One of the easiest and most productive things you can do at home is make your own jam. With a few specialized tools and a couple of hours of time, you can save yourself over $100 dollars. As an example, here are the actual costs of canning 35 jars of fresh strawberry jam:
- 10 pounds of strawberries = $10
- 12 pounds of sugar = $12
- pectin = $8
- lids = $4
- jars (reused, but originally purchased for about 20 cents each) = $7
- total of $41 in materials
This yielded an equivalent of 37 half-pint jars of jam. If you buy jam like this at the store or farmers market, you will pay $5 to $8 per jar. So, if we go with the low side, I have $5 x 37 = $185 worth of jam sitting on my kitchen counter right now. I’ve saved our family $185 – $41 = $144, and I have the added benefit of knowing exactly what ingredients went into those jars. Another way of looking at it is that it took me 2 hours to make the jam that saved me $144, so that is $72 per hour for my labor! Not too bad!
I tried something new with one of the batches this time: I left the green stems on the strawberries and blended it all together in my awesome vitamix blender. I’ll do a taste-test later to determine if I can detect a difference in taste.
Here is the recipe I used for strawberry jam:
- 5 cups of strawberries, mashed (or blended)
- 7 cups of sugar
- 1/4 cup of lemon juice
- 1.5 boxes of pectin
- Heat strawberries and lemon juice to a boil, stir in pectin, add sugar, stir until it boils for one minute, add to jars and process for 10 minutes.
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