Sunday, June 26, 2011

Strawberry Jam!

Last year I didn't make strawberry freezer jam because we still had a bunch in the freezer. And with fewer people living at home we just weren't going through it as fast as we used to. But we ran out of jam about a month before the strawberries were ready here. Lauren said that we could NEVER run out of strawberry jam again.

Making strawberry jam takes almost a whole day. We left at 8:15 am to go to the berry farm and pick our 12 quarts of strawberries. Yes, it was hot and muggy, and the berries were tiny. The farm worker said that they'd had a lot of people pick the day before and they'd gotten all the big berries, so that made it take a little longer than normal. That and the fact that we were down to just Lauren and I doing the picking. Then we had to go buy the sugar and pectin. Then it was home to cut up, mash, and make the strawberry jam. We made ten batches of jam. In the middle of making it Lauren had to leave to take a Regents exam so it took me a little longer to finish since I was working alone.

When Lauren got home from her exam around 2:30 pm she started helping again and we got done around 4:00 pm. On the counter you can see some of our 30+ jars of strawberry freezer jam. Justin happened to be here interviewing for a job, so we sent a couple jars back with him. One for them and one for Brett. It's truly a labor of love - of strawberry jam love, that is. Nothing tastes better!

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