homemade strawberry jam.

{Jam cooling on the balcony.}

We've had many, many pounds of strawberries sitting in our freezer ever since we went berry picking a few weeks ago. On Sunday, Nick and I, and our friend Melissa, finally got around to making jam with them. I'd never canned before and was expecting it to be a laborious experience. I wasn't wrong; after seven hours we had twenty-five jars of jam in three different flavours! Making the jam itself wasn't too difficult but sterilizing everything and boiling it all was really time consuming. We all ended up with a few burns, too! Perhaps next time we won't make quite so much. I'm dreaming about apple butter for fall ...

Anyway, we made a pretty traditional jam using Pomona's Universal Pectin because it required less sugar than recipes with regular pectin do. Next we made a strawberry lemon jam, which was pectin free. Not too sure if that one set properly because I just couldn't fathom putting in the amount of sugar required. Finally we made a strawberry-tayberry jelly with Certo and the recommended amount of sugar. They all taste really good and it seems like we'll have enough jam to last all year! Our freezer is also glad that it can go back to it's usual diet of meat, loaves of bread and frozen peas.*

{Nick's giant canning pot came in really handy!)

{Boiling the strawberries down.}

{Pouring the fruit into cheesecloth to make jelly.}

{Straining the juice for jelly.}

{Creating a vacuum seal.}

{Ta-da!}

{I'm hoping this will bring me back to summer in the middle of January.}

* If you make jam here's a little clean up tip: after you've removed your last batch of jars from the boiling water, throw all of the rags and cloths you used during the process into the water. Turn the heat back up and throw in some OxyClean, vinegar or hydrogen peroxide and boil your cloths for a few minutes. It'll get the stains out and make use of the last of the hot water.