Strawberry Jam

Wednesday, 04 June 2008

Matt's favorite treat? His mom's strawberry jam. Jean's jam is so delicious, and Matt eats it like it's going out of style! Seriously, Matt can load up a piece of toast like none other. Well, instead of mooching off Jean's supply any longer, we decided to pick strawberries and attempt making our own jam. On Saturday (5/31), we headed out to Blueberry Hill in Cobden to pick strawberries. It was about 80 degrees at 9:30am and the sweat was just dripping off my nose, but we picked until we had 2 flats! Luckily, it only took about 40 minutes.

I guess we could have bought the berries that were already picked, but what's the fun in that? After we got done, I actually had to go to work, which means that Matt cleaned and cut all those strawberries by himself. He said that it took an hour and a half!

Matt's hard work! He was pretty anxious to make the jam and wanted to get started the minute I got home from work. Sooo....

Matt did most of the mashing while I prepared the sugar/pectin mixture. We did have quite the system going on, which is necessary when we only have about 4 square inches of counter space in our apartment. We made 4 batches of jam and still had leftover strawberries! Once we figured out what to do, it was surprisingly easy to make.

Here's a picture of the finished product. Before you say anything - and not that I could hear you anyway - we had a bit of an interesting jar situation. We had been saving jars for a while, but not a lot of food comes in jars. Rather than buying jars, we just used the ones we had - from applesauce to alfredo jars. If you look towards the back, there are a few hefty jars of jam back there. Those are big applesauce jars! Funny, huh? Normally jam comes in petite jars with nice labels. Our jam comes in monstrous applesauce jars with the leftover labels still on. No worries. It will all get eaten anyway! We already opened a jar - it's just like Jean's! Oh, and Jean's family recipe? It's for us to know and you to find out!