In a jam and the making thereof

I always marvel at those little old ladies and their canning, they are so dedicated and fastidious and patient, none of which I am possessed.  Then I look at the economics and logistics of doing likewise myself, but as I don't have a vegetable garden, am not overly fond of most vegetables, and have no knowledge or equipment concerning the process, it really doesn't make much sense.  So I continue to gaze in wonder at their carefully stored, beautiful jars or jam and preserves, sauce and so forth, but never give into the affectation myself.  Then I saw the peaches.

My mother once made a peach freezer jam and it was delicious, and as it was kept in the freezer until needed, there was no canning necessary.  So I bought a half dozen of those beautiful peaches and thought I would give it a try.  Having neither knowledge nor pectin is a very dangerous thing, but that's what google is for, right?  I found a site that seemed to offer the ideal solution and there was no peeling involved (even better!), so I gave it a try.  They did mention not buying your fruit at the grocery store, but as I already owned the fruit, it was a little late, besides, they were so pretty, what could go wrong?

I followed the recipe on the site, save that I pureed the peaches before I began the process, and it was something of a disaster and the result tasted only of lemons.  Grocery store peaches indeed!

I tried again, with some mushy, ugly, half moldy fruit someone at church gave me, which at their prime had been beautiful, juicy, sweet things but now looked as if they should be moldering on the compost pile.  I did the exact same thing, except there was no peel in this batch as it was too nasty to include.  I'm not sure if the peel makes that much of a difference in cooking the jam, but it was a much milder boil this time around without molten droplets of sticky peach ooze spattering all over everything, including the stirrer.  Ugly or not, they were very nice peaches, as was the resulting jam.  So there you have it, how not to make jam like a professional.