Strawberry Blues

So. The first batch of pectin-less strawberry jam turned out to be strawberry sauce. Ok, not a big deal, I still had a lot of strawberries so I could try again, right? Right. The second batch I used a different recipe and followed it to the 't' using the exact amount of pectin called for. This was my first mistake. I found out the hard way last year while making cherry jam that also turned out to be cherry sauce, to always, always double the amount of pectin the recipe calls for. I'm not saying that the people who write these recipes (mine happened to be Ball- like the jars, and a lady that has won tons of blue ribbons for her canning stuffs) don't know what they are doing, I'm just saying that maybe they don't account for non-professionals re-creating their recipes and all of the variables that should be factored in (like tripling a recipe and assuming every amount stays the same; or forgoing certain ingredients because I don't have them and refuse to drive to the store for a third time in one day to buy them). On the third batch I doubled the pectin, but it still wasn't very thick so on the fourth batch I tripled it. I wasn't concerned about using too much pectin as the worst that could happen is the jam would be more like jello, which is still nicer to spread on bread instead of pouring it. I put a jar of the final batch in the fridge to cool overnight and *hopefully* wake up to fresh strawberry jam.





That didn't happen.





I woke up this morning to discover yet another jar of flippin' strawberry sauce. This means that I have a grand total of SEVENTY jars of strawberry sauce. Art's mother, apparently, makes runny jam as well so he has no problem using it as it was intended but I don't want to pour my jam over my peanut butter. It's just not how I roll. It's not completely useless as it will be quite tasty on fancy cheese, cakes and ice cream but it's not jam!

I think the problem is that the recipe tells me to bring the strawberry mixture to a rolling boil, but by the time it's a rolling boil, a lot of juice has cooked out of the strawberries so it's mostly juice with some fruit on top. Next year (as I'm out of small jars and more than a little discouraged) I will just heat it through then can it. Maybe I should write my own canning recipe book. I could call it "You Can Do It: Canning Recipes I Just Made Up Because All the Others Were Crap".

I would also like to give a shout out to those workers that pick strawberries. I know that many people who work in the food picking industry are migrant workers and illegal aliens, but I have to tell you, picking strawberries is monotonous and, while not labor intensive, a time consuming process. I have more strawberries than I know what do with and I only have a 15'x4' area! Think of the amount of strawberries that are in every store, in every state and consider all the people that have to pick them. I'm not making any sort of political statement, I'm just acknowledging these people that pick my food. I would also like my very own migrant worker because I don't enjoy picking strawberries. Or weeding.