Snowstorm Canning

So, there's this big snowstorm coming today. Everyone in town is at the hardware store getting ice melt and shovels. I buy canning jars. At the grocery store, milk and bread are flying off the shelves. Me? I'm buying Certo liquid pectin, sugar, and looking for lemon grass (which I didn't find). The grocery store clerk must think I'm crazy!

So, what was I working on? "Zesty Watermelon Jelly" from this book:


which is where I get a lot of my recipes. I never got the lemon grass, and discovered that my dried lemon grass was just too old. It smelled like nothing at all. So I skipped it. The only other problem was that the vinegar I had in the house was cider vinegar, so it changed the color of the watermelon juice from a pretty pink to an amber color. Otherwise, all went smoothly, and I even got my 3 year old to help pour the liquids into the pot.




Here's the jars resting before I pull them out of the boiling water canner.





As you can see, the finished product is a peachy-amber color. It's an interesting flavor due to the vinegar. I've been dabbling in jams with hot peppers but this is the first jam I've made with vinegar in it. Hmm...