Donnie: Great point! I make jam from some of my fruit. After using Sure-Gel, I found the jam sickening sweet. When I reduced the sugar on the next batch, the jam did not gel thick enough. Some of the recipes called for 5 cups fruit with 7 cups sugar! I now use sure-gel light. It calls for 1/3 less sugar than regular Sure-gel. Works great. I have reduced the sugar on some of their recipes even more and still get it to gel good. I am amazed when I meet europeans living in ith U.S. I constantly hear from them that Americans use too much sugar! Of course I agree somewhat but not always. I bought some scandiavian made jams from a local specialty store. WOW! It listed sugar on the ingredients but far too sour for me. I will not buy jelly/jam from scandinavia again. Although I have had great luck with morello jam from Italy and some red currant jelly from the U.K. Luckily I now have enough homemade jams from 2011 crop to last me thru 2012.

Monique, The calcium water is no big deal. You mix what they tell you in a little jar. Store the rest in the fridge. The only thing with the Pomona's is that is it hard to dissolve, so I blend one cup of juice with the pectin, then add to the fruit or juice. I tried adding it to the Splenda like they said, but it was really lumpy. I had to take the immersion blender and blend the pot of jelly. Then, I had a lot of foam. I used 4 cups plum juice, the Pomona's dissolved in one cup boiling apple juice (no sugar), calcium water, and 2 cups Splenda. It is wonderful tasting ! I think that stuff will gel anything in the world, too. I am glad you are thinking about taking care of yourself now. I was like that at first, and now am diabetic. It isn't that bad, but it is just a bother because I have to plan my life around eating times, and have to eat certain amounts of certain foods. You really have to be disciplined. You do the same exact things for being prediabetic, if you take care of yourself as you should. Best wishes to you.

Ken: Thank you for those instructions. That helps considerably, particularly with the advice to mix the pectin part with juice in a blender. I will be doing it in the next week or so. Dave: I originally made jam. The berries were odd, did not break down, and in the final product, were shrivelled and hard. Only a few of the 100 jars or so set up. So I strained the berries out, tossed them, and reboiled the juice with Certo. Some of them set, but some didn't. I checked the boxes of Certo I was using to make sure they weren't expired because I could not figure out why only some were jelling. I hesitate to try even more pectin at this point. I need to point out that I made this recipe with Gewurtztraminer and paid a fortune for the Blackberries (they never get cheap here). Also, it tastes really good so far. I figure I have nothing to lose at this point to reprocess the remaining 40 jars that did not set up with Pomona. I should point out that since this jam disaster saga began, three or so weeks have passed and the jelly has still not set up. If you have any other ideas, I'd be delighted to hear them. I just can't bear to toss 40 jars of jelly without one last kick at the cat. Silvercook: If you have a natural foods store in your region, and you haven't yet, call them. I was surprised to find Pomona in one after I'd looked pretty much everywhere else.

I'm another non-fan of Pomona's for the reason Robin mentioned, but it does have its advocates and only you can decide which camp you fall into. Non-commercial pectin jams use less sugar than commercial pectin jams but a certain amount of sugar is necessary to assure a jell. It's a fine balance of fruit, sugar and acid. Cutting the sugar is possible but at some point the mixture will either not jell or you'll evaporate out the water and end up with a thick viscous mixture like tar. Annie routinely reduces the sugar in something like pear preserves; with each batch she reduced more until she hit a point where it wasn't possible to further reduce and get even a soft set. But since each batch of fruit varies (especially from season to season) with traditional preserving there's always an element of "mystery" as to how the preserves will respond. You can improve the odds by adding citrus pulp and seeds, as Robin mentioned. You can also make your own natural citrus or apple pectin base. And yes, you can definitely experiment with assurance of safety as long as you avoid the low-acid peppers and such. You can do a simple (and cheap) alcohol test to determine the pectin level of the fruit in any given batch. I usually don't bother unless I'm developing a new recipe and working with fruit that has marginal pectin. A search online will bring up lots of sites that explain how to do it, but you can also ask here if you're interested. You can also get a refractometer or jelmeter, which will help you measure the sugar in the fruit. Knowing the level of natural sugar helps you determine how much additional sugar is needed. Jelmeters are no longer manufactured, though Jamlady mentions them. But they do occasionally turn up on ebay. They were in common use during WWII because women making preserves could then reduce the sugar. Lee Valley Tools sells a refractometer. But that probably goes beyond what you want to get into right now. Carol Here is a link that might be useful: Refractometer