Homemade is the Best!

Since I was away last week, I am so behind with posting on this blog.  I have to catch up with what's been happening here that I haven't had the time to write about.  Before I went away, I made a batch of strawberry jam with the 6 pounds of strawberries that I harvested from the garden.  I was storing the strawberries in the freezer until I had time to make jam.  I wanted to have the jam ready to give away to my 2 sisters and brother since they were coming to visit for a mini-family reunion.  I defrosted the strawberries and it released a lot of juices.

I took a potato masher and smashed the berries.  I looked up many different recipes for strawberry jam and all of them called for so much sugar!  I asked some friends and they said that it should be okay to lessen the amount of sugar, but it would mean that it wouldn't set as well.  So I ended up using the following recipe. 
5 cups of sqooshed strawberries
5 cups of sugar
3 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 box of pectin

Cook ingredients all together until it was a rapid boil, then boil for 1 minute.  I tried to scoop up all the foam on top of the jam before putting it into the cans, however, it was hard to get all the foam, so the first few jars are foamy on top.  I'll just have to live with it.

All the jars went into a hot water bath and was processed for 10 minutes.  One batch of jam made 3 pint jars and two 8 ounce jars.  I tasted the jam and it's outstanding.  Yum!  It's too bad I didn't have any bread in the house!  This jam is so good that I will never buy store bought ever again!!  I might have to figure out a way to plant more strawberry plants, it's how much I loved this stuff!

For more Garden to Table creations, check out Greenish Thumb's GTTC!