If I see another strawberry again it will be too soon

Jar of freezer jam.  Isn't it pretty?

So this weekend I made my first foray into food preservation: strawberry freezer jam. Curtis' mom makes this jam and I love it. She's been sending some to me for Christmas for the last several years, and it's always gone within a day or two. Some years I even let the kids have some. :)

So this year I decided I would make it myself. I've been wanting to learn how to can for a year or two and I thought freezer jam would be a good way to try things out. Freezer jam is kept in the freezer (duh) instead of sitting on a shelf, so doesn't require the hot water bath to preserve the fruit. It seemed like it would be easier to make and wouldn't heat up the house like regular canning.  And you can put it in whatever container you want.  You don't need a special canning jar.

So this last year, whenever I remembered, I would save our empty jelly jars. I thought I had a pretty good collection, maybe 30 jars. Then I got the correct number of pectin boxes to fill 30 jars (6). And I got enough sugar. Then I went to a pick-your-own farm and got way more strawberries than I needed.  I'm talking like more than twice what I needed.  I got something like 25 pounds of strawberries.  This happened because the recipe in the pectin box calls for a quart of strawberries for each batch, and I really have no clue how big a quart is, or how much it weighs.  So I just kept picking and stopped when I got tired.  Some of the kids helped pick too, but not much.

Not even half way through the strawberries I ran out of sugar, pectin and containers to put the jam in.  Curtis got me some more containers, and I made a special trip to Costco to get more sugar (a trip to Costco on Saturday?  That's just craziness).  I got the 25 pound bag of sugar and worried that it wouldn't be enough.  Costco doesn't sell pectin, so I stopped at Shopper's to get that.

In the end I used maybe 22 or 23 pounds of strawberries, 17 boxes of pectin, and an amazing 30 pounds of sugar.  Next time I'll have to do a little more research and find a lower sugar recipe.  Hopefully there's one out there.  The recipe uses a high amount of sugar to keep the water content down so bacteria can't grow.

After many hours in the kitchen (5? 7? I can't remember), I finished with 79 jars of strawberry freezer jam.  It became 78 this morning when Michael broke one the containers by dropping it on the floor.  Thanks Michael.

If I did the math right, cost per jar comes to around $1.50.

Containers of jam.  Minus the one Michael broke and a couple more given to neighbors.

Good thing we've got an extra freezer in the basement.