasty growing in the jam because it’s heated for so long before it goes into the jars. And need I mention the preserving qualities of sugar and the acidity of pineapple? Anyway, my grandma used paraffin to seal her jam and none of us died from it, so I feel pretty safe.
I’m cheap…er, frugal…too. I chop the pineapple cores up and use them in the jam, instead of discarding or composting them. There’s a lot of flavor in those cores and the jamming process makes them plenty tender and adds better texture to the jam. And who can afford to be wasteful in these times? Not me!
So, now I’m done with jam and I’ve been admiring the jars cooling on the counter, golden as the sun. I still have 5 slightly underripe pineapples to cut into chunks and can tomorrow. That should give us plenty of pineapple to last through the winter and probably well into summer, given our unusually – and fortuitously – large fruit supply this year.
What do YOU think?