This summer’s home canning season has been pretty darn excellent for a couple of reasons. First, I’m so happy to see that low sugar/no sugar pectin and pretty much every other home canning supply is becoming easier for me to find here in the urban jungle. A few years ago, I had to go on a canning supply scavenger hunt every time I needed jars or seals, and I wasn’t always successful. I’m very thankful that supplies are always readily available online, but sometimes you need something last minute, you know? Anyway, I think it’s awesome that home canning is gaining more popularity again.

I was also honored (and completely jazzed) to be asked for a second year to be a Canbassador for the Washington State Fruit Commission. They sent me an amazing box of stone fruit that I used to make much, much tasty jam. If you’re looking for great home canning recipes and tips (their Preservation 101 series will be very helpful to those of you who are just starting out), be sure to check out their site, Sweet Preservation.

This recipe was inspired by the peach raspberry cobbler that I made recently. Since I had already earmarked any peaches that I might receive for another recipe (stay tuned for that), I used nectarines and raspberries, and wow, why have I not paired these two before? This one’s definitely a keeper.

Several weeks ago, Annie from the Washington State Fruit Commission contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in receiving a basket of Washington fruit to use in my kitchen canning adventures. Well, I never pass up a chance to do a little canning, and I was thrilled about having a little Washington fruit to work with — I don’t tend to see a lot of that here in Boston.

Shortly thereafter, I received what can only be described as a huge box filled with peaches and plums. I wasted no time in getting to work as a Canbassador (hee!), and within a couple of days I had processed the luscious peaches into tasty peach butter.

The plums became a tangy plum sauce, adapted from a recipe that can be found on Sweet Preservation, the Washington State Fruit Commission’s new website, which also features tutorials on canning and preserving, ideas for throwing a canning party, and free printable canning labels and crafts, in addition to a variety of recipes. I used their free printable Fall Perfection labels by Notepourri to label my peach butter.

This was my second attempt at peach butter. My first attempt came last year and didn’t exactly turn out as I’d hoped. I think that my problem was not cooking the peaches long enough, so while the result tasted pretty good, it was very runny and not peach butter-like at all. This year, I was prepared to hang in there and continue cooking the peaches down until the mixture was thick and jam-like.

It took about 1 1/2 hours, much longer than I remember cooking the peaches in my previous attempt, and the extra time made a world of difference. This peach butter has a deep, rich flavor, enhanced by using white grape peach and apple juice concentrates as sweeteners and by a bit of ground cinnamon, which I decided to add at the last minute. The cinnamon is optional, but it gives the butter a subtle spiciness, making it the perfect addition to a warm, buttered, gluten free biscuit.

Sunbutter — the name alone just sounds friendly, doesn’t it? Actually, Sunbutter is a registered trademark, so I think that I have to call my version sunflower seed butter or something that isn’t Sunbutter.

I initially thought that I might be able to find the unsweetened version at Trader Joe’s, where lots of people on the interwebs said that the regular, sweetened type could be found, but my local Trader Joe’s only had the sugar-filled version, and I just couldn’t bring myself to pay $10+ (with shipping) per jar from the Sunbutter website. So, I picked up some roasted sunflower seeds — at around $2.99 for a pound, I think it was — and set out to make my own.

I am now a total sunflower seed butter convert. Not only was it easy to make, and much more economical to make myself, but it tastes totally yummy. If you haven’t tried sunflower seeds or sunflower seed butter before, then it’s difficult to describe the flavor. It’s kind of like peanut butter, but not really. As B said when I had him taste test my first batch, “it’s really a different kind of flavor, isn’t it?” Yes, it is, and it’s delicious with some of that sugar free jam, slathered on a banana, or just eaten with a spoon.

In addition, sunflower seed butter is rich in Vitamin E and Thiamine (B1) and is a great source of protein. It’s a great alternative to peanut butter, too!

Food canning is one of those things that seems intimidating at first, but trust me when I say that it’s not difficult at all. If anything, you’re going to find yourself obsessed with making jam, jelly, and pretty much whatever other tasty foods you can find and stuff into a canning jar. Okay, maybe that’s just me, but canning really is easy and fun once you get the hang of it, and that shouldn’t take long at all.

So, what will you need to get started? If you’re making sugar free jam, then you’ll want to pick up some no or low sugar pectin. I didn’t even realize that this existed until I spotted some when I was buying canning jars, but Ball makes a product called No Sugar Needed Pectin, which allows your jam to gel just as jams made with sugar. After I ran out of that, I purchased Pomona’s Universal Pectin, a great product that can be used in jams made with or without sugar. The Pomona’s pectin is also concentrated, so it’s very economical because you add much less product per batch. It’s also possible to make jam without pectin. Blueberry and cherry jams turn out quite well without pectin. Remember, though, that you’ll have to cook them longer to get a jam-like consistency.

For those of you out there who are urban dwellers like I am, you may have a bit more trouble finding canning supplies. I found a small selection of canning jars and lids, pectin, and a few canning tools at both Kmart and Ace Hardware. Be prepared for the cashier to give you an odd look and ask what in the world you’re buying, and watch as her expression turns to a mix of confusion and fascination as you explain that, yes, you can make your own jam at home. And please tell me that young people these days do know what home canning jars are and that this incident was a rare exception, or I will feel very disillusioned. If you aren’t prepared to go on a canning supply safari, then you’ll find plenty of places online, like Canning Pantry, that sell everything you could possibly need.

Here are the basic tools that you’ll need to can jams and jellies:

- canning jars (I like the half pint size for this type of canning)
- a water bath canner (I just use my stock pot)
- a jar lifter
- a pair of kitchen tongs
- a wide mouth jar funnel
- a ladle or large glass measuring cup
- oven mitts
- tea towels

Ball is the authority in home canning, and their site has a wealth of information about any type of canning you can imagine. They have guides for preserving different types of fruits and vegetables, how to videos, and links to sites with even more information about canning. I’ll have a brief run through of the water bath canning process below, but Ball’s site does a much better and more thorough job of explaining everything than I do.

The great thing about making jam at home is that you can customize it to your taste. Use more or less sweetener depending on which fruit you’re using and how sweet or tart you like your jam. Cook longer for a thicker jam, shorter for a thinner consistency. It’s all very flexible. The recipe posted below is simply a framework to get you started. And, if you’re making jam with regular sugar, just replace the sweetener 1:1 with sugar and use regular pectin.

I’ve been wanting to make a non-peanut nut butter for a while now. Cashew butter is still on my list of to-dos, but this time around I went with almond butter. It was so easy to make that I could kick myself for not having tried it sooner. All you need is a food processor, a few ingredients, a little bit of time, and you’ve got a yummy, healthy butter to spread on everything from toast to chicken.

Almonds are actually one of the most nutritious nuts around. They can help lower LDL cholesterol, reduce your risk of heart disease, and they contain healthy nutrients like manganese, magnesium, vitamin e, tryptophan, and more. So, while I still love peanut butter, I think that almond butter will be making more regular appearances in my diet.