Strawberry Deliciousness

I love fresh strawberries out of the garden. Particularly when its not a garden you planted, cultivated, or cared for. But you get the reap the benefits! And this is our situation. The boarding school where we volunteer has a large strawberry patch, and we had permission to raid it! Caleb and I are the big strawberry eaters, and we made out like bandits last week!  

On one of our evening walks we brought our Frankenstein faced-halloween bucket to collect those precious morsels of deliciousness! Oh, its just heavenly!   One for the bucket, three for the mouth!

While eating them right out the garden is the best, we also sprinkle sugar on them, let them sit for several hours, and then drizzle the soupy deliciousness onto ice cream. I also like to make a rhubarb/strawberry cobbler that works because the tart and sweet are such a wonderful combination. But our favorite is

homemade strawberry jam. Just look at that color!!!! I did NO enhancements of the color in photoshop; I just added the text! Caleb's favorite sandwich now is a jam-jam sandwich.

Jam-Jam Sandwich Directions:

1. Enjoy the beautiful color of your strawberry jam. Seriously, sit there and just look at it. Let it sooth your soul. Now, when you are ready, move to step two.
2. Using a knife, spoon, or your finger, spread the jam onto BOTH sides of the jam. This is an important step to a 5 year old. You MUST spread jam on both sides of the bread, or else!
3. Now, sit and look at it. Yes again. We must enjoy our food before we eat it! 
4. Put jelly sides together and slightly "mush" them together.
5. Enjoy!   

Many people rave about homemade strawberry jam, and rightly so. But it really isn't that hard to make.  Compared to the heart-of-the-summer canning, this is a breeze. And I hate to be the one to break this to you, but there is no secret recipe. Just use the freezer jam recipe on the box of the pectin you buy! (I've had better luck with the powdered pectin compared to the syrup pectin.) The only trouble I've ever had is that you MUST pay attention to dry vs. wet measurements. Measure sugar using the cups made for dry ingredients, where you level off the top with the back of knife. As long as you do that, you're sure to have a winner batch! This recipe is from Kraft.

What's your favorite strawberry recipe?