The ginger jam turned out, well, o.k. I guess. Certainly not the triumph that I had been hoping for, but not too bad either. I ended up making eleven of those little gift-sized 4 ounce jars. So that's, what, 44 ounces? I don't what that makes, pint-wise. I guess I could figure it out for you, but I don't think it really matters that much. Go ahead, though, if it means a lot to you.


The recipe I used was a kind of self-created mish-mash of the recipes that I looked up. I peeled and cut about a pound of fresh ginger (not a fun process) and boiled the slices for about half an hour. The boiling process produced a very strong ginger steam and made my kitchen pretty much uninhabitable - my husband couldn't even stand in the doorway, about 12 feet from the stove. Anyway, once the boiling was done, I minced the ginger in my ever handy Cuisinart until it was, as one of the recipes instructed, "the size of grains of rice." Um, o.k. What I basically got was a pretty ground up mass of ginger and I figured that would be good enough. I put that back into the drained pot, added four cups of water, 3 tablespoons of calcium water, and one cup of sugar. I let that all come to a boil and then added another cup of sugar to which 3 tablespoons of powdered pectin had been added. The result was a little strange. But it jammed up nicely and processes well, so I guess it all worked out. The color is a little odd, kind of khaki or light brown. If I had to to it all again, I might add just a smidge of food coloring. The texture is kind of grainy - like a marmalade, I guess, but not quite as chewy as I always think of marmalade as being.


Now I'm not quite sure what to do with this (isn't that always true of long-held goals made manifest? You think, "now what?" and the answer is seldom clear). I'm thinking it would probably taste horrible on a PB sandwich, so I'm thinking maybe it could be on some fancy-schmancy tea sandwich with cream cheese on zucchini bread, or a cake filling, or the bottom of, say, a pear tart. Maybe I can develop some cool recipes and include them with a jar as Christmas presents.


Today I'm a bit natured-out. We're still dealing with the carpenter bees and today I saw my first snake of the season. Snakes are not my favorite of God's creatures. There's this place in New Jersey where people built all these expensive houses only to discover that the land was adjacent to one of the only known stomping (slithering?) grounds of some kind of endangered rattlesnake. At first I thought, "well, that's the wages of suburban sprawl." Then I though, "gosh, that's my worst nightmare." The homeowners have apparently built walls (!) to try and keep the snakes out of their yards, to no avail. I've not been to this place, but my mind conjures up visions of backyards that are more like the temple scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Probably not entirely accurate. On the cuter, but still strange, side there are two rabbits at the bottom of the yard near the gate that keep running back and forth, back and forth. I have not a clue what they're doing - I've never seen rabbits behave this way. And, yesterday there were two deer in the front yard, galloping around. I guess they were playing, but I don't usually see deer until dusk or even later. Sheba, a beautiful tan German Shepherd who has recently joined our family, has proven to be a lousy watch dog and didn't notice the deer crossing the driveway ten feed in front of her while we walked down to check the mail. We love her, to be sure, but jeez girl - it's a deer! Bark or something!. So, in short, the creatures are acting odd.