Homemade raspberry jam

I haven’t bought jam for quite a while.  Why?  I like to know what goes into the food I consume.  Not only do I like to control the amount of sugar and know what goes into my food, I also like to support local farmers by shopping at my local farmer’s market.  And have I told you it only takes 2 ingredients to make jam?

Ingredients:

1.5 cups of fresh raspberries (you can also use frozen ones too)

¾ to 1 cup of organic sugar, depending on how sweet you like it

1 small lemon

Steps:

• Heat up your raspberries in medium heat. Use a potato masher to mash up the raspberries.

• Once the raspberries are mashed up, boil over medium-low heat for an additional 1 minute. Keep mashing and stirring the raspberries so it won’t stick to the bottom.

• Slowly pour in the sugar. Continue to mash and stir the solution.

• Turn the heat down to simmer, and be diligent in stirring the soon-to-be-jam for an additional 7 minutes.

• Cut the quarter top off the lemon and squeeze the juice of that quarter lemon to the jam, stir well

• Bottle your raspberry jam.

Note: As the jam cools, it will settle and thicken even more.  So, do not continue to boil it thinking it’s too liquidy.  I made that mistake once; the jam was so hard at the end that it’s practically not usable (still edible, but it’s not appetizing).