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Most jam isn't worth its salt without sugar

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By MARY A. KEITH

Tribune correspondent

Published: June 21, 2009

I have two recipes for pina colada jam. They sound delicious, but they are so different I wonder if they're both possible. One has added sugar, the other does not. One puts the pectin in first, the other adds it last. Do you have any suggestions?

The pectin differences are easy to explain. Powdered pectin is always added first, to the juice or fruit, and brought to a boil. Then the sugar is added to the boiling fruit. With liquid pectin, the sugar and fruit are brought to a boil first, then the liquid pectin is added. If you add them in the wrong order the pectin will not gel.

As for the sugar, I suspect that recipe is incomplete. Unless you use one of the specially purified pectins that does not require sugar, I don't think that recipe will gel. Pectin requires a fairly exact amount of sugar to set, and the canned pineapple in your recipe won't add nearly enough. Use the other recipe.

Even without hurricanes, I've all ready had two power outages! What can I keep and what do I have to throw away from the refrigerator? What about the freezer? So far the power's been off little enough that nothing thawed out, but I'm sure that will happen, too.

This is a whole page handout, but here's a very short version.

In the freezer:

If it still has ice crystals in it, you can refreeze it.

Meat, chicken, veggies: If they're as cold as a refrigerator, you can cook them and freeze as leftovers.

Ice cream, mixed and egg dishes, frozen meals: If they're soft, pitch them.

Refrigerator:

Condiments such as mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, etc., can all be kept.

Milk, mixed dishes, lunch meats, leftovers: throw them away.

The best thing to do is call and we can go over your specific situation. There's a fact sheet on my Web site, http://hills boroughnutrition.ifas.ufl.edu.

Mary A. Keith, a nutritionist and health agent at Hillsborough County Extension, can be reached at (813) 744-5519 or mkeith@ufl.edu.

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