Monday, August 22, 2011

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!

2 comments:

  1. Two very hard earned pints of jam - you should be proud!
    A little secret: to easily and quickly sterilize jars, you put them in your cold oven, turn it to 110C, when it gets to temperatures, bake/sterilize/leave there for 10 minutes, and you're all set! Fill your jars with jam while still hot (use oven mitts!).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooh, ouch, and sympathy! I'm making jam today too - will remember to be super careful! I hope you heal up quickly. Burns are no fun :(

    ReplyDelete