Monday, May 9, 2011

Sheep and Wool Festival

This past weekend was the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and as luck would have it, it was also Mother's Day weekend! Consequently, early Saturday morning, I took the bus back to Maryland. My mom picked me up and we went to the festival. As always, it was a lot of fun and this year we managed to not buy out the entire festival's selection of fiber. I spent more time looking at pottery this year, than fiber, but I did still manage to buy some natural wool which was in the grease from a buyer that I've purchased from before.


I also went a little crazy with buying jams and preserves...Jams, jellies and preserves are a bit of a weakness of mine. I love buying homemade (or, artisanal, as I like to call it) specialty jams. I ended up taking home 12 cans...keep in mind however, that 3 were jams my mom had made a while back (I'm helping her to take them off her hands) and 3 were some we made this weekend (Strawberry Jalepeno Jam). That being said, however, I did buy 3 from The Lion Potter- Old Timey Apple Butter, Hot Pepper Jelly and Raspberry Amaretto Jam (so far I've only tried the Raspberry, which is amazing). I also ended up buying a Juice Sweetened Peach Jam at a stand at the side of the road along with a Honey French Salad Dressing.

As mentioned previously, we made Strawberry Jalepeno Jam this weekend. I've never done canning before and figured it would be best to attempt it with my mom first. While my mom isn't so hot on the jalepenos, I think it's awesome- just the right amount of kick for a sweet strawberry jam. The canning went well without any issues and it turned out outstanding (in my opinion).


After lugging a huge, heavy piece of luggage home (after a bus that was supposed to arrive at 9pm showed up at 9:55), all jars arrived safely, and now it's just a matter of finding places to store them! Time to do some apartment cleaning/reorganizing...

No comments:

Post a Comment