So there we were, late Friday morning, standing out in a field of strawberries somewhere in Carnation, Washington, ready to get to work. I had Emilia with me, and my sister had Elsa and Vigo -- the rest of her offspring was either globetrotting or just too busy to go and stand in the dirt and pick berries. Anyway, everyone was astonished with the fetching ensemble I had managed to put together for the occasion: t-shirt, shorts, and rubber wellies. (I still neglect to find the humor in my choice of footwear. I wear my Le Chameau's nearly everywhere, and besides, I was counting on it being a lot muddier than it was, thank you very much.)
I believe we were less than twenty minutes in to our work when Emilia was officially fired from her job as berry picker. The girl picked four strawberries and then spent the rest of the time running around with Vigo, grabbing the wooden row-markers (that were not supposed to be touched) and smooshing strawberries into her mama's sunglasses, to nice effect, I might add. Kari was rather miffed that over half of her laborers had left her high and dry to pick strawberries (those would be the world travelers and such, not Elsa. Elsa did a great job of picking, when she wasn't pointing out the fact that Aunt Tonya's shorts, were, in fact, rather low-rise. But really, what do you expect when you are bent over picking berries? Sheesh.) Anyway, my sister raised a fine point, and one that I've maintained for years, and that is: half the reason you want to have kids is for the manual labor you can get out of them. Berry picking, weeding, shoveling snow, cleaning the bathroom, you name it.
And so, an hour or so later, we emerged from the fields with our haul -- the fruits of our labor, as it were. Emilia and I (including the four berries she picked) had eleven pounds. My sister had twenty. Rather impressive, if I do say so myself. And the berries were gorgeous. We hopped into the car and headed home to get cracking in the kitchen. My first plan was a batch of freezer jam. But only after I got Emilia down for a nap -- she was knackered after being no help to her mother at all and running around with her cousin.
Freezer jam is marvelous. It is so much easier to make than the other stuff, and it tastes leaps and bounds better. This probably has something to do with the fact that you don't cook the daylights out of the fruit. In fact, you don't cook the berries at all. Instead, you stir the freshly pureed/chopped/crushed fruit into the hot pectin mixture, give it a good stir, pour it into your jars, and there you go. The color is also always so much more vibrant than traditionally canned jams (again this is to do with the not-cooking of the fruit).
Our freezer is now full (ten jars, to be precise) of strawberry jam. And we still have a ton of fruit left over. It is the funniest thing, you never realize how much you have until you are home and staring at all the fruit. That is when you begin to say, what was I thinking? What the hell am I supposed to do with all of this?! And then you slowly walk over to your cookbooks and figure it out -- quick-like. Because goodness knows, fresh berries are some of the most perishable things in the world. So with that, I'll give you the rest of the recipes I've done so far, but not this minute. I've got a cake in the oven and more berries that need macerating. Besides, I hear my little beauty waking up from her nap and she will most likely be demanding a nice bounce on the trampoline, if you please.
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