Over the weekend, I saw a post on our local freecycle offering pick-your-own figs. I think this is the best offer I've ever seen on freecylce. The owner of the tree, a few miles from our house, said we could come over on Monday.
Baskets in hand, the boys and I marched to our car only to remember the car seats were in Eric's car. We modified our plans and took the Dash bus. The Dash small bus local transit system is the jewel in the crown of Los Angeles' public transportation program. They run every twenty minutes. We're lucky to live a few blocks away from a stop. And the figs growing on our new found freecycle friend's tree were within easy walking distance from a stop.
The boys loved riding without being strapped into a car seat. Our small adventure seemed quite grand to them. We acquired some delicious figs from a small tree.
Then we headed homeward.
At home, I cleaned the figs and embarked on my maiden solo jam making experience (without grandma or my sister). I loosely followed the recipe from www.pickyourown.org. Seven cups of sugar seemed excessive, especially for the very sweet fig, so I only added four cups and about a 1/4 cup of inadvertently added apple juice (I thought I was adding the fresh squeezed lemon juice rather than my youngest son's beverage.) The results are unbelievably delicious. Fig jam is where it's at.
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Fun outing! Safety comment: you don't say, but if you didn't add the lemon juice at all your acidity might be unsafe for room temp storage. Maybe figs are acidic enough alone, dunno.
ReplyDeleteI added the lemon juice after the apple juice. The jam seems safe, then again, if you don't hear from us again...it was probably the fig jam. How embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteSugar is also a big preserver, which might be why the original called for so much of it....
ReplyDelete