Jam Session with Friends
Saturday I met up with two of my friends, Susan and Lynn, and we headed out to a U-pick strawberry field to begin our adventure in jam making. We picked about 30 pounds of strawberries, which amazingly only took us about 30 minutes. My hamstrings are still killing me! The strawberries were in good supply considering the high amounts of rain we have had. The mud in between the rows of strawberries was also in attendance...slurp.
We departed the strawberry fields with our bounty, along with homemade strawberry ice cream and 2 strawberry fried pies. (good thing I weighed in at Weight Watchers earlier that morning - and thank goodness for extra weekly points!) Back at Susan's house, we spent the next six hours tempering the glass jars, washing, cutting, mashing, boiling, pouring, and sealing our jam. We made basic strawberry jam, strawberry/jalapeno, and christmas jam (strawberry/cranberry). We made about 60, 1/2 pint jars in total - which we split between the three of us. Guess what everyone is getting for birthdays, Christmas, and every holiday in between????
The husbands and children joined us that evening for pizza, wine, and good, but exhausted company. I cannot even imagine incorporating canning into my daily routine - my hat goes off to previous generations!
I am so thankful to my adventurous friends who teach me new things daily. What a great time we had! We have decided to do a project like this once a season - end of summer may be canned tomatoes, salsa or pickled okra. YUM!!!
As for strawberries....I think my love for them is done for a season...today I bought a watermelon for dinner instead!
Here are some picture of our fun day!
We caught Susan off guard and made her take a picture with the jam after we had started to highlight her hair....thus the silly looking bonnet on her head!
No comments:
Post a Comment