Sunday, June 27, 2010

Cooking

I love cooking. I really do. The problem is, I am far more in love with the satisfaction that comes with making something from scratch than I am with pouring time and grocery trips into making things from scratch. Luckily, I've figured out recently that I'm not alone in this.

Anyway, the point is that I made really easy cherry jam! After a trip to the farmer's market this week, where fruits and veggies are wonderfully cheap, we ended up with a couple cups of cherries starting to get mushy. A few Google search results later, I land over at David Lebovitz's blog and this no-recipe cherry jam "recipe". You can use as many cherries and you're willing to pit, stir them around while they soften in a pot with lemon zest and juice (I used the zest of one full lemon and the juice of half a lemon.) Once they're totally soft and mushy, add 3/4 of the amount of cherries you have (I had about one cup of cherries so I added 3/4 cup of sugar,) and stir and stir while being very careful not to burn the jam.

I totally recommend making this jam. I've wanted to make jam before, but I really didn't want to go through the whole process and making so many jars that I'd never get to and that powder stuff. Since this recipe hardly takes any time at all (I finished in less than 45 minutes, including time spent pitting the cherries,) you can make as little as you want, and there are only three ingredients. It's perfect. It's perfect without being snobby.

Here's a picture of my jam while cooking:


After letting it cool to room temperature then storing it in the fridge overnight, I had to have some (with crackers) this morning. It's so delicious, and the lemon zest really goes perfectly with the cherries. In fact, I'd like to make some more with lemon and orange zest. Yum (Oh, and my camera is dying, I guess. All the pictures are turning out really overexposed with horizontal lines...?):


I'm really trying to diversify try really simple but delicious recipes, and I'm going to try to add in a little more of this into the blog mix.

Happy Sunday!

3 comments:

Lucy said...

Love it!

Sarah said...

wow, good for you! I'm a terrible cook, tried jam once but burnt it?!! well yours looks lovely! xxx

lu said...

oh my, this looks..DELICIOUS. i'm not a cook. nor do i like cooking. and i hate the grocery store. my poor boyfriend gets stuck with it all!! haha. but i DO like baking--because i like eating that more--so maybe i should really get more into it! any scrumptious dessert recipes?