One Year of Blogging Done!

Last weekend was the one year anniversary of Oscoey. I can’t believe how quickly the last year has gone! I have learned a lot about blogging over the past year and gotten to know many fabulous bloggers as well.

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When I first started out blogging with my very first blog post:

Welcome!

I had all sorts of ideas of what I wanted the blog to be and then the reality of life set in and I had to way scale back my ambitious plans.  There simply was not time for me to be posting quality posts 3 days a week, be on top of social media all day long and be an active member of all the blog groups I am part of and have some semblance of a home life. Luckily I realized pretty early on that it is ok if I can’t write an article for a few weeks or if I miss out on pivotal twitter discussions because I am not doing the blog as a full-time business making gig. I am doing it because I enjoy writing about our life and I love the community of people I have become a part of.

My blog first started out as a basic mom blog with many posts about the garden and recipes. I loved my weekly garden posts and will continue them on a less frequent basis this year. I love looking back at how the garden changed over the growing season.  I am probably going to scale back on the recipes though. Mr. Oscoey is more the cook in the family and now that I am working again I really don’t have time to cook much any more.  I use my banana bread and chocolate chip cookies recipes all the time though. They are a great dairy and gluten free choice for any sort of social gathering you need to bring an item to.  I am planning on making my dairy and gluten-free banana bread to bring with a jar of homemade jam to our work potluck at the end of this month.

I have spent a little time focusing on urban homesteading on Oscoey because I firmly believe that people should grow at least a little of their own food. It is easy to set out a pot and even just grow a little bit of lettuce. Connecting with nature and understanding the seasons is something a lot of people have lost. Growing your own food is the easiest way to regain that connection and as an added bonus you have cheap organic produce to munch on! I am very excited to start our garden this year and I look forward to spending time out there with the kids every day. They love to graze and eat whatever is in season and that is fine with us!

After I had done the mom blog thing for a while and focused on our little urban homestead I found the personal finance community and I haven’t really looked back. I love reading about personal finance, talking about savings strategies and getting inspiration from others. I will be honest and tell you I was a little nervous when I added the “Finances” category to the top of my page but then I did the Uber Frugal Month Challenge this January and I loved being a part of that community and jump starting our frugal mindset once again.

My crossstitching progress pictures seem to have fallen by the wayside…and that is mostly because I have not been stitching.  I would love to have the time to stitch every day and I am very inspired by my Instagram feed with everybody’s progress but I am honestly too tired at the end of the day to even think about picking up a needle.  This picture was taken almost a year ago and even though I have actually made progress on the piece I am no where near finished with it like I had hoped.  I also have several sewing projects I would love to write about that I have not worked on in months so I think one of my blogging goals for this year is to talk about some of my projects and spend some time tracking them on a weekly basis to motivate me to finish them.

Oscoey had a great first year! I want to thank everyone that is a regular reader of the blog! I love your comments and interacting with you. Here’s hoping to another great year of blogging!

A few days ago I posted about our strawberry picking and how we froze and dried the berries.  We have been snacking on the dried berries all week and they are delicious!  On top of drying and freezing our berries we also made two batches of strawberry jam.  My husband and I love to make jam together so it took us a couple of days to coordinate our schedules so that we had enough time to finish.  We kept the berries in the fridge and they were still delicious.  You can store some varieties of berries such as Rainiers in the fridge for a few days before you make jam but others such as our favorites shuksans need to be processed as soon as they are picked.  We had picked regular can be kept in the fridge strawberries so we had time to wait.

This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

If you are new to jam making it is really important to do your research first.  There are a bunch of awesome books and websites out there that walk you through the steps to process your canning jars safely and with minimal risk for spoilage.  Some of my favorite are:

USDA Home Preserving website

The Ball Book of Canning (The canning Bible)

Signs of Spoiled Food by Live the Old Way

There are many many more and a quick Google search can find you what you are looking for.  We used the instructions that came in our box of Sure Jell Pectin for both batches but for the second batch we added a little bit of fresh squeezed lemon juice.

We wanted a “lower sugar” jam which you can do with strawberries but it still used 4 cups of sugar so don’t be fooled into thinking it is actually low in sugar, it just means you use less sugar to process it. Before you do any canning you have to make sure all of your jars, utensils and surfaces are clean and sterile.  I always wipe down the counters and put a clean dry towel down to work on.  We ran our canning jars and bands through the dish washer on the sterilize cycle.  Before we placed our lids on our jars we put them into the boiling water for a few minutes to warm up the seals and kill any germs on them.  We used the Kerr brand wide mouth jars and lids but any of the brands are fine.  We just got a good deal on them so that is what we use.

The first thing we did was measure out and crush our strawberries.  For the first batch we used a potato masher for chunky jam and the second batch we used an immersion blender to make a smoother jam.

Then we measured out our sugar and spit it into two bowls and added the pectin to one.

Next we put our crushed strawberries into a pot and added the first batch of sugar/pectin.

We stirred that up and brought it to a boil.

Then we added our second batch of sugar and brought it to a rolling boil again for one minute.

Then we quickly poured it into our jars, leaving about 1/4 inch of head space.  We used a Ball canning kit similar to this one I found at our local grocery store to make sure we had the correct amount of head space in the jars.

Yum! Chunky strawberry jam. We opted not to skim the foam off but many people like to do that so that their jars look prettier.  We won’t be giving a lot of it away so for us it wasn’t a big deal.

Next we wiped the jars clean with a paper towel so that they would seal correctly.

Then we used the little magnet thing to put the lids on the jars without touching them and screwed on our bands to finger tight.

Next we made sure the water in our canning pot was fully boiling and then we added our jars, brought it to a boil again and left them in there for 10 minutes.

This year I broke down and bought the special tongs for pulling the jars out of the water and let me tell you they are amazing.  I don’t know how we went without for so long. They make it so much easier and I wasn’t worried at all about the jars slipping so if you only buy one canning tool I highly recommend the jar grabbing tongs.

After our jars were processed we put them on another clean towel to cool.  We check them the next morning and only one of ours did not seal so we will be eating it this week.  I am not complaining, our jam turned out delicious!

We had a great time with our strawberries this week and I feel much better about eating our own jam rather than buying some in the store that may or may not have high fructose corn syrup.  I am already thinking ahead to raspberry season in July and how much raspberry jam I will be eating. Raspberry is my favorite and Costco has been out for months.  I fully plan on canning a bunch of raspberry so that we don’t run out this year!

What types of jam are you making this season?

Links to Products Used:

Ball Canning Guide

Canning kit similar to the one we have

Sure Jell Pectin

Ball Regular Mouth Jars

Strawberry Jam by Sure Jell

June 17, 2017

Servings: 8 cups

Prep: 20 min

Cook: 60 min

Total: 80 min

Difficulty: Medium

Print This

Make your own strawberry jam!

By: Oscoey

Ingredients

• 12 cups whole strawberries (6 cups crushed)
• 4 cups sugar
• 1 package Sure Jell Low Sugar Pectin

Directions

• Step 1 Use a dry measuring cup to measure exactly 12 cups of strawberries with the tops cut off.
• Step 2 Measure exactly 4 cups of sugar into a bowl.
• Step 3 Combine 1/4 cup of the sugar from the bowl with 1 package of Pectin in a small bowl.
• Step 4 Crush your strawberries and measure out 6 cups of crushed strawberries into a pot.
• Step 5 Add your sugar/pectin mixture and bring to a full boil on high heat, stirring constantly.
• Step 6 Stir in remaining sugar and return to a full boil. Boil exactly 1 minute, stirring constantly.
• Step 7 Remove from heat and skim off foam with a metal spoon if desired.
• Step 8 Immediately pour into prepared jars, filling within 1/4 inch from the top.
• Step 9 Wipe jar rims and threads, cover with lids and screw bands tightly.
• Step 10 Place jars into boiling water making sure they are covered with 1-2 inches of water.
• Step 11 Process for 10 minutes or adjust time based on Altitude.
• Step 12 After the jars are processed remove from the water and place on clean towels. Check the seals after the jars have cooled down.
• Step 13 Let jars stand at room temperature for 24 hours before storing in a cool dry place for up to a year.

This site participates in affiliate links and receives a small fee for affiliate recommendations at no cost to you. As always we only recommend products we have tried ourselves. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Products Used:

Ball Canning Guide

Canning kit similar to the one we have

Sure Jell Pectin

Ball Regular Mouth Jars