To Much Or Not Enough

So my first canning "experience" was a bust. The Huckleberry likes pears and I was feeling adventurous, so I took myself down the canning isle at Wal-Mart to see what they had to offer. The pickings were slim; this may have been my first mistake because "canning season" was over. Anyway, I got a case of half-pint jars (Mason of course), a canning discovery kit, a giant pot, and since they were out of Sure, I decided to go with a flex-batch pectin rather than the single dose I was looking for. Needless to say, I ended up making something resembling more of a pear syrup than a jam.

No worries though, I was so excited and determined to become a master canner I bought way more fruit than I needed, so I just started a new batch. The only problem was I used the same flex-batch pectin. I managed to convince myself that I measure the wrong amount the first time around, therefore proper reasoning said to add a little extra for good measure. Wrong! This batch, while having more of a jam appearance, set up so thick that it was hard to spread once it was refrigerated.

Moral of the story: Laugh at the mistakes made during creation processes, learn from them, keep trying, and just buy the boxes of pre-measured pectin.