Canned Jam: Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate

The food for Canned Jam this month is Berries! I made Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate from Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. It came out so very good. With only three ingredients I do not have to worry about what is in my lemonade.

I found that 1/4 of a cup concentrate to 1 cup water is a good mix. For a great slushy you only need ice, water and some concentrate in a blender.

Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate
Makes about seven pints

6 cups strawberries
4 cups lemon juice
6 cups sugar

In a blender or a food processor working in batches, puree strawberries until smooth. Transfer to a large saucepan as completed. Add lemon juice and sugar and stir to combine. Heat to 190 F over meduim-high heat, stirring occasionally. Do not boil. Remove from heat and skim off foam.

Ladle hot concentrate into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace.

Can in water bath for 15 minutes, adjust for altitude (I had to add 15 min for a total of 30 minutes)


To reconstitute, mix one part concentrate with one part water; tonic water or ginger ale; adjust concentrate to taste.

States I have been to

visited 16 states (32%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Can Jam May: Cherry Rhubarb Pie filling

This month's Can Jam Food Blog Challenge is Rhubarb, which is great. I love the stuff and have been known to eat it raw.

Yaaa! Rhubarb season, In a few weeks the only you pick within an hours drive will be open, rhubarb. I will most likely get 20lbs. Half to be dried, some frozen and the rest canned. I have been wanting to try this recipe for Cherry Rhubarb Pie filling since I saw it last year. It came out pretty good. I did have to scale it down. I only had 4 cups of dark cherries left over from last year. Freezers are nice.

I think that I will freeze some rhubarb just for cherry season to make more.

Lets see things I did a little different I used clear jell, the kind for canning. I did not scale down the amount of lemon juice, I wanted to make sure that the pH was still in range, I used vanilla sugar and cut out the Almond Extract. I ended up with 2 quarts and used one the next day. Had to make sure that it was good, you know.

Adobe Photoshop Cook

psiXel states on her youtube site that this is, "A video made in stopmotion for competition AdobeYouGC. The simulation of a tutorial which shows how to make the lovely butter cookies with the new Adobe Photoshop Cook! Whole set was made with cardboard and with kitchen utensils."

Jaw Surgery

Well after three years of working towards the jaw surgery I had it done.

This started with a sinus infection that lasted for 6 months. I did have one at the start but it turns out that I was having TMJ pains, I was unhinging my jaw to eat, talk, yawn and all sorts of other things. This caused my joint to no longer be round.

I then had to wear a dental splint, 24 hours a day taken out only to brush my teeth, for a year to figure out how bad my bite was. At the end of that it was found out that my lower jaw was too small and that I have been grinding and clenching my teeth all the time, I wore a hole into the splint.

Braces were the next stage of treatment and then jaw surgery. A year and a half into the brace treatment it was also found that the upper jaw did not fit the bottoms, there was a see saw effect the right side would touch and the left side would not and vice versa. So also needed the upper jaw broken to fit the bottom. I needed a La Fort 1 and a sagittal split osteotomy.

I had the Surgery on the 29th of Dec. It was an overnight stay at the hospital, having people wake you up every 2 hour for vitals, having the alarms on the IV pump go off every hour or so and then having the ice melt every hour I did not get much sleep. But at least I had pain meds.

This hurt more than I thought it would and drinking is very hard. My jaw is banded shut. I am drinking by taking sips from a spoon, I feel like a little kid again having my mom feed me meds and trying to use a sippy cup to drink. I can not use a straw. That and I can not feel my lips so drooling is a large problem.