Jammin'

We made jam over the weekend.  We headed to the farmer's market in the morning and came home with an insane amount of strawberries.

 We boiled our jars, mashed our berries and the making of the experimental batch began!  We decided to make freezer jam, which rumor has it is much easier than making traditional jam.  The girls had Freezer Jam 101 class with Nana when we were in Michigan so they taught me a thing or two.  Natalie kept mashing even after I told her she could probably stop and she said, "no, Mom, you want to really mash it."  And then when I started spooning the jam into jars she added, "don't forget to leave 1/2" of space in the jar for it to expand."  Mercy, that kid pays attention!!  Soon she'll be making batches of her own jam while I read a book!

We tried it this morning on sourdough toast.  It wasn't as firm as store-bought jam but it sure was delicious.  Audrey would have devoured the whole jar if I'd given her a spoon and Natalie liked it but said it was "too sweet".  Don't hear that from a kid very often.  I think Audrey got all of Natalie's sweet teeth!  We ended up with a lot of leftover strawberries so I might try a healthier batch that I found a recipe for that calls for maple syrup instead of sugar. We'll see!