Saw this great looking tutorial/recipe on Microwave Jam over at Simply Recipes. I had no idea you could make your own jam that easily!! This is great for me since I’d prefer to make small batches since I never eat a lot of jam at any given time. I just have a craving once in awhile for a slice of toast with jam, etc. I can’t wait to try making some. After looking for other recipes since I don’t usually have figs lying around, I discovered that homemade jams use a LOT of sugar…more than 1 cups worth for a small amount!! So I was on the hunt for some low sugar or sugar-free jams. Here are a few recipes!

Low-Sugar Refrigerator Strawberry Jam

Recipe By :Net
Serving Size : 32 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Fruit Low-Cal
Low-Fat Preserves

Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
——– ———— ——————————–
1 quart strawberries — Sliced
1 envelope veggie gelatin powder, unsweetened
1/3 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Water
2 tablespoons Lemon juice

1. In a medium saucepan, combine strawberries, sugar and lemon juice.
Heat 5 minutes, crushing the berries slightly. Bring to a boil; boll
rapidly, stirring constantly, 3 minutes.

2. In a small bowl, sprinkle unflavored gelatin over cold water. Let
stand 1 minute. Add to strawberry mixture and heat, stirring until gelatin
is completely dissolved, about 3 minutes.

3. Let jam stand 5 minutes, skiing off foam with a spoon. Ladle into
jars. Cover and cool slightly before storing in the refrigerator for
several weeks or in the freezer for longer storage.

No Sugar Blueberry Jam

Recipe By :Net
Serving Size : 1 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Fruit Low-Cal
Low-Fat Preserves

Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method
——– ———— ——————————–
1 Envelope veggie gelatin powder, unsweetened
6 Ounces apple juice, frozen concentrate — thawed
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
5 Pints fresh blueberries

Place half the juice concentrate in a small pan or microwave dish.
Sprinkle gelatin on top and let soften, about 1 minute.

Combine remaining juice concentrate with lemon juice.

Puree blueberries, a pint or so at a time, in food processor or blender.

When gelatin is soft, heat gently until melted.

Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Spoon into sterilized jars.

Store in refrigerator or freezer. Keep refrigerated.

Everyone’s doing it so I thought I might share with you my “current faves”.

Eating: Honey’s Kettle Fried Chicken

Hands down the best fried chicken I have EVER had. If you are a fan of fried chicken, this is a must try. Their biscuits are to die for as well!

Watching: The Office

Thanks to my roomie who got the dvd set for my bday i’ve been enjoying pam and jim goodness! Love it!

Reading: On The Road by Jack Kerouac

I finally got around to reading this book. It starts off kind of slow though.

Loving: Superbad

Funniest movie of the year. Yes, I’m that immature.

Not Loving: Britney’s performance at the VMAS
Watch it here. For something that was so hyped up, it was probably the most disappointing Britney VMA performance ever. It was actually hard to watch because she looked so uncomfortable to be there.

Playing: MahJong on Ijji

OMG. I am so obsessed with this game. I even got my bf and roommate addicted too. The funny thing is I am probably playing against 10 year olds but my god, they have fast little hands. My username is girlrobot and you can find me on here til the wee hours of the morn. haha.

pavarotti dies at 71 – :(
Movie Quiz by the Filmcritic – only includes movies from the last 25 years
Skippy takes first in a peanut butter taste test
Using Google Earth to find missing people – interesting concept!!!
The most and least prestigious careers – i find it weird that athlete is ranked one of the lowest. farmers are ranked higher than engineers!
Cool gmail video – all made from user submissions
Gwyneth Paltrow to appear on Mario Batali’s food network show touring italy – interesting combo
Back to school with these awesome star wars bookcovers – i remember just using old brown paper grocery bags!

Not only does Ikea sell really cute looking furniture they also sell the most ADDICTING candy ever. I swear, I could eat the whole bag if my guilt didn’t stop me. I know, most of you didn’t even know Ikea sold snacks let alone the best candy ever! Here it is:

BILAR CHEWY CARS

These light, chewy “cars” are HEAVEN. They are not too sweet so that’s why I think I keep eating them. It’s like you aren’t eating anything. Everyone I know who has tried it thinks they are pretty good too. So next time you are shopping at Ikea, pick up a bag of these chewy cars…they are just a few bucks. They are definitely worth a try. MMMMM.

Now that we’ve fully integrated into a 9/80 schedule at work (we work 9 hours a day and get every other friday off), I’ve found even less time to exercise. Ok ok, I wasn’t exercising much even before we made the switch haha. But in my newfound zest for exercise, I’ve started climbing stairs at work every single day. I take a 5-10 minute brisk walk to the highest building on campus, walk up 10 flights of stairs, and then cool down with the walk back. The whole process takes 20-30 mins which is nothing really but it’s better than nothing for a person who does ZERO exercise normally. It’s quite sad actually! After I’m able to climb the 10 floors without stopping (I get really out of breath after the 6-7th floor I’m a wimp!), I will try walking the 10 floors twice and keep increasing thereafter. Maybe after a year of this I can attack Half Dome? We’ll see haha.

Some benefits of stair climbing
– works the leg muscles in particular the quadriceps (front of the thigh) and your butt
– intense activity for the heart and leg muscles because you are carrying your body weight against gravity
– low impact and safe for the knee joints so long as you follow the guidelines of not doing too much too soon and you do not have any existing knee problems that may be aggravated. Walking down is harder on your knees so it’s advised to take the elevator down and only climb up which is what I do
– you can burn an avg of 300 calories for 30 minutes of stair climbing

I find that it’s an easy way to get some type of “fitness” in in my busy schedule and I like having an afternoon break everyday!

Websites like l8r and futureme allow you to write emails to yourself or others that are sent at a predetermined future date. This is a cool tool to use to write yourself a letter. Do you ever read old stuff that you’ve written after a long time has passed, like in your old blogs? To me, it almost sounds like a different person. It’s amazing how when you read things that you’ve written in the past that it suddenly hits you how much things have changed.

Yesterday, I turned 28…soo old!!! (Btw, thanks for all of the well wishes!) I think I might write myself a letter of goals, thoughts, and self evaluation for my future 33 year old self. Just enough time for me to forget that I wrote it and allowing a lot of things to have happened as I hope to get a lot accomplished in the next 5 years…perhaps get married, buy a house, have or think of having kids? Will any or all of those happen in 5 years? I’m anxious for the future but also so contented at my current situation that I’m afraid of change. But I’m one of those roll with the punches type gals and I can’t wait for what the new year brings me! Life would be boring without changes right? Bring it on.

Free chicken and a coke – chikfila promotion
First suicide at Burning Man – friends thought it was a performance
crocaccidents.com – the world’s ugliest shoes are also dangerous….why is everyone wearing them again??? (btw, the pics on that page are gross…so beware!!)
David Letterman to appear on Oprah – for the first time ever since their on going feud!
Free Smashbox makeup at Nordstrom’s
Little league players caught spitting in hands before shaking – what a bunch of sore losers!
New Busted Tees shirt making fun of Miss S. Carolina – If you don’t know what this is, watch the video. it’s pretty much the funniest thing ever. If that link doesn’t work, try Youtube.

There’s a big sale going on at everybody’s favorite tshirt shop right now, Threadless. Shipping is very low, just a couple of bucks. I think it was 5 bucks for the 2 shirts I got:

Nerds 4 Ever

Bad Apple

I seriously debated getting this tshirt but I didn’t get it :( (Isn’t it perfect for me?? haha)

And I REALLY wanted this tshirt but they were sold out of my size. BOOOOO!

Stupid Cupid

These cassette items are so nostalgic:

Cute gift alert!!! How cool would it be to make a mix tape on this cassette usb drive!!! Now you don’t need a tape player to play it, you can just plug it straight into your computer.

And this cool mp3 player looks like a cassette tape! Ahhh, I’m itching to make a mix tape now.

So I finally decided to try out Anywhere.FM. In case you haven’t heard of this website, it lets you upload your whole music library so that you can listen to it ANYWHERE on an Itunes-like player! I love the concept. I uploaded about 50 mp3s tonight (which took a few hours for me and my slow DSL). For people who are always connected, I think this is a great way to listen to your music at home or work or even your friend’s house. The whole process was painless and signup was a BREEZE. They didn’t even ask me for my email address or any type of information! BTW, if you’d like to listen to my music my username is girlrobot. Yes, you can listen to other people’s music but the only catch is you can’t pick what you listen to….it’s just a random shuffle of their playlist. Still pretty cool!

The service is free for now and I really wonder how they are making enough money to support the bandwidth for this but we’ll see.

PS. while you’re adding me to this, add me to your Facebook (my email is halfasleep and I use gmail!).