I be jammin’

Ok. It’s been a while. I have been active in my garden and will do my best in the next few weeks to bring you up to speed on my projects. I’m hoping to have my sons Caleb and Koehler take over some of the editorial duties so that I can concentrate on being grumpy. Anyhoo, here is what I was working on this weekend:

Saturday morning I went over to my parent’s house to help pick strawberries and cherries. My mom, my sister-in-law, Val and I picked strawberries. We ended up with about 20 or so quarts.

Lots of Strawberries!

Now I know what it means to “cherry pick.”

Later, we picked cherries off the cherry trees (with the help of my niece and nephew). We ended up with about two big bowls.  Unfortunately, I broke one of the large branches of one of the trees and we’ll need to put in a pin to keep it from breaking off.

My Dad and my nephew Boris pitted the cherries outside on the picnic table. Inside, my brother Adam and I stemmed the strawberries and my Mom sliced them.

After splitting the booty, I ended up with two tubs of cherries and 5 quarts of sliced strawberries. I mentioned to my mother that I wanted to make some jam and she suggested making freezer jam. She said it was much easier than making cooked jam and tasted just as good. I froze the cherries for a later date and decided to make strawberry jam my Sunday project.

After church on Sunday, I went to Menards to pick up pectin and jars. To my wonderful surprise, they wonderful surprise, Ball freezer jars were on clearance. I picked up some half pint and pint containers on the cheap. I was planning to use glass, but this would be better for the freezer since I would have to worry about it falling out of the freezer and shattering.

I decided that I was going to make a double batch since I had an abundance of sliced strawberries. The recipe called for 2 cups (4 cups) of mashed strawberries, 2 tbsp (4 tbsp) lemon juice and 4 cups (8 cups) of sugar. My mom recommended not using that much sugar because it was too sweet.

I cut back to about 6-7 cups of sugar. Which I think, by the way, is way too much sugar. I’m going to look for some recipes that have more fruit and less sugar. When you think about it, it has twice as much sugar as fruit. That is kind of crazy. I know that is how it is supposed to be made, but it bothers me nonetheless.

Mash them’ berries!

A little lemon juice.

Mix lemon juice with mashed berries.

SUGAR!

So you mash up the strawberries, mix in the lemon juice and add the sugar. Mix well and let stand for 10 minutes. (I put it aside thinking that the next step would take longer, but it didn’t). It only ended up sitting for about nine minutes. Next time, I’ll relax and let it sit longer before I start working on the pectin).

The fruit mixture.

Next I combined 1-1/2 cups water with two packages of Fruit Pectin in a sauce pan and brought it to a full rolling boil while constantly stirring. (Ok, I didn’t CONSTANTLY stir it, but I stirred it quite a bit. I was to boil for 1 minute. I let it go a little longer and turned off the heat and kept stirring because my strawberry mixture hadn’t sat for 10 minutes. (It probably wouldn’t have made a difference, but I was trying to follow directions!)

Mixing the pectin in the water.

Cooked fruit pectin mixture.

I then added the cooked pectin mixture to the fruit mixture and stirred for about 3 minutes.

The final mixture: Strawberry Jam.

Jam ladled into the freezer jars.

Next I ladled the freezer jam into the freezer jars and left (hopefully) ½ inch headspace to allow for expansion in the freezer. I put the lids on and put them in the refrigerator to set. After 24 hours, I am supposed to put in the freezer or use. According to the recipe, it can remain in the freezer up to 1 year and will stay good in the refrigerator up to three weeks.

The final product. Not bad for a beginner!

I ended up with 10 half pints, which what the recipe promised if you doubled it. I’m hoping Beth will make some homemade bread when she gets back from Missouri so we can try it out in style!

I ended up with two remaining quarts of strawberries, which I promptly froze. I did keep out a little so I could mix them in my breakfast shake on Monday morning.

Oh, I almost forgot. I picked about a cup of strawberries from my patch, so I worked them up and used them in the jam. I figured about a ½ cup of sliced strawberries came from the Grumpy strawberry patch.

Grumpy Strawberries.

My parents are going to New York next week and we’ll have to pick strawberries next Saturday. Maybe I’ll try the cooked method next and give it away. I think that we will be hard pressed to eat all 10 freezer half-pints in a year. I’m learning that strawberries can go a long way!