Tomato Jam?

My summers are filled with tomatos!  I will eat them every way I can think of.  Tomato sandwiches, BLTs (of course), caprese salads, salsa, I could go on and on.    I love them!

Usually I'm not into the sauce/ketchup/canning process every summer.  But this year I made a small batch of tomato puree to put in the freezer to use later in chili.  

Then I was inspired when I ran across this post on Wild Oak Designs for tomato ... jam?  I have had homemade ketchup and it's one of those things I'd just as soon not spend the time making it.  But tomato jam had my curiosity up!  So I clicked over to foodinjars to check it out. 

I don't have kitchen scales, so I filled a bag with what I thought was about 5 lbs of tomatos and placed it on my bathroom scales. 

Uh oh, the scales won't measure. 

So I took matters into hand, or rather took the bag into hand and stepped on the scale!  Then put the bag down and stepped on the scale again.  I will spare you those pictures.  Ha ha!

After I wore my fingers out making Cherry Limemade last month I decided to get a citrus juicer.  It works great and gets all the juice.

Add the juice and spices (the spices were the interesting part in this recipe) to the tomatos.

Bring to a boil...

...and stir

...and stir....

...and stir for a long time...for about 2 hours. 

Ugh, something that takes this long better be good.

After it's cooked down, put it into jars and do the boiling water bath thing.  This is another reason I only can every few years!

And then there's the step where I hope the lids seal.  They usually do.

After all that I can't not add a crafty, cutsey label to the lid. 

This jam has a cinnamony, spicy, ketchupy taste.  It goes great with stinky soft cheese on crackers as a appetizer or snack and I look forward to trying it on a burger or turkey sandwich.

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