Jammin'

Right after breakfast this morning Dennis and I made a batch of strawberry jam. It took us about an hour from start to finishing the clean up.  We’ve made a lot of jam together in recent years. By now each of us knows just what our tasks are and we move like clockwork. While I was stirring the boiling jam my mind was pondering a question: why do we make jam? Most people don’t.

We both grew up in families that weren’t far removed from farm life. Our folks still kept gardens and preserved most of the harvest for cold weather months. Dennis’s dad, a banker, even built what he called “the canning kitchen” in their basement. My mom was a high school history teacher and my dad was still a farmer, although we lived in town. He planted a big garden at the farm and hauled bushel baskets of produce to our house in town for Mom to “put up” in glass jars which were stored on long shelves in our basement. So we grew up eating that food all of our young lives.

Because my only household tasks were to sweep the front porch and dry dishes I didn’t get direct experience in canning food, but I somehow absorbed it into my being. When I married, one of the first things I bought was The Farm Journal Canning and Freezing Cookbook.Sixty years later, I still use it every summer, even though it is literally falling apart.

We make jam not only because jam-making is part of our heritage, but also because it is more economical than commercially prepared jars of jam and jelly and because it tastes better than anything we could buy.

Today we used two pounds of strawberries and about two pounds of sugar, for a total cost of about seven dollars. Those ingredients made for pints of jam, which would cost ten dollars each if purchased. Also, we use only fruit and sugar in our jam, but no high fructose corn syrup or expensive commercial pectin.

We use eight cups of berries and six cups of sugar. We buy the strawberries at the grocery rather than a you-pick local patch because locally grown berries are usually fully ripe, while commercial berries are picked slightly under-ripe so they will survive shipping. Under-ripe strawberries have more pectin than fully ripe ones, so there’s no need to add additional pectin.

Alas, this knowledge will be lost. None of our children is interested in jam or jelly making. The tradition will die with us.

RIP

Copyright 2018 by Shirley Domer