Thursday, June 30, 2011

#79: make freezer jam


Last Friday we happily took care of #79 on the summer to do list and made freezer jam.

If you haven't tried freezer jam yet then come over...it blows conventional jam away!

My friend Denise explained that when you cook the berries for regular jam it cooks out all the flavor. With freezer jam you just smush up the berries, add a little pectin and a little sugar (& a touch of lemon juice) and voila...the tastiest, most berry tasting jam ever.
(the smushed up strawberries)

 (pre-bee sting)
We went out to Kruger Farm first. 
See all that clover we parked on?
Within two minutes of arrival a super mean bee stung Maya in the leg.

So, so sad.
Thankfully Maya is tough and we were meeting friends so the distraction of seeing said friends and me giving her a bag of cheese crunchies to eat solved the bee-sting-pain problem. 
(I'm realizing now that it would be a good idea to carry kids Tylenol around with me in case we're in the middle of nowhere and some pain inducing event happens again)
 (Owen and Nigel)


 (Maya and her snack; and Denise back there too:)



 (After the drama @ Kruger we went to Sauvie Island Farm)




After the kids ate close to a half flat of berries themselves, we went back to Denise and Nigel's place to turn the rest of it into freezer jam...strawberries are the most tedious because they're dirty and you have to cut all the tops off. It will be a lot faster with blueberries, raspberries, marionberries, etc.

Check out my stash:
At every meal I'm trying to figure out a way to add strawberry jam to it. 
It's so, so good!

2 comments:

FW said...

Miss Campbell...in the span of 2 years got stung 8(yes, 8!) times by bees. Whe was that lucky. Benadryl (or a generic) makes a FABULOUS topical cream that is a savior for lousy bee stings. That might be handy to have around. It's helpful even a handful of days in. Love the freezer jam....Evelyn introduced me to it. I just made it with my class. :) Christina...pretending to be Frank!

kristen said...

yikes, poor shugary sweet Campbell! Thanks for the tip about Benadryl...I got in a way too lengthy discussion w/ one of the (very young) farmer's about making a poultice out of dandelion weed by chewing it up and then spreading it on her sting. That's hippy dippy Oregon for ya. :)