Feeling the love

An awesome thing happened to me the other day that came out of a really crappy thing and I just have to share it. A few weeks back my house was burglarized and my camera was stolen. The camera I had received a year ago as a gift from James and a bunch of my friends for my birthday. I had been talking about getting the camera, the Canon G11, for awhile. My digital SLR is soooo outdated and I really wanted a camera I could carry easily that would allow me to shoot manually and without delay. It was the gift of that camera that first inspired my 365 days of pictures challenge and the camera I use to photograph for this blog.

My plan was to replace the camera through financing, but then amazing things happened. James and I celebrated our 3-year anniversary last week and he gifted me half of my new camera. WHAT?!?! The following day my supervisor at work handed me an envelope with cash inside. My co-workers had pitched in and gifted me the extra money I needed to replace my camera. AMAZING!!

I was able to replace the camera I had lost and know, more than ever, that I am surrounded by the most generous and caring people. What more could you ask for? THANK YOU!!

Time to go shoot...

Sweet Cherry Jam

We have been swimming in cherries.

Cherry season is James' fave and he is averaging a full grocery bag of cherries every weekend from the market. After od'ing on fresh cherries we went out and bought a cherry pitter so we could make jam.

Cherry Pitter = Clutch kitchen utensil for baking/jamming with cherries.

It is totally possible to cut out the pits with a knife if you don't want to spend the extra cash, but for $12 we will be able to make lots of jam in a short period of time this year.

After my usual search on tastespotting.com came up short for good recipes for sweet cherry jam, I decided to follow the recipe from the pectin box. I like to use Pomona's Universal Pectin. It allows for less sugar than most pectins and works well. I chose the Pomona's recipe because it called for cherries, lemon juice, and sugar. Keepin' it simple.

I had a little bit of cherries left over after measuring the amount I needed for the Pomona's recipe, so I made one batch of cherry jam with no pectin. It turned out really well. I just simmered the cherries longer than usual until the cherries broke down. I then added the sugar and lemon juice and simmered until the jam thickened. A good test to see if your jam has thickened is to spread some on a clean spoon and let it cool.