Fig Jam

Our brown turkey fig tree started to produce so many figs in the summer of 2011 that the birds and squirrels couldn't eat them fast enough, so we started picking figs every day during late July and early August. Of course we ate a lot of fresh figs either right off the tree or with half-and-half, yogurt, or kefir.

Here are some ways we depleted our supply of figs. The first was to replace figs for apples in our Apple Crisp recipe, which is on this "Recipes Page." The only changes to make are to squeeze a lemon onto the figs and to use about 1/2 the amount of sugar that is in the Apple Crisp recipe. We used about 1 lb. (30) of our brown turkey figs for one crisp.

The other way to use a lot of figs is to cook them down into fig jam. There are a number of recipes out there on the Internet. The one we have here works very well and freezes. So we spent a lot of afternoons cooking down fig jam and freezing it for the nasty, up-coming winter months.

• 1/4 c sugar (could go up to 1/2 c if you want it really sweet)
• juice of one lemon
• 1/4 tsp. each of ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and ground ginger
• 1 lb. of figs (about 30 brown turkey figs) cut into quarters
• note that a lot of recipes online call for pectin, but that is not needed

Mix the ingredients in a 2 qt. or larger sauce pan, and cook on medium heat (maybe lower if the burners on your stove are hot) while stirring occassionally to keep it from sticking. If you don't like the large bits, smash them with a potato masher. When the jam is as thick as you want it, put some in a dish for the refrigerator to use right away on ice cream, to be mixed with yogurt, or on toast (great with peanut butter, but not for Sam!). The rest can be frozen.

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