I slept late today ;-) Last night was a "rest" - after DD and I got home from parade, she changed and the whole family went to pick up our jars and ribbons, then we met my parents at pizza place for dinner, picked up a cake and ice cream and went back to their house to celebrate my birthday 2 weeks late (we've been so busy have had no time to go to dinner - and now anniversary is coming up, I've got no idea when/how we're going to celebrate that b/c rest of the month looks busy too, with DS's awards - see my brag post - my mom visiting my sister's family for niece's b-days, and then coming back right before my dad has surgery). Anyway, I haven't made the apple-jalapeno (or any pepper jellies except Gold) for a couple years, I can't find the recipe I used, it was mostly apple juice or homemade apple pectin not vinegar so I don't remember how many jalapenos I used, how much lemon juice. There are a few tomato jam recipes on this forum if you search, I've used the Food in Jars no-pectin recipe successfully with cherry tomatoes (lots of skin and not so much juice as heirlooms, don't try it with really juicy tomatoes). The red-ribbon winner was Orange Minsk tomatoes peeled and sugared per Joy of Jams Tomato-Pineapple preserves recipe, but instead of fresh pineapple I used 1C (drained) of canned crushed pineapple, since that has already been cooked it didn't have the enzyme that hinders the set. I peeled (raw, not blanched so lost a little flesh) 3 huge Orange Minsk tomatoes for 2.25 lbs. 2C of sugar, let stand all day, lots of liquid but very ripe tomatoes were falling apart once I started cooking them. Added 4 Tbsp lemon juice, 1 Tbsp lime juice, 4 Tbsp OJ, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 1/2tsp coriander and 1 Tbsp whole dried birdseye (Thai) peppers. Bring to a boil, add 1/2 a can (drained) crushed pineapple (about 1C). Boil until set. The next time I made this, I put the pineapple (not drained) in the pan first with the syrup from the sugared tomatoes, the lemon and lime juice (skipped the OJ), and brought that to a "hard simmer" and crushed the pineapple with a potato masher b/c I had bought 6 cans of pineapple chunks (in juice, not syrup) from BJ's and that's what DD used in her jam first. The pineapple chunks were a lot harder/bigger than the crushed - tidbits might work best, the crushed was really shredded and I was *trying* for a preserve with chunks of pineapple and whole yellow cherry tomatoes, but the tomatoes keep falling apart on me and I used the immersion blender on the whole pot, pulled out the skins. A food mill would have worked better. Same spices, skipped the hot peppers in that one. A 3rd batch used the Orange Minsk again, with crushed pineapple, same juices (incl. OJ) and spices, so it was jam consistency, but instead of whole birdseye peppers which were really spicy (to me and DS) when you bit into one, I added 1Tbsp of crushed red pepper flakes. But that hadn't set up as well by the time of the fair so I didn't enter that. I'll let you know how that goes. I've still got to work out the tomato preserves, but I think I need to use really firm just-ripe cherry tomatoes and it's the end of the season, I don't have any more. I've also been working on a savory "just tomato" spread using no-sugar pectin but am having a hard time getting a set with the juicy heirlooms I've tried this year.

Better yet get the Ball Complete Book. It has all the recipes found in the BBB and many more. Including the Carrot Cake Jam recipe and yes, it really is 1 1/2 cups peeled and chopped ripe pears regardless of what someone on YouTube said or did and the juice is supposed to be the liquid from the undrained pineapple. Most recipes call for using the liquid pectin and liquid pectin and dry pectin are not interchangeable. So you made several changes in the original recipe. It is supposed to be very thick but it wouldn't look or taste the same as the original with all those changes. It honestly isn't advisable to keep picking recipes to try that are obviously quite sweet to begin with when it's clear that that sweetness doesn't appeal to you. Trying to make all sorts of modifications in them usually only leads to very poor results. So if low-sugar is your primary consideration then why not stick with all the low sugar recipes? Dave

Yippee! Spotted my first half ripe cherry tomato on one of my 38 plants today. Hopefully, I too, will be in the same boat as you all... By the way, a friend told me a great trick for getting rid of fruit flies...quickly...Put a quarter inch of red cider vinegar in the bottom of a quart sized canning jar (hopefully you have one or two left after all your canning). Anyway, you then get a piece of 81/2 x 11 paper (preferably scrap so you're not wasting a clean piece on the @#$%ing things. Twist the paper into a cone shape where there's a pretty small hole at the point end (small enough for the flies to go only one way...in) and tape it into that cone shape. Stick the cone small end down into the quart jar until the paper fits snug inside the jar. The flies are attracted to the vinegar, go down the funnel and are too stupid to figure out how to get back out. Works REALLY well! It's also really cool watching the stupid things trying to get out. I rid my kitchen of ALL the fruit flies in two days that came home with the farmer's market peaches. I have also placed it right next to my compost on the kitchen counter and I no longer have ANY fruit flies around my compost bin when I open it up to put food scraps in.

Steve, there's some contention over the Complete Ball Blue Book, as it was apparently published in Canada, with guidelines less stringent than those here in the United States. Soooo....trained educators like Linda Lou at Harvest can't tell you the recipes are "safe" because the USDA hasn't approved them. Now, understand, this doesn't mean that they AREN'T safe, just that they are untested by our government. Since the company (Ball/Kerr/Jardin/Bernardin/whatever) has food scientists that do testing, and guidelines and parameters they work within, I'm perfectly comfortable with this book and the safety of the recipes and techniques. I do have the $5 Ball Blue Book, it's about 1/5 the size of the Complete issue, so there are a lot of recipes in this Complete book that aren't in the others. Annie