We're jammin'

We're jammin' 
To think that jammin' was a thing of the past;
We're jammin' 
And I hope this jam is gonna last.

I've had that earworm stuck in my head since Saturday afternoon.

Alan's away in Scotland for a week, so the boys and I took advantage of a weekend at loose ends and traveled to my sister's house down in the Niagara Region to make some strawberry jam.

Matthew, my sister, my mom and I went to a pick your own farm and dragged home about 25 quarts of fresh berries. It's still early for berries this year and they were fairly sparse in the fields, but we picked enough to make 40 jars of jam.

We eat a lot of strawberry jam in our house.

It's a pretty simple process. First, you mash up the berries to the consistency that you like. We like our jam with some chunks of berries, but you can mash it up until there are no chunks left if you prefer a smoother, more jelly-like consistency.

 

Put the berries in a large pot on the stove and add the pectin. Bring the mixture to a boil and then add in a shocking amount of sugar (7 cups for every 4.5 cups of mashed fruit).

You bring that to a hard boil that can't be stirred down and maintain it for one minute. At this point you need to be very careful with the boiling fruit mix. A big bubble burbled up from the bottom of the pot the second batch my sister was stirring and gave her a pretty bad burn on her hand. She had to sit with her hand in a bowl of ice water and fire off directions to us.

Which, as you can imagine, she didn't enjoy one bit.

After one minute at a rolling boil, you remove the pot from the heat and let the jam cool for a few minutes. Then skim off the pink foam from the top

and pour it into mason jars that have been sterilized in the oven. I use a glass measuring cup as it's bigger and easier to handle than a ladle.

As Cal would say, easy peasy lemon squeezy!