Strawberry Jam...

I finally got around to making something with the 4lbs of strawberries I got last week. Last night about 6PM I started to make strawberry jam. Initially I was just going to use my bread machine to do it, but it would have only made 1 1/2c of strawberries at a time. Figuring I had about 10c of strawberries I quickly surmised this wouldn't work out too well. So I ran to the store, got some jars and pectin, ran home and proceeded to core all the strawberries. (Good excuse to take the new car out.)

Now, I have this huge bowl of cored and washed strawberries, what to do... Freeze half of them. Good start, bowl is much emptier. Need to mash the rest up, but can't find my potato masher! Settling on using a metal specula to chop them worked pretty well until I tried to press flat and smash them a little. *specula breaks* Great, things are going well so far. I finish smashing them all up with my broken specula.

Got the jars all ready and the strawberries on the stove starting to boil. 8:30PMish. Not going to let these burn! Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, *arm sore switch hands* stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, *switch back* stir, stir.

Rolling boil finally, add the 8.5c of sugar, am I making jam or candy??!? Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir. Getting really foamy and close to the top of the pot, uhoh. Trying to lift it off and stir is not good. The thing weighed about 15 lbs, so I just slid it off the burner as best I could till it foamed down a little.

Finally ready. Sheesh.

Pour jam into jars, stick them in boiling water to seal. Not too easy to do when you can only do 4 at a time. This part was pretty easy though. Downhill slope, almost done, yay! Got all the strawberry jam in 10 1-cup jars, all boiled finally, some took twice to seal properly.

Let them cool all night and this morning all seemed to be properly sealed, woohoo! I was worried as some of the tops still popped a little last night.

So much for throwing stuff in the bread maker and being done.