Perfectly Practiced Preservation Part III, Scrumptious Spiced Vanilla Peach Jam

It is getting to be my favorite time of year, peach season. Peach season reminds me of the warm ripe days of summer, lightning bugs, lakes, and my birthday, mmmm. I tell you later about my absolute favorite way to eat peaches, when the are really really ripe. For now I'm talking about jam. Again I know, but it's my blog and I love homemade jam. What can I say?

So what makes soupy fruit soup become gel like jam? There isn't any cornstarch or gelatin, but there is something else, pectin. Pectin is a naturally occurring heteropolysaccharide found in the cell walls of non-woody dry land plants (as opposed to water plants). It's a long word, so I'll break it down. Saccharide = sugar. Sugars a usually chains (like beads on a string) but sometimes they become rings instead. Poly = many. When a lot of these rings get together they make a chain of rings called a polysaccharide. Hetero = different. So a heteropolysaccharide is a long chain of different sugar rings. Citrus fruits, like lemons have lots of pectin.

When the a jam mixture starts to cool down the water and the sugar get together leaving the pectin all alone. The pectin the groups together and bonds to itself creating our favorite colloid, the gel. Word to the wise, do not reduce sugar in any jam recipes or you will end up with soup instead of jam.

This jam recipe combines my new love for homemade jams, my old love of vanilla, and my summer love of peaches. It's a lot of love, and this jam is so totally worth it.

Spicy Vanilla-Peach Jam

Ingredients

5 cups peeled, pitted, and coarsely chopped fresh peaches

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

9 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 vanilla beans

1 pouch (3 oz) liquid fruit pectin

Process the peaches in a blender until finely chopped. In a large heavy stockpot, combine peaches and lemon juice. Stir in sugar and cinnamon until well blended. Split vanilla beans and scrap seeds into peach mixture Add vanilla beans. Stirring constantly, cook over low heat 4 minutes. Increase heat to high and bring mixture to a rolling boil. Stir in liquid pectin. Stirring constantly, bring to a rolling boil again and boil 1 minute. Remove from heat; skim off foam. Remove vanilla beans. Can using the jar directions (~10 half pints). After cans are sealed place in a pot with enough water to cover the lids about 1/4 inch. Boil for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool.

Marvelous Mixtures Part 4, Plain Old Popcorn

So this entry is a tribute to one of my very good friends (shout out Kara) who had a very interesting experience trying to make popcorn without an air popper or a microwave. It is also one in a series of posts about how to eat foods without artificial preservatives (see jam and hamburger helper). My goal for this summer is to cut my artificial preservatives down to an absolute minimum. And that makes snack food a little tricky. But, popcorn from something other than a bag is actually pretty good and low calorie, so it has become a staple in my snack food diet, and a mystery. How does popcorn work?

Popcorn is a seed. There are three main things in a popcorn kernel, the shell, the starches inside (to feed an eventual popcorn plant), and some water. Before you heat it everything is contained inside the hard shell. But, as you heat the kernels the water turns to steam (a gas) and the volume remains constant while the temperature increases, increasing the pressure (remember P*V=n*R*T?). Eventually the pressure is just too much for the little shell and BOOM, it pops open like a balloon with too much air in it. The starches stretch out and form a solid network through covalent bonds, trapping air as it goes (see cornstarch crystal). When air is dissolved in a solid it is a colloid known as solid foam, like styrofoam.

Because of how it works popcorn will not pop if 1) the popcorn doesn't get hot enough (which is why you cook it in hot oil), 2) the popcorn dries out, or 3) if the popcorn shell has a crack or hole in it that releases the steam, lowering the pressure.

A microwave works by sending out a frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum (like the light we see, the UV rays that hurt our skin, or the radio waves that make beautiful music). The frequency it uses is a very special one that makes the bonds in water jiggle and dance (resonance). Temperature is a measure of how fast the molecules are moving, so as they dance more, the temperature goes up and eventually the dance so far away from each other the create steam, increased pressure, and eventually a popcorn explosion.

If you don't have a microwave you have to use a lower tech version to make the water dance, heat transfer. As molecules from something warmer, like hot oil, hit slower moving molecules from something colder, like the water in the popcorn, a little bit of the speed is transfered. Making the hot thing colder and the cold thing hotter until they are the same temperature. It's like when you play pool. When one pool ball hits another the first one slows down and the second one starts moving or speeds up. Molecules act the same way.

This is not really a recipe, but directions for how to make popcorn yourself without any special gadgets. Enjoy!

Popcorn

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons oil

1/4 cup unpopped popcorn kernels

Toppings of your choice

Place oil in a sauce pan with a single kernel of popcorn. Heat on medium until the kernel pops. Add remaining popcorn kernels and cover with a lid. Heat, shaking frequently, until the popping slows to 2-3 seconds between each pop. Remove from heat, cover in toppings and enjoy.

Perfectly Practiced Preservation Part II, aka Radical Raspberry Jam

So far this summer I have been hanging out with some very awesome Young-at-Heart Americans and they are starting to rub off on me. Not only am I making my own dress, wearing cat-eye glasses, and helping out in the church office, today I made my own jam.

Jams are a great way to naturally preserve fruit past its prime. Microorganisms (mold, bacteria, etc.), once again, are the reason that fruit spoil. They eat away at the fruit and cause rotting and mold, yuck. I talked earlier about freezing and refrigeration as one way to slow down the organisms. You can also just kill them off. When you make jam you boil the fruit and the high temperatures make all the microorganisms croak. Vacuum sealing the jars keep new ones from getting in and the jam stays fresh.

Because you want goo, natural breakdown because of fats and enzymes is not a problem. But, you do have to worry about oxidation. When you cut a piece of fruit the cells along the cut line break open, releasing an enzyme (tyrosinase) that reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere and the ferrous phenols in the fruit to create a new brown chemical that is a cousin to the very famous iron oxide (aka rust). Rust is created the same way, when iron reacts with oxygen. To prevent the browning of fruit you use vacuum sealing to remove the oxygen.

So, how do you vacuum seal? Pressure is a measure of how often molecules hit a surface. When everything is open the pressure will equalize throughout a gas. Most gases follow the ideal gas law which states that pressure*volume = the number of molecules*the gas constant*temperature (PV=nRT). When you heat a jar and the gas inside of it without a lid on the pressure is the same as the air around, but the temperature is higher. When you put an airtight lid on the volume and the number of molecules can't change. So, as the jar, the jam, and the air inside cool down the pressure decreases and the air outside starts pushing really hard to try and get in. Eventually the outside pressure is so much greater that the little pop dot on the jar gets pushed in and the jar is "vacuum sealed". If you've ever wondered why the pop dot is there, that one reason. The other really important reason is, if there are still organisms in the jar they will start eating the jam and will give of gases as waste (like yeast) which eventually will pop the dot back up, indicating that the jam is spoiled. So, never use a jam with a popped up dot.

While the science behind jam can be confusing and complicated, the act of making jam is surprisingly easy. There are rarely more than 3 or 4 ingredients and the steps are fairly straight forward. One major hint, use really good fresh ripe fruit. My mom and I went an bought fresh raspberries at the farmers market and it was perfect. This jam is a little sweet, a little tart, and very very good. Good luck and enjoy.*

Raspberry Jam

Ingredients

4 pints fresh raspberries

5 cups sugar

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

5 half pint Ball or Kerr jars with lids and rims

Wash and lightly dry the raspberries. Place in a large stock pot or dutch oven and crush (I used a potato masher). Mix in the sugar and lemon juice and quickly bring to a boil. Boil, stirring frequently for 25 minutes. Remove from heat and skim off foam. Ladle hot jam into hot jars leave about a 1/4 inch between the lid and the jam. Seal using the jar's instructions (they will go something like this, boil jar and rims, place jar rims and lids in hot water, pour in jam, wipe rim clean with a damp cloth, center lid, add rim and tighten). Let cool and enjoy.

*Good news, the uploader thingy is working again. Better news I have an awesome new digital manual camera to take my pictures with, yay!