Strawberry Day Part I

Here’s what our house smelled like last Friday:

There are no jam or jelly recipes in Lucie’s collection, even though canning was something she did (for the local school, no less). It’s something us Olmstead women just do, usually following the instructions from the pectin box or the well-worn Ball book, but mostly following the lessons taught to us by our mothers.

In that spirit, you have a window into my Friday at home with the kids, puttering in the kitchen, taking breaks for naps and dipping graham crackers into warm jam, and getting two flats of strawberries processed.

No recipes. But I will entertain you.

Here's where everything starts:

Fresh, picked-ripe, first-of-the-season berries from my husband's farm visit to Grossnickle Farms in Kaleva, MI.

These are the big ones, and easier to hull for processing. The little berries that come in a little later in the season are much sweeter, better than candy. But their size makes them more tedious to process. So these berries are perfect.

A Note on Timing: Sometimes I do fruit a little bit a time, a batch of jam here, some frozen quarts there, but this year everything fell in place to do it all in one day. This happens once a decade. 

Which leads me to. . .

Full disclosure: things do not always get done on time around here.  There have been mushy peaches and moldy cucumbers and don’t tell my Mom that some of the rhubarb she sent home with me two weeks ago is still in the fridge, uncut and unfrozen.

I tell you this so that when I brag that everything was beautiful this year, birds chirping and no sick children, with only one bad berry in the whole 16 quarts, you don’t feel bad.

For the ADD part of me, this was a dream day. I had a million things going on at once and never got bored. While the jam was cooking, 

That's rhubarb in there. Strawberry-rhubarb is a killer combination.
It costs less than straight strawberry jam too.

a sheet of berries was laid out for the freezer. 

Freezing berries on a cookie sheet before bagging them keeps them from becoming a solid brick.

In between measuring sugar,

Racks ready for cooling jars, a small pot for sterilizing lids, and sugar staged for adding to the fruit.

prepping jars, 

This step is only necessary (in my book) if you aren't processing the jars once they're filled.

mashing fruit, feeding children and bagging up frozen berries into quart bags, I was in heaven.

For all of the Type A, born-organized people out there, this might be overwhelming and confusing. But for me it was a nice break from a world where I fight the stigma of scattered and cluttered. 

Multitasking rules! 

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

First, I hull. Does everyone use a spoon? 

The curved edges of a spoon wastes less fruit than a paring knife.

That’s how I was taught.  Bonus: your kids can help without blood mixing in with the berries.

Next up, washing:

Fill a bowlful of berries with water and pour off. Do this a few times.
And, I need a real camera.

If you have a lot of fruit to do, wash and hull them in batches of 4 quarts or less. You might be tempted to wash your fruit as soon as you get home from the market or farm, but don’t do it! They will stay fresh longer if kept dirty. Once they’re washed, the countdown to mushy fruit begins. 

One last tip: canning is a lot like painting walls.

You think it’s all about the actual thing, but you really spend most of your time prepping. Washing jars, measuring ingredients, sanitizing equipment, prepping the fruit-- it's important to get organized before the fruit hits the heat, because the actual cooking of the stuff happens really fast and you don’t want to be hunting for your jar gripper thingy while your jam scorches. 

And once that sugar starts to boil, never, ever stop stirring.

That is all today. 

In Part 2 I will talk about keeping your sanity with kids in the kitchen and, not unrelated, breaking all the rules laid out by the USDA. We will end with Strawberry Pie.  Stay tuned!