Summertime Jam

[tea_and_toast]

First, JAM. Because, as you know, toast is one of my favorite things and I already know how to make bread. When my husband's mother gave us a bag and told us to please go pick nectarines, that they were falling off the tree, I somehow got the idea into my head to make jam from them. It might have been the large pack of pint jars for canning I bought on a whim, I don't know.

I've never made jam before. I recall "helping" some adult make jam with Girl Scouts. Something about cutting up lots of strawberries and then getting to take home a jar, or similar. This is not how you teach a child to make jam. But it's okay, I'm an adult now and can operate heavy machinery read directions and buy my own pectin. (I bought two kinds to be safe, such a splurge.) This is freezer jam, because even though I look through my kitchen cupboards regularly, the Canning Pot Fairy has not given me a large enough pot to do water bath canning. My jars stick up out of the pasta pot I have. I'm thinking that's not ideal. (Admittedly, I probably should have bought half-pint jars. I was thinking in terms of pickles, which wouldn't have fit. We didn't make pickles from our cucumbers. We made pickle relish, which would fit. Sigh.)

Anyway, nectarines + sugar + pectin + teeny bit of cinnamon:

It's good. I have big plans for toast in the future. And possibly jam thumprints or a variation on mincemeat cookies. Or those raspberry linzer cookies, but with nectarine jam... and danishes... ahem.

In other news, the tomatoes are ripe in the garden, finally! So far we have tons of cherry tomatoes, and a few Mr. Stripey Green Zebra. (Is Mr. Stripey a real thing? It should be.) I've forgotten what our middle tomato plant is, and it looks like it will be a while before I find out.

And of course, there are carrots, zucchini, and cucumbers. Our second batch of peas may do well. I have my fingers crossed -- we planted them from the dried peas of the last batch we planted but didn't get around to eating. It would be some kind of triumph to be able to say that we not only grew them from seed, but that we grew the seeds, too.

But even better --

My husband made a desk. He had just gotten a new desktop after having a laptop for a long time, and the old desk has a sewing machine built in, and a lot of drawers, so there wasn't really room for a big desktop tower. So we looked on the Internet for a pattern, and found one that used 2x4s, which we happened to have a lot of. We bought a 10" wide plank for the top, so it's only two wide pieces, but the rest of it is all 2x4s. The desk cost maybe $15 to make (plus labor. Labor is worth something).

The cat approves, as you can see.