July 28, 2011

Fireweed Jelly

Did you see the picture in our last post of that field of "flowers" in front of the glacier?  Yeah, well those are actually weeds known as fireweed:
 (these would look lovely against the bank of a canal or something. *cough*Laura*cough*)
So for family home evening, we set out to get ourselves a bunch to make fireweed jelly with the Mcdonalds and the Allreds.
I guess to make the jelly you have to get the blossoms within the first two weeks of blossoming.  So as you can see above, you just take the blossoms that are fully bloomed and we got about 8 cups worth to make 6 jars of jelly.
 There were 4 batches being made, so Celsea graciously got everything measured and set out for us when we returned home to start the jelly making!

 First, we boiled the 8 c. of blossoms in water with 1/4 c. lemon juice.
While you're waiting for it to boil, you should grab the cutest baby around and make her giggle a lot :)

 Then we strained the juice through some cheesecloth (which I was very happy about because we had some little bugs that crept into our ziploc bags with the flower blossoms, yuck.)
(look how cool that mixing bowl is - it has cup measurements along the inside of the bowl! sorry it's fuzzy)

Then you must boil the juice in a lime green pot because looks really cool with the bright pink bubbly concoction we have going on right here (the lighting for this is horrible, but trust me - it turns like a hot pink color!)


 After some sugar goes into the mix, it's ready to go in the jars and seal up!  As you can see (besides this pic) I mostly just went around taking pictures while Devin did all the work.  Since we were making four batches, one right after the other, timing for everything was KEY and Devin worked it like a pro :)  Here are some award winning shots of his mad skills:


 haha, the end.
p.s. if you want us to bring you back some packets of seeds for Fireweed so you can grow some, let us know - it's so pretty!
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2 comments:

  1. My daughter is a domestic goddess!

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  2. haha oh please. It's not like I walked past the fireweed and thought, "I should make jelly out of that". I really didn't even doing anything except fill the jars, Devin did most of it :)

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