It's Time for Tea and a Party with Rose Petal Jam!

I am having my Mother's Day Tea Party for friends, students, fellow artists etc. It is a wonderful time to just enjoy my garden with friends and sketch and paint while we all visit. I just happened to be reading the book "The Zoo Keepers Wife" and she mentions in the book about living in Poland and loving Rose Petal Jam. I was intrigued as I always love to make jam but have never even heard of using Roses!! I guess in Europe this is nothing new and much loved. These homespun activities are rarer and rarer here in the states since we are all so busy but I still love to do them. I have an old spirit, I am a homespun homebody, and I can't help it.

 

So that peeked my interest and I started Googling Rose Petal Jam. Subsequently, this year,  I am making Rose Petal Jam for my Tea Party!! Everything seemed to come together for us to work on the jam. We had just ended a long tour and needed some R&R. Jennifer and I needed a day together, enjoying the outdoors whether painting, gardening or just hanging out always invigorates us. Her and I made this together and we had a blast!! I thought I would share our adventure with you and the recipes we used, yes we used several and changed them a bit.



Jennifer helped me collect the most fragrant roses!

Randy made us a bouquet to enjoy while we worked.

We selected roses by fragrance and by color, then we
washed and sorted. The jam will be the color of your
roses.

Here is our pinks and we also had reds. Then at the end we
made a mixed batch with all the left overs.
 

I then had Jennifer sort through the petals to assure that there were
no bad petals etc. This is her doing her choosen roses, Judy Garland.

This is how her roses looked when they were put into jars.

After she was finished sorting and cleaning we measured out our roses and Jenn bruised the petals with sugar to bring out more of their fragrance.

I then started to cook them

                                                                 

 Once they were done cooking I filled the jars and then inverted them to sterilize the tops. The jars had been sterilized earlier and were just waiting for the boiling mixture.

This was Chloe, sunbathing as we cooked our Rose mixture! Everyone was enjoying the sunshine. Randy was busy working in the yard, pruning roses and mowing the lawn!

 

 

 

We tried several recipes that I found on the internet for Rose Petal Jam. We changed up each batch to see which one we liked the best, which one set up the best etc. Depending on how long you cook each batch you will determine the thickness of the jam. I don't think we followed any of the recipes to the letter, we are like that, rebel canners. It is very sweet but so fragrant! Jennifer's jam was our first batch, we cooked it the least and it is the loosest but it is a golden, fragrant syrup that will be perfect for ice cream, cheese cake and pancakes! 

The next batches ranged from pink to red and since we experimented with pectin and cooking time the pink jam is far more set up than the others. It was a fun way to try several recipes. I loved the sun coming through the jars, they looked like jewels.

At the end of the day we had lots of beautiful jars of Rose Petal Jam to serve at my Tea Party and give as Mother's Day Gifts. Below are links to several recipes I found. I hope you try one.

So far we have tried it on toast and now last night for dessert we put it over our ice cream. I opened a Red Rose Petal Jam and it looked beautiful over the vanilla bean ice cream. I will be sure to serve this at my Tea Party in May with scones! Happy Jammin!

Here is the first one we tried, they used wild roses! Make sure your roses are pesticide free!! I even included a Martha Stewart Recipe for Rose Petal Jelly. We prefer the petals in the jam! Enjoy

http://www.feastingathome.com/rose-petal-jam/

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/166277/rose-petal-jam/

http://www.emikodavies.com/blog/rose-petal-jam/

http://www.marthastewart.com/356009/rose-petal-jelly

Follow me on Instagram and Facebook to see our other adventures. Life is short, make every minute count!

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Apricots and Peaches Everywhere!!

Well its that glorious time of year again, when the beautiful flowering fruit trees have put on their crop of fruit and the warmth of the sun has ripened it all at ONCE!! Ahhh. I love the thought of going out and picking a ripe apricot or peach from the tree on a hot day and enjoying it but it doesn't happen like that. It takes ladders and every bowl in my house to carry in the ripening and falling fruit. I try to pick the ripest first and spread the wealth over at least a week.

Sometimes it happens, sometimes not.

Normally I spend the early summer dreaming and pining over canning and preserving books I have collected over the years for some new, exciting recipes. This year I didn't do that. Then Marta called me to tell me she was canning strawberry margarita jam! Oh, I got all excited. Finally after canning by myself for so many years I have a few friends that have begun to can!! Its so exciting, exchanging recipes, canned goods etc. Dawn also then posted she had canned Ginger Lemon marmalade. Wow!! more goodies.

Well I better get busy here.

This year, like last, my apricot tree has had a disease. Don't panic, it isn't contagious, but it does affect the production of fruit. We lost the whole crop last year but this year Randy did get the tree sprayed once. It probably needed to be sprayed three times but being organic gardners it really pains us to treat things we are going to eat with anything. But the idea is to spray before the tree is setting blossoms and then the disease will be treated. Anyway (long,boring details), we got apricots, but they were small but plenty of them and they tasted good. So I picked the day before fathers day and set them out for the party goers the following day. After everyone had eaten their fill I still had plenty left over. Not wanting to tackle jam during our heat wave I got a great idea, Apricot BRANDY!! So simple but so much fun. I got on the internet, poured through all my books and found a recipe that seemed good. After I put the apricots in the liquor I had to put them into a brown paper bag in the closet, to keep it cool and dark. It has the feeling of being a closet drinker during prohibition days I must say! It felt weird to show Marta the concoction cooking away in the pantry! LOL Marta and I were dreaming over a chapter of decorated jam jars, already planning how we will prepare the Christmas gifts for my everyone!
Here is the process and I even took the time to journal it in my sketchbook!

Preparing the liquors, sugars



In go the apricots



One jar down, one to go