Cheap Jelly

Fruit is expensive, but there are some cheaper ways to make delicious jelly and those ways are probably all around your yard. Typically we like them for their beauty or look at them as weeds, but edible flowers abound and cut out part of the jelly making cost. Yes you can make rose petal jelly, clover jelly, honeysuckle and dandelion jelly. In the fall you can harvest rose hips and make rose hip jelly which is full of vitamin C, even more than an orange. Domestic flowers like pansies are edible also and make a beautiful jelly. Make sure your flowers are edible and then pick them. The smellier they are the better the jelly. Then you boil the flower petals in about 4 to 5 cups of water. Then let it sit and cool overnight. After it sits, strain out the petals and bring the water back up to a boil adding about 4 cups of sugar and 1/4 cup lemon juice. Then add your box of pectin and bring to a rolling boil keeping it there until you get to the gel stage. Then jar up your jelly and process in a water bath for 20 minutes. Yummy and beautiful too. Can't get any cheaper than that for jelly and it really stretches your fruit jelly and jam supplies, therefore stretching the budget. Blessings, Kat