So finally, the story of the strawberry jam! It was a great little Sunday afternoon. We headed to the farm and picked ourselves 6 baskets of strawberries - we figured, hey if we are already there we should just go ahead and get all we can, right? While we were there we also got some broccoli (of the pick your own variety as well), and some delicious local honey. Then headed home to rinse them off.
Then onto the real fun! The first thing we learned was that jam takes A LOT of sugar! One of the 3 trips to the grocery store during the jam making process was for more of it. The other trips were for more jars seeing as how we underestimated how much jam we could make with an hour worth of strawberry picking.
The amazing thing is once you chop the strawberries, mix it with some sugar and 'Sure-Jell' (which provides the jelly-ness of the whole deal), all you've got to do is put it in some jars and seal them up. The actual sealing process involves a whole lot o' steam - we both felt like we had facials after the whole deal.
Between Nicole's food processor and the jars and canning materials my mom brought me, we were actually quite well prepared for the whole deal. The one thing we were missing was the tong things you use to pull up jars with. So it was necessary to improvise...pliers were the only thing that we came up with so pliers it was.
It was not pretty, or efficient...or extremely safe...but it worked.
Other than a whole lot of jars of jam, we were left with a sweet mess! With two people, it was a bit better though...
...and once it was done we had a nice little celebration of strawberry-ness! Delicious!
Then onto the real fun! The first thing we learned was that jam takes A LOT of sugar! One of the 3 trips to the grocery store during the jam making process was for more of it. The other trips were for more jars seeing as how we underestimated how much jam we could make with an hour worth of strawberry picking.
The amazing thing is once you chop the strawberries, mix it with some sugar and 'Sure-Jell' (which provides the jelly-ness of the whole deal), all you've got to do is put it in some jars and seal them up. The actual sealing process involves a whole lot o' steam - we both felt like we had facials after the whole deal.
Between Nicole's food processor and the jars and canning materials my mom brought me, we were actually quite well prepared for the whole deal. The one thing we were missing was the tong things you use to pull up jars with. So it was necessary to improvise...pliers were the only thing that we came up with so pliers it was.
It was not pretty, or efficient...or extremely safe...but it worked.
Other than a whole lot of jars of jam, we were left with a sweet mess! With two people, it was a bit better though...
...and once it was done we had a nice little celebration of strawberry-ness! Delicious!
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