What Not To Do

So last week Mister bought fruit. Fast forward to today, and they were attracting fruit flies. So, thinking I was a smart cookie, I figured I'd turn them to jam. The pears were a lost cause. But the peaches were fully salvageable!

So I hunted up an easy peach jam recipe and set to work.

(Sliced peaches and put on heat with sugar)

Poking around the freezer turned up a bag of blueberries. Perfect! I tossed them in with a little more sugar. All told, I added peaches, blueberries, sugar, oj, cinnamon, nutmeg, garam masala and vanilla. I was feeling pretty crafty.

Added to that crafty feeling was my heating and sterilizing my jars in the same water as the water bath. How sneaky am I, I thought. And then I realized that I didn't have my jar lifters, they're still in storage.

Never fear, thought I, I am resourceful. I can figure this out. So to fish my clean jars out I grabbed a spatula and a silicone oven mitt.

I was futzing with the jar when disaster struck. I dipped the silicone oven mitt far enough under the water that it filled up and became a silicone cup of water. Feeling my hand burned, I freaked out, and reared back... throwing the water from the oven mitt directly at my face. Luckily, I wear glasses. Tearing the glasses off my face, I ran to the sink to throw cold water over everything in pain (with a constant stream of f-bombs). I also dashed into the bedroom to grab the aloe vera and smear it thickly upon everything.

I did manage to use the silicone oven mitt and spatula in lieu of the jar lifters, but thanks to my burn, the wafts of steam made it an exciting process.

I can happily write this all now, with two pint jars of jam on the counter, and my right hand in a bowl of water. But boy, what an ounce of prevention is worth!