welcome to rainy season...and to the making of jam!

If you live in a pretty temperate climate, or somewhere that has four seasons, you may not have experienced "rainy season" for yourself. Depending on who you are, you can either hate rainy season, or love it. After all, 8 hours of rain most days of the week does have the potential to drive someone insane. Luckily for me, I find the rain both refreshing and relaxing, unless of course, there's somewhere I have to go. Anyway, I really appreciate how being forced indoors encourages one's creativity. Living here (with no access to cars, malls, movie theaters, and all those things you take for granted on a rainy day in America) is quite a challenge. It can also be a blessing.

This past weekend, after being driven indoors by the rain, Deke and I decided to make passion fruit jam. Passion fruit is relatively cheap here (even cheaper when the fruit is in season), and since we love passion fruit, we thought - why not passion fruit jam? 

I've taken much joy in documenting the things that happen in my life while living abroad, and so I wanted to share our little cooking adventure with you. Now, I have to warn you - we didn't really follow a recipe, so if you're the type that needs exact measurements, you should probably stop reading. But, if you do like some semblance of adventure in your life, and don't mind messing up for the sake of having fun and being creative, then I highly encourage you to make your own jam! It's easy, and great for a rainy day!

 The first step is to gather your ingredients and other necessary items. You will need: a LOT of fruit (in our case, a dozen passion fruits only yielded half a jar of jam), sugar, non-flavored gelatin, glass jars, a knife, some kind of mixing utensil, and a strainer (optional).

Next, wash your fruit, cut them, and proceed to extract all the yummy goodness out of them. Again, the amount of fruit we had did NOT yield much (this is what happens when you don't follow a recipe), and so you'll want to make sure you have enough fruit. Otherwise, you will end up with enough jam for two slices of toast, like we did. 

Then, set your pot of fruit on low heat. When it begins to boil, add some sugar. If you like your jam really sweet, or if the fruit you're using is more tart than normal, add more sugar. There's no shame in liking things sweet!

As the liquid is evaporating from your sugary fruit concoction, you can choose to use a strainer to separate the liquid from the seeds. Because passion fruit is basically 90% seed and 10% pulp, using a strainer really wasn't an option. A food processor would have been a better choice, but unfortunately, we didn't have access to one.

The last steps is to add gelatin to the mixture. Make sure most of the liquid has evaporated; otherwise, you will have to use more gelatin to achieve the solid-like nature of jam. Good indicators that you've added enough gelatin are 1) the viscosity of the mixture and 2) whether or not your concoction adheres to a spoon.

 

Finally, you can take this jamming experience (ha. ha.) up another notch and research home canning directions. Otherwise, after pouring everything into a jar, set it in the fridge, wait for the gelatin to make magic happen, and then enjoy the results of your hard work!