I love summer; if you know me, you already know this. I love the long days and the warm nights. I love the heat. I love swimming, kayaking, paddle boarding, and general lounging in rivers and lakes. I love camping and road trips. And I love the food- the stone fruits, summer squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, grilled everything, and all the salads. The farmers market is so full of great looking stuff I have to check myself. Even with the heat, it’s a great time to play in the kitchen with all this good stuff!

I think I started canning stuff when my parents’ dwarf, fruitless apple tree turned out to be neither of those and started pumping out tons and tons of tart apples every June. My mom could only make so many apple crisps (and we could only chip so many into the walnut orchard with golf clubs) that I started messing around with apple butter. My grandmother used to can stuff when I was a kid and although I hadn’t done it myself, it wasn’t foreign to me. When I met Jason and got to know his mom, she stared giving us lots of figs which I realized were easy to make jam with. These days, I will make jam with just about any surplus of fruit you give me and I have fun playing with flavors (I made a zinfandel rosemary jam that was out of this world a couple years ago). I have played around with some paleo jam (apricot/thyme made with honey), but I wasn’t a fan of it and am not ready to experiment more. I love giving my creations to friends and love having homemade jam around the house all the time- I haven’t bought jam from the store in years.

I’ve been doing the fig/blueberry jam for a few years and really like it. This year I thought I would try adding some balsamic. I only added 1/4 cup and will add more next time. The balsamic is there, just a hint at the end and I’d like a little more. I’m excited that I actually wrote the recipe down this time so I won’t have to dig around for how to make it next year! ❤️

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Fig, Blueberry, Balsamic Jam

• 4 cups chopped ripe figs- you do not need to peel them.
• 2 c. blueberries- I used frozen because I had them in the house, but either fresh/frozen works.
• 2 c. sugar- I use Morena pure cane sugar
• 2 ice cubes of lemon juice- this is probably close to 4T. I juice lemons in the winter and freeze them.
• 1/4 balsamic- this is what I used this time, next time I will use 1/3 and see how it goes.

Put all ingredients into a pot and bring to a boil over med-high heat. Once it starts to bubble, reduce heat and cook till it’s the thickness you want.- stirring often with a spatula to wipe the sides clean. It took about 45 minutes this time.

If you want to process it, there are lots of sites to read how to do that. There are a few precautions you need to take, but basically I put it in clean, hot jars, seal up, then process in water canner for 10 minutes. You can also put it in the freezer or just keep it in the fridge for a few weeks. This batch made about 4-8oz. jars worth.