i'm jealous! Wild plum is my favorite jelly and you can't buy it in the stores. And to have someone give you a box-how lucky can you be?

I know. We went out to dinner with them tonight and I gave them a box of six jars plus a pint of corn relish. What a wonderful gift! And plum jelly is just "the best"!

I miss my grandmother's wild plum jelly so very much! I've tried oodles of commercial and craft show homemade versions and none of them have the tart taste of hers. I wish I lived closer to Linderhof. I would be begging you for a jar.

I haven't canned anything yet this year, but was thinking about making a batch of dilly beans this weekend. We don't have wild plums around here! - now I'd love to try some and make some jelly to see what it's like.

I have never tasted wild plum jelly. However, my sister's kumquat tree has gone crazy the past 2 years, and I just made some kumquat marmalade. I love it with cream cheese on a bagel.

I just planted plum trees last year, Elery likes the Italian prune type plums, so I'm hoping to have plenty in a couple of years. I did buy some and make some plum sauce for the Grandkids to dip chicken nuggets in, but I only made about a dozen half pints.

I do a lot of canning and grow most of it myself. Between green beans and Elery's beloved pink half runner beans we've canned over 200 quarts of beans. I've already done 30 pints of Chase's chile sauce too, that makes great sloppy joes. My salsa is done, the only thing I'm really "famous" for is Annie's Salsa, but I still want to make a couple of batches of pineapple/peach salsa when my peaches ripen. Pickles are done and I made a batch of 3 bean salad and canned that too.

I've canned over 500 jars this year and still have greens, apples and peaches, as well as the last of the tomatoes and I'll have to can stock when we process chickens in a couple of weeks. And, with all that, I still have only made one single batch of jam, a seedless raspberry jam. It is delicious and Mother loves it, and I strained out all the seeds so they don't get in her teeth, LOL.

My goal this year is to use at least one item from the pantry/canning and one from the freezer for each meal this year. My shelves are full and I have milk crates stacked 7 high in my laundry room full of canning jars, my kids are teasing me that I'm a "prepper" or waiting for the zombie apocalypse. That doesn't stop them from "shopping" at Mom's. Yeah...

Anyway, plum jam sounds lovely. That's exactly how I make jam, just fruit and sugar, and I try to keep the sugar to the minimum, although if I reduce it too much I don't get jam. Cook it long enough, though, and it's "fruit spread", LOL.

Annie

Sounds and looks wonderful. Do you have to pressure can corn relish?

I was once given a crate of wild plums.....the jam was lovely....this year it was grapes.....and that jam is lovely too....
And Blue berries were cheap and I made jam....and beautiful colorado peaches were $.99 a pound....so I made lots....looking for some free unsprayed crab apples and then I'll shut down the jelly factory!

I've cut down a loss on the amount of canning I do. Maybe 200 jars all put together.

Jam in the early summer, dills and bread and butters in early August , next week stewed tomatoes, chile sauce, salsa ( Annies ) and herbed pasta sauce. October pepper jelly ( Annie's ) , February marmalade.

Every year I say that's it but.........

Olychick -- I don't pressure anything -- I'm scared of pressure. So I only "can" jams, jellies and pickle stuff and tomatoes (things with sugar and vinegar - although the tomatoes have neither sugar nor added acid) so no. 25 minutes in a boiling water bath. My mom canned green beans without pressure -- I think it was 2 or 3 hours a batch. We ate them and never were sick from them. But I'm also as scared of water bath green beans as I am of pressure so I don't do those either.

I'm not afraid of much of anything, so I happily pressure can my vegetables, beef and chicken stock, homemade soup or chili, whatever suits me. I am, however, afraid of water bath processed low acid foods like vegetables, even if it never killed me. Eating moldy jam can make you sick, but eating water bathed vegetables that don't even seem spoiled can kill you. Boiling your product for 10 minutes can help inactivate those botulism spores but I'm not taking that chance. As a result, I'm very happy that Martha does not water bath green beans!

I know lots of people who say they've always done it and didn't die, but I rode to Canada in the back of a pick up truck more than once and didn't die either, but I'm sure not going to let the grandkids do that. No car seats when I was a baby either, and I survived, but my kids most certainly had them. I just don't consider "we've always done it that way" to be a compelling argument, if there's a better/safer way, I want to know about that! The USDA has been telling people to use pressure canners since the 40s. I'll take a risk but I want to know what that risk is before I take it.

LindaC, I have a crab apple tree in my pasture and I never spray it. Iowa is kind of a long way for delivery, though. (grin) You reminded me that I have to check it, for some reason apples here are inconsistent this year, and so some trees have fruit and some don't. I have to check the crab apples and see if there even are any!

Annie