Skip to main content

J is for Jam


Strawberries are in season in Texas. We bought a bunch. The kids have been loving them. The best strawberries are fresh from our garden, but we only get a handful of those at a time. They are a perfect before bed snack. For recipes that involve lots sugar and plenty of cooking time we use store bought strawberries. Julie has been hopping around the house saying "strawberries" for days. She also has utterly refused to wear clothes. She screams and shouts and kicks and thrashes while I get her dressed and then immediately removes all of her clothing as soon as she can. I've decided this is not a battle I'm willing to fight, so she spends most of the day in just a diaper. (I am willing to fight with her to keep a diaper on. I hate cleaning the carpet.) But when I said it was time to get out the strawberries and make jam she ran into the kitchen, grabbed her apron, and said "Put it on Mom." I did not make her ask twice.

In addition to convincing Julie to get dressed, the jam turned out to be one of our more successful projects. Strawberries can be adequately sliced (or mangled) by a child with a butter knife, there are only three ingredients, and only two of those need to be measured. With a long enough spoon, Spencer could easily avoid being splattered with hot jam while stirring. I was a little nervous about him filling the jars, but I should have had more confidence in his abilities. He did a lovely job. I'm a fan of the little 4 once jars because I like miniature desserts and because when the kids make their own peanut butter sandwiches they will use an entire jar of jam no matter it's size. -L





Strawberry Jam was a perfect dessert for this week.  No eggs, and he got to use the masher.

It's not quite berry season here in Boston, so we opted for frozen berries.  Isaac was disappointed when he tried to snitch a strawberry and couldn't bite into it.  We just made a small batch and since we love jam we didn't bother to process it (unprocessed jam should last about 2 weeks in the fridge). And of course homemade jam needs homemade carbs so we baked a batch of biscuits.  -H




Printable recipe here
Processing chart here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

C is for Chocolate Crepes

Spencer is still improving his egg handling skills, but I think he has perfected his crepe flipping technique. Printable recipe here
Post a Comment
Read more

E is for Eclairs

When it's a dessert day, Spencer will unload the dishwasher without whining. We cleaned up the kitchen, cleared off the countertops, got out the step stools, and put on our aprons. After measuring the flour, salt, and water, we realized that I haven't been shopping since before spring break and my butter supply was gone. So we put on our shoes and went to go buy some. Since we were out anyway, we went ahead and did all the errands.  By the time we were home, Julie was hungry and tired. We fed her lunch and let her take a nap. I'm a little sad that she didn't do this project with us, but she was not disappointed to wake up to fresh eclairs. Spencer felt really strongly about cutting the butter into three pieces before adding it to the water. I'm not sure where he came up with this idea, but he was adamant that it was necessary. The eclairs turned out pretty good, so maybe he knows something I don't. I tried to take a shortcut for the filing and use ...
Post a Comment
Read more

G is for Galette Aux Fruits

During my first years as a public school teacher I became a firm believer in the powers of the full moon. I have not converted to the full complement of astrology, but I do believe that the phases of the moon are extremely relevant to children's behavior.  One colleague suggested to me that perhaps we were trying to educate werewolves. The students always display their most ridiculous, defiant, and disruptive behavior during the full moon. I checked lunar calendars twice last week to see if it was a full moon. It wasn't. I take little comfort in the fact that my children are not werewolves. This is not the place to recite all of Spencer's escapades over the last week, but he was in a lot of trouble for most of the time. We tried to make our dessert on Wednesday like we usually do. Then we tried to make it on Thursday. Then I gave up on having Spencer do it with us, and Julie and I started the Galette Friday morning. Then Spencer was left home with a babysitter to prese...
Post a Comment
Read more