Blueberry Jalapeno Jam for the Fridge

I picture myself in my own little house on the prairie, making a larder full of pickles and preserves. What actually happens is I buy fruit and vegetables and they mummify in the back of my fridge unless I have a very specific recipe in mind.

That is nearly what happened this week. I bought a pound of blueberries on Thursday, and accidentally left them home instead of bringing them when I went away for the weekend. So I came home to a bunch of blueberries and three nectarines on their last legs. I had a handful of berries with my yogurt for breakfast, but I decided I needed to act fast or lose these berries.

I looked at some small batch blueberry jams, including this one from Food in Jars and this one from Local Kitchen Blog. I love Marissa's small scale, but I didn't have any ginger. I did, however, have half a jalapeno left from some recent cooking.

I followed Marisa's sugar to berry ratio from the ginger jam and took some advice from Local Kitchen about ingredients. Here's how it went down:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of blueberries, rinsed and picked over (2 cups once mashed)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 large jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Mash the berries, pour in a saucepan. I guess you could mash them in the saucepan, but then how would you know how much you had?
2. Add sugar, pepper, lemon juice and cinnamon.
3. Heat over medium heat for 20 minutes or so until it is thick (if I knew what I was talking about I would tell you something about degrees or the plate test, but I don't, so I just pretended). Please feel free to refer to the recipes I mentioned for the science-y stuff.
4. Pour into jars. I got about 2 half pints (but I only had one half pint jar so I had to put the rest in a (very clean) salsa jar I had in the cabinet. (Yay for nested parentheses!)). Store in the fridge.

It's good. It isn't spicy, probably because the pepper was surprisingly mild, but it has a bit of a pepper smell/flavor. It is sort of...lip-warming. It's going to be awesome on buttered bread, or cornbread. I'm also thinking maybe about quesadillas with sharp cheddar and this jam, since I read this blueberry cheddar dip recipe. I can't wait!