Take Two! I have a few days off this week so today Lucas and I used this gloriously dreary day (outside) to spend the afternoon inside canning. (AKA finish Christmas presents.)

This go around we decided to try making a peach jam. A few weeks back when we made concord grape jam we used fresh grapes from my grandma’s garden. Since we didn’t know anyone who had fresh peaches in the area, we just picked up some *gasp* frozen unsweetened 100% peaches at the grocery store. Yes, we’re lame I guess, but we were itching to can more jam and the produce section wasn’t looking too… healthy today.

Once again we used the SUREJELL brand of low sugar/no sugar pectin and combined the recipes and tips we found on various websites online to come up with what we thought would make the best peach jam. We used four pounds of frozen peaches, which we thawed completely, and 2 cups of white grape peach juice for sweetener instead of sugar. After a little help from the food processor and some hand blender thing we found in my mom’s cabinet, we threw all of the peach goop and juice onto the stove to boil. Once we got a rolling boil going, we added in the pectin and 1/4 cup of Splenda. That really was it. So far so good and all 10 jars we managed to get from it sealed properly. Now we’ve got 17 jars of fresh jam between the grape and peach to give away as part of our Christmas gift packages we’re doing for family and friends this year. Awesome!

Also today I finished yet another knitted object for my upcoming nephew — can you believe that he’s due at the end of this month?! In true fall style I whipped up a pumpkin toque and figure that even if he’s born after Halloween that the pumpkin would be an appropriate icon for the in-between Halloween and Thanksgiving period. I hear my brother and sister-in-law aren’t big fans of hats that look like vegetables, fruits, or flowers… too bad for them, eh? Since baby William isn’t here yet, I used (big surprise) Oliver and Winston as models. I think the toque turned out pretty darn cute, don’t you?