Box Project Completed
August 13, 2010
I finished up my box project today, finally. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, mainly because of the amount of time I spent putting the clear finish on the boxes. I built 10 boxes total, all of them are 16-1/2″W x 16-1/2″L. I built a variety of heights, to see what worked best for me. We are in the process of going through all the jars I’ve accumulated and washing them and sorting them. If I have to build more, I might try using cheaper materials, maybe some OSB to see how that will hold up. I figure I spent around $20/box on this go-round, and they are overkill. They are nice though, should last forever, and I got a good bit of satisfaction and enjoyment out of making them.
Mason Jar Box Design – Version 2
July 29, 2010
Digging through box after box of unorganized mason jars last night to find the ones I needed was enough motivation for me to decide to move forward with my little box-building project. I thought of a better way to make the boxes stack, by arranging a side piece that will extend up into a void in the box on top, the boxes will lock together. Installing the bottom piece so that it extends below the other pieces will mimic a lid, so that I don’t need lids for every box that is stacked. The boxes will stack and lock with or without lids. I also played around with Google SketchUp again. Of course I impressed myself with my self-taught 3D CAD skills. Here are the pictures of my new design:
Strawberry Jam
July 28, 2010
Sprouts is selling strawberries for $0.97/pound right now. This is what $6 of strawberries + $5 of sugar + $3 of pectin, and several hours of my time yielded tonight.
12 half-pint jars and 3 3/4-pint jars. It took me two batches. The last batch has 1/4 tsp of fresh ground black pepper. I’m curious to taste that one. Jars of homemade jelly generally sell for $5 each, so we have about $75 worth of jelly, for about $15 in materials and a few hours of time.
Plum-Flavored Sugar, Hold the Worms
June 5, 2010
I’ve quickly moved through the 5 stages of grief since finding that my precious plums were playing host to some very rude and uninvited worms. A few people advised me to just cut out the bad parts of the fruit and use what was good. That is what I decided to do. I had a good deal of satisfaction washing those worms down the drain, ending their happy future as plum-egg-layers. I felt good that I was able to still use the fruit, rather than just throwing it all away like I was intending to do last night. I learned a few things while cutting up the fruit: 1) it is actually easier to pit a plum with a worm living in it. 2) birds can eat a worm out of a plum through a single tiny hole. 3) cutting up a bunch of plums is time-consuming work.
After I got all the fruit cut up, I only had 2 cups of fruit, far from the 6 cups the recipe called for. After some advance math, I figured out how much sugar I needed. The process of making jam is super easy. You just heat it up, stir in the pectin, stir in the sugar, and keep stirring. The only hard part is getting the water, jars, lids, and fruit all hot at the same time. This is one time a big stove would be handy. I came out with 4 half-pint jars of jam. The taste taste results were outstanding, but I don’t know how you can go wrong with anything with that much sugar! I’ll be able to use less sugar once I get a pressure-cooker though.
My First Canning FAIL
June 4, 2010
I was excited to see that my plum tree is full of fruit that is ripe or near ripe. I decided to seize the moment and go ahead and make some plum jam tonight. I was missing a few things, lemon juice, pectin, and a tray for the jars to sit on in the water bath. Bryson and I went to the Super Target to get these things. Turns out Target has a few items for canning, but mostly worthless. Next stop, Wal-Mart. I couldn’t find a canning tray there either. They had a kit that came with a plastic basket, but it would only hold 3 jars and looked like it would last about 4 times. I decided to make my own using a stove burner cover by drilling holes in it. At $4, I wouldn’t be too upset if it didn’t work out.
We got home with just enough light left in the day to get some fruit off the tree. I picked what I thought would be enough and came inside to get started. I drilled a bunch of holes in the burner cover, then decided I needed to sand it a little to remove all of the sharp burrs that were created by the drilling. As Murphy’s law dictates, I cut my finger while doing this.
Moving on, I got the jars set up in the water bath to heat up, lids ready for heating, tools cleaned and ready, and started cleaning my fruit. Guess what? EVERY PIECE OF FRUIT HAS A WORM LIVING IN IT! I little research tells me it is too late to do anything about it, all the fruit is infected. You have to spray very early to take care of this problem. I’m very disappointed to say the least!
-
Gallery
-
-
-
-
-
