Preserving my sanity

I've been canning since university when I lived in a house with a pear tree.  That pear tree was the best thing about that house and although I don't miss the house at all, I really wish I could still get at those pears.  I bought a canning pot and the various accouterments and some large jars and put up half a dozen jars of pears.  Then, feeling on a roll, I made a batch of caramel apple jam that I gave as gifts that Christmas, but managed to keep enough jars for myself to know how good it was.

I didn't preserve anything again until 2 autumns ago, when Kathryn and I went to an apple you-pick and came home with 3 large bags of apples.  We made some more of my yummy apple jam and some applesauce, which we called Triple Threat Temptation Applesauce because it contained three kinds of apples.  By the time I got laid off, I was down to 1 partially full jar of apple jam and was thinking of making some more.  

It was with this in my mind that I happened to be chatting with the butcher and mentioned that I know how to make preserves.  He got very excited and asked that I make some for his store.  He said that he had dreams of a whole shelf of preserves and ordered a dozen 250 ml jars and a dozen 125 ml jars.  

That weekend, I went out to our usual organic grocery store and bought some organic apples.  I decided to experiment with the homemade apple pectin I'd made from the apple skins and cores from the previous batch of jam and applesauce, but it didn't gel properly so I need to experiment with that some more.  It still tasted good, but it wasn't "jammy" enough for me to feel good about selling.  I'm going to play with with using it in other ways, like muffins or tarts, that I can maybe sell at the butcher shop, as well.

Since then I've made a few batches of jam until I got what I feel is a good recipe for a double batch using powdered pectin (they say you shouldn't double jam recipes because it could cause the pectin to fail, but I figured that apples have enough natural pectin to over ride this, which it did).  I delivered almost the complete order - 1 dozen 250 ml jars and half a dozen 125 ml jars - to my butcher.  When I walked in with my cotton bag clanking with jars, the butcher was talking to a man at the counter.  When he saw me, he greeted me loudly as he tends to, calling out, "Hey, Broccoli!" (I'm not inserting this in place of my real name; that's actually what he calls me whenever he sees me).  He then made a big deal out of showing my jars to the man at the counter.  

As we got talking, the man explained that he was a caterer.  I immediately put on my sales hat, telling him that the jam works really well in tarts.  By the time the caterer left, he asked to buy a small jar from the butcher as a sample, talking about how he's always looking for new and interesting ingredients to keep ahead of the competition.   I hope he finds my jam outstanding enough to become my second client.