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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Happy Earth Day!

It's Earth Day today, and in an effort to do my part in preserving our gift I am sharing the things I am currently involved with. My garden is a huge part of my earthday celebration. We have always grown our own food, and for years raised all of our meat and had milk goats. I usually can and freeze for use later as crops seem to produce a bounty of goods at one time. I also have dried zucchini and ground it up to make zucchini flour to use in my zucchini bread. There are so many wonderful ways to creatively be a good steward of our planet. I now only garden a small area, in a raised bed. I use drip irrigation and mulch to conserve water and I compost. This year I bought some tomatoes in peat pots which are directly planted in the ground so there is no waste or trash from plastic containers.

I think one of my biggest weaknesses is Costco, which I feel is not the best at being an earth friendly company. They over package things, package some perishable foods in over sized packaging which you can never eat fast enough. But for some reason I love to shop at Costco. They carry some very cool things. Last week while I was shopping I saw that they had a composter for sale, Oh wow, an easier, smaller way to compost. It was only 99$ so I bought it. Today, my husband is setting it up for me, an appropriate way to ring in Earth Day. I keep a plastic milk jug with its top cut off in my sink and as I chop or peel I just add the pieces to the jug and I can easily carry it out to the composter to empty. I have always had the giant pile of stuff that had to be covered and turned and watered. This is all self contained and has a handle to turn it weekly! Yippie, I can't wait.

As my garden grows, and my fruit trees start to set fruit I will be thinking of all the good uses I will have for my new crop of "black earth".