Strawberry deliciousness

I made jam! Well, actually it was more like preserves. Well, wait. I'm not totally convinced it wasn't a compote.

This is much more confusing than I thought it would be.

It is not Strawberry Wine, despite the fact that I wanted to sing that song a lot today.

Anyway, I made this. Whatever this is.

And it made me oddly happy. Like, look-at-me-'I can make stuff and be self-sufficient and don't need Publix for everything' kind of happy. Also the kind of happy that can let me forget about termination letters and angry staff managers.

I hesitate to call it preserves only because I couldn't manage to find canning jars in this town, so it had to go in a combination of freezer bags and storage containers; to me jam comes in a jar. Ten years ago the thought of having a canning jar shortage would have been more than my brain could have comprehended. My family owns what some may call a disturbing amount of canning jars. I try to tell myself that the reason I used mason jars to decorate for my wedding (we put tea lights in the jars and set them around) was to give it a bit of country charm, but in reality it was just because I knew we had a bazillion of them and it would be cheap. With me, practicality beats creativity nearly every time.

I can't imagine we will need as much of this strawberry goodness as I made anytime soon, but you can be sure I will be trying to put this stuff in whatever I can find. I already bought vanilla ice cream and plain yogurt and you can bet we'll be having pancakes and waffles more than normal.

It was as simple as can be and as long as you have 30 minutes and are resigned to the fact that your stove may be sticky for days, you're set to go. It's even pretty while it cooks.

I used the following:

4 cups of fresh strawberries cut into chunks

2 cups of granulated sugar

4 tbs. balsamic vinegar

I'd like to pretend I know a lot about balsamic vinegar and when you use high quality and all those fun things, but I don't. I just buy whatever doesn't make me feel slightly ill when I look at the price and make sure it isn't the cheapest, either. It worked just fine.

Enough about that. I just put all the ingredients in the pot and keep them on medium heat and let them reduce. This took around 30 minutes. I did two batches. In the 2nd batch, I used about 1/4 c. of pectin and included it when I was almost ready to remove it from the heat. I let it boil another minute or so, then removed it from the heat to cool. I didn't notice a huge difference, but it did help it set up a bit more. Either way is fine, and if you're like most folks in the world, you probably don't have pectin sitting in your cabinet. Don't let that deter you; just cook it a little longer.

I think you could also cut back on the balsamic if you wanted to add some orange zest or even juice. Rhubarb would also be great with this. Now that I think about it, I might need to buy more strawberries. Just for research, of course.