Strawberry Fields Forever

We've been anxiously awaiting spring strawberries. There are a number of fields/stands in Sacramento and whenever we're in town from mid-April thru mid-October, we stop and buy strawberries and other fresh produce. We had to make a run to town last Friday to buy lumber for the "headache" rack for Verne's '52 Chevy truck. Here's an in-progress picture of the red-oak bed without the headache rack...

As we turned onto Sunrise, we noticed the first of the stands was open for business. Hooray! Picked that morning, the strawberries were fresh and beautiful at $2/box, a flat of day-old berries for half price, and equivalent to probably a triple flat of overripe berries for $10. I had $12 to spend (that's all we had between us), so I popped for the overripe berries with plans to go home and make strawberry jam. I love the "idea" of canning and actually took a step in that direction last fall when I bought a steam canner and canned a batch of plum/strawberry jam. I was so nervous about the process and getting it right and not poisoning us, that I froze the jam after it was canned. Can't be too safe!

Necessity called Saturday morning, because the overripe strawberries were not going to make it another day. We got out our "Put 'Em Up" book and began making jam. The first was actually a low-sugar syrup that was cooked for about 5 minutes, jarred, and frozen. We tried some Sunday night on a small scoop of ice cream, and it wasn't bad...not good enough to make again, though. We then made and canned a batch of Classic Strawberry Jam, following by a second batch of Strawberry-Vanilla Jam. Num! They are both delicious!!! The last 4 pounds of strawberries were cleaned and frozen to be used in smoothies, margaritas, or more jam. Four hours later when we'd finished, I looked at jam recipes in my Betty Crocker Cookbook. Just a word to the wise...if you decide to make jam, don't use an old tried and true recipe handed down from your grandmother or out of an old Betty Crocker Cookbook. The amount of sugar canners used to use is obscene...in this case, 7 cups of sugar for the same amount of berries that our current recipe used 2 cups (do the math, it's less than 30% of the original)! I think our jam can actually be called "low-sugar" with that kind of reduction.

I love pictures, so I'm including one of the jam cooking on the stovetop...

and the finished products...

There is something so appealing to me about rows...whether they are rows in gardens, the farming rows we see at Davis Ranch (Sloughhouse), or, in this case, rows of our strawberry syrup and jams. As Martha would say, It's a Good Thing!