Crocus in Bloom

Our neighbor's crocus are always among the very first crocus I see in bloom every early spring. By early February his garden is full of them. I was surprised today, out on a walk in the sunny afternoon, to see clusters of crocus in full bloom. We really have had a warm December, but it's still only December 30th!

I stood around and waited a few moments, and sure enough, a couple honeybees stopped by to collect pollen. While the honeybee was visiting some sort of fly was also hanging out on a flower.

Vanilla Pear Jam

After the family ate their fill of pears, I still had several sitting on the counter from a recent Costco run getting riper and riper by the hour. A little too soft to slice and eat out of hand, they were fine for jam. I followed the recipe on the Food in Jars blog .

The last time I had made jam, I used the requisite amount of pectin and cooked it at a hard boil for a bit too long, resulting in a tasty jam, but with a consistency that was way too hard. This time, I didn't use quite as much pectin and the result is a pretty thin jam. I was hoping to serve this pear jam with cheese and crackers, but I think it's more suited to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pancake topping.

The ingredients: pears, sugar, vanilla beans. Vanilla beans are super expensive. I think a little bottle holding two beans are about $12 at the local Harris Teeter. I bought a package of 30 beans on eBay for about that same price. They aren't quite as plump as the ones in the store, but they are absolutely fine and the price is right.

Mashing everything up...

The finished product...