Forty pounds of strawberries later, I have my feet propped up and my eyes are slightly glazed as they gaze at the computer screen. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The story begins on Wednesday afternoon, when Jay called me from the grocery store, announcing that strawberries had gone on sale for $1/lb--a pretty darn crazy good price. I suggested he get a bunch. He announced he already had 16 pounds in the cart. The word "jam" jumped into my head and I suggested he buy 20.
When he got home, he managed to fit all 20 pounds into the refrigerator, buying me an extra day with which to research recipes and gather supplies (in between watching four little boys for eight hours, but that's another story). Daunted by the inordinate amount of refined sugar involved in "normal" jam making--the kind my mother did (we're talking more sugar than fruit)--I scoured the internet for reliable-looking reduced-sugar recipes. I also ate a number of the strawberries fresh, and found the taste a bit weak, which is only to be expected from a grocery store.
So I settled on a strawberry-orange recipe that used honey instead of sugar, and a small amount at that. (You can see my inspiration here.) We happened to have some large oranges on hand, so I zested and juiced them for a trial batch of jam last night.
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| Seriously, these oranges were the size of grapefruits. |
I followed the recipe's instructions to a T, only eliminating the water, since I wanted a stronger taste. Two pounds of strawberries and a few minutes later, yummy smells began arising from my cooking pot.
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| Can't you almost smell that syrupy steam? Yummers. |
Not bothering to seal the jar since it was a trial batch, in almost no time at all I had one pint of near-perfect strawberry orange jam.
So much for yesterday.
This morning, I woke up at 6 a.m. and thought, Wait a minute. Two pounds of berries only got me one pint. We eat a lot of jam [in plain yogurt, in cottage cheese, on toast...]. I don't want to go to the bother of making a big mess for only a few pints. I should go buy some more strawberries.
**Queue ominous orchestral swell**
I dragged the kids to the grocery store with me and came home with another 40 pounds of strawberries.
Well, I had done the math and--at the time--it seemed like a reasonable amount! Of course, somehow I managed to forget that we still had 10 pounds of berries in the refrigerator. (Seriously, who forgets they have 10 pounds of *anything* in the frig?)
It turned out not to be a simple case of duplicating last night's success in larger quantities, either. You know how on the back of pectin boxes it warns not to double the batch? Try tripling it. Then try stirring it forever to get it to reduce. Then seal it up in jars and hope it sets when it cools. Then try to decide whether cooking too much at a time made it so runny; or if the problem was using an off-brand of pectin; or if the strawberries weren't chopped small enough; or if somehow leaving out the orange zest changed the consistency; or if your math was totally bonkers and you mis-measured something. Then try to stave off whines of "I'm bored!" and "G pushed me!" from little boys. Then look at the 44 pounds of strawberries left in your kitchen and fight a growing sense of panic.
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| Only the first six pounds a-washing. |
The air in the kitchen was tense.
But with the incredible moral and cooking support of our dear friend Grammy G--who ended up spending 8 hours with me today--and the knowledge that my mom would have figured it out, I made some adjustments and slogged on.
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| Wondering how those strawberries are in such uniform shape? I ran them through my French fry blade on my slicer-shredder. It was a cool idea but didn't end up saving much time in the long run. |
By the third or fourth batch, Grammy G and I figured out our system and had things running fairly smoothly. We didn't eat. We barely sat. We conversed only sporadically. But we made progress.
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| Grammy G takes a turn stirring two pots at once. |
Incidentally, I thought I'd make a note of the tools involved in the process.
- Knives, assorted
- Spoons, stirring
- Spoons, tasting
- Spoons, measuring
- Cups, measuring
- Tongs (for picking lids out of boiling water)
- Jar holder thingies (for moving jars into/from boiling water)
- Two cutting boards
- Large bowls
- Large pots
- Pressure cooker/canner
- Small pot
- Jar funnel
- Pot holders
- Towels and washcloths
- Kitchen scale (for re-weighing strawberries when I lost track)
- Pliers (for removing the drain plug from the sink after I wedged it in upsidedown)
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| A small sampling of the tools involved. Notice the many tiny honey bears. Jay said they were the best deal, oddly. |
Six and a half hours after washing the first batch of strawberries, I removed the last jars from the bubbling canner. They were the last jars because...they were the last jars. I ran out of jars before I ran out of strawberries. Remember those 10 pounds I already had in the frig? Well, there are still 10 pounds of strawberries in the frig.
But the other 40 pounds are...Voila!
Thirty-seven pints of strawberry jam, which include 40 pounds of berries, nine cups of honey, three quarts of orange juice, and 12 boxes of pectin. Plus a little desperation endurance. And a whole lotta love!
The story ends happily with every jar cheerfully pinging its signal that it sealed, and displaying a progressively thickening consistency as the jars cool. The taste tests I took while cooking are magnificent. The fond memories I have of jam-making with my mom filled some little heart-holes. Spending a day with Grammy G made some lovely new memories.
But I'm not going to buy strawberries again for a long time. A long time.
P.S. For those of you who are interested in such things, you might like to know the following. After doing more math, I determined that each pint cost roughly $2.50US to make. Each pint has a total of 60 grams of sugar (from the strawberries, orange juice, and honey). The "low sugar" jam we've been buying at the store has 160 grams of sugar per pint. I think this homemade stuff is worth it. I think.
I ADORED this. And I cackled out loud when you brought home even more strawberries. You are, without a doubt, your mother's daughter.
ReplyDeleteMuch love, sweet girl.
This makes me smile and cry at the same time! Thank you for being part of my process. <3
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