Canning season is here again. This year I made the same two batches of peach jam as last year: peach lavender and peach, pear, lime. Both turned out great. I chopped the fruit into much smaller bits than last year so it’s much less lumpy and spreads better on bread. I also made two new jams: strawberry margarita jam and kiwi daiquiri. Both are fantastic. The kiwi jam is super, super easy and the strawberry jam, although a lot of chopping, is so delicious that it’s worth the work.

I also canned grape juice for the first time. I sprinkled some fertilizer around the grape vines this spring, and boy, it paid off. There are so many grapes in our garden. I canned 7 pints of grape juice, plus had a pitcher of fresh juice in the fridge. And that was maybe 1/4 of the grapes on the vines. I don’t have enough quart canning jars to make another batch of grape juice, I think I will have to invest in more.