Plum Canning Part 1

Last night was plum preserves night.  I picked the "old fashioned" jam from the Ball canning book, which could also be called "takes forever" jam.  It's also very hot here, so "old fashioned" meant stirring the plums over the hot oven for TWO HOURS!  Gordon and I were very hot and tired by the time the spoon test sort of worked.  We liked the plate test better.  I have a feeling we could have stirred all night and the spoon test was never going to look the way it did in the book.  But grumpy moments and near melt-downs aside, we woke up this morning to 11 1/2 jars of very lovely, perfect jam.  We opened the half jar to have on our toast, and I must say, the suffering was worth it.  

But we're not done yet!  Tomorrow we do the plum preserves.