Strawberry Mama

The strawberries are ripe. We're eating them at every meal now after our big trip the u-pick farm. We always mean to look further afield and one year we went to our CSA's organic field for them but we usually end up at Jones Farm like we did this year. The taste of a field-ripe strawberry is cliche but it still has to be remembered every single year that they are so, so, so much better than the ones we buy in the grocery store all winter to tide ourselves over.

Yesterday I finished putting the last of the jars of freezer jam into the freezer. A joined us around the dining room table this year and helped mash berries and boil pectin with the boys and I. Said he truly had no idea there was exactly that much sugar in jam. Heh. Now you know why I substitute that low-sugar pectin stuff that I buy at Whole Foods, eh buddy?

It does make me feel good to have him start noticing how much sugar is in a given food, not just have me be the food-nazi around the house, always on everyone's case about "feeding the children good things." Nobody likes to be the lone policeman. To be fair though, despite my very wholesome nutritional training there was a time when I was in his shoes, not paying much attention to what went into the jam.

Once as a teen I made jam(one of my favorite summer activities) with one of my best chums whose mom was a devoted naturist hippie type, committed to real foods and the avoidance of processed goods. We'd been out picking wild strawberries together which was all very idyllic and then ended the day in my parents kitchen, with everything we'd picked, intent on making them into jam. My friend balked at the amount of sugar in the recipe and told me that her mom would never go for that....and asked me if we could possibly substitute a smaller amount of honey or fruit juice or even skip the sweetener all together. At the time I didn't exactly get it but here I am, mama of my own domain and retroactively impressed by my friend's scruples and I kinda wish we'd just eaten those little berries raw and fresh instead of boiling the daylights out of them with a wagon load of sugar on top. I hope my own little boys learn the same standards my friend espoused, even when her mom wasn't watching. That's what Pamona's Universal Pectin is all about I guess....at least as far as jam is concerned.

So, there is jam, and there are plenty of "leftover" fresh berries and last night there was even a pie. And for breakfast tomorrow, I'm going to have some strawberries in cream...just a little maple syrup drizzled on top to keep it on the straight and narrow. You haven't lived until you've eaten fresh berries in cream.

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We Be Jammin'!

We picked strawberries this past weekend at our local u-pick strawberry farm. Such a highlight of the year! I always make enough strawberry freezer jam to last us all winter and pretty much every time we get out a new jar we have a conversation about how good the jam is and how when it is June, we'll go pick more together. I am part squirrel, I swear, there's a manic little rodent thing in my soul that is mad for storing away goods. I love to pick and dry and can and freeze and all the other things one can do to fruits and nuts and berries and mushrooms. One of the hardest things about our annual strawberry pick for me is stopping. There are so many berries and I could pick for hours...days maybe, I've never tested my resolve.

When I was a little girl, I always rallied all my younger sisters (all four of them) and marched them down the road with baskets in hand to the top of a meadow on a two-track where wild strawberries grew. We'd pick every last wild strawberry we could find, and then I'd come home with my greedy little hoard of tiny berries and I'd make wild berry jam. My siblings were incredibly tolerant of my driving really, that's love. I hope I didn't injure any of their psyches too deeply, I still think gratefully about their faithful support of my obsession every year when we go picking big, abundant domestic berries.

It was important to the little girl me to be out there in the field on my hands and knees every summer, with all my sisters around me, rolling those tiny red bits into our baskets. I looked forward to it every year, it made me feel frugal and special and I felt really loved by my little sisters for their dedicated picking, even though it wasn't their personal dream. I don't think I could have made wild strawberry jam by myself, but many hands made light enough work that we could pull it off. And I felt like I had rubies in my pantry after I'd jarred up a glittering jar or two, all full of our tiny, hard earned prizes.

 Delicious, and mommy-friendly level of work recipe for the strawberry pie I made with the "leftovers," can be found right here!

I was lucky to marry a man who loves fresh fruit and u-picking almost as much as I do. He's absorbed my foraging love and eats my canned goods with gusto. (I love you A!) He marks strawberry season and cherry season and peach picking in his calendar and makes sure that we schedule each picking event. And my little boys have now the joined the team, energetic pickers, even little Nib plucking berries and saying smilingly "Hep! Hep!" ( Baby-speak for "I help, Mommy!") And my squirrel-mommy heart swells. Such a good life.

Peach Love

 We're off and running on a very busy week. Lots going on. Company for dinner, apricot jam to make, packing prep to do (ah, the ever-present), visitors to get ready for, friends to visit, a Bible study to lead (yipes!) and heaven knows what quantities of laundry. 

In amidst all of the business we keep stopping to eat another peach. We've been peach picking, see and all of three lugs of peaches are spread out in our kitchen, ripening slowly on our counter-top. We're waiting for that sensitive point when more peaches will be ripe than green or mushy brown. Its a special balancing act and to avoid the brown ones you have to eat a few as you go, lest they over ripen in the meantime, see? Such a delicious business. I do like peaches. They're my Papa's favorite and I sure think of him every single time I rub a velvet fruit between my cupped hands and then eat it leaning over the sink to drip the sunset juice down the drain. 

Next stop, peach canning!

The Garden

by Shel Silverstein

Ol' man Simon, planted a diamond,
Grew hisself a garden the likes of none.
Sprouts all growin', comin' up glowin',
Fruit of jewels all shinin' in the sun.
Colors of the rainbow,
See the sun and rain grow
Sapphires and rubies on ivory vines,
Grapes of jade, just
Ripenin' in the shade, just
Ready for the squeezin' into green jade wine.
Pure gold corn there,
Blowin' in the warm air,
Ol' crow nibblin' on the amethyst seeds.
In between the diamonds, ol' man Simon
Crawls about pullin' platinum weeds.
Pink pearl berries,
All you can carry,
Put 'em in a bushel and
Haul 'em into town.
Up in the tree there's
Opal nuts and gold pears –
Hurry quick, grab a stick
And shake some down.
Take a silver tater,
Emerald tomater,
Fresh plump coral melons,
Hangin' in reach.
Ol' man Simon,
Diggin' in his diamonds,
Stops and rests and dreams about
One... real... peach.

Last Jam

Happy Strawberry Season!

Today the boys  and I started smooshing and stirring and ladling out our annual batch of strawberry freezer jam. We picked berries together this past weekend and it has taken me until today to be able to finally get the pectin out and haul the boxes of half-pint jars out of the attic.

We've been busy because we've been working on pulling together bids and comps and forms and heaven knows what else in paperwork and last night it all culminated in our offer on a lovely three story colonial being accepted. We are really excited and I'm daydreaming pretty constantly about where I'll put the vegetable garden and the bee hives and which rugs will go in which rooms.

This berry jam will likely be the last big project I'll ever  do in our boiling hot, gray kitchen. I hope I'll be canning my August peaches in my new kitchen....looking out the window at the lilies in the backyard. I'll miss the sunshine in this space, all my plants crowded into our story corner under the solarium windows and the cool of the marble floor not to mention the marvelous way it hides all cooking spills and drips. But, we are moving on to greener pastures folks. Literally. There is a wide green lawn, front back and side of the house where boys will tumble happily, an apple tree of our own to love, a big one car garage where bikes can live and a beautiful sunroom where I'll paint and sew and make emerald with green growing things.

So, here's to jam! The last ruby product of our little condo. Grey eighties place, you have been a good home but, not our real one, we hope, hope, hope (pending inspections and mortgage stuff and appraisals and all manner of other processes) you will be a piece of our past by the end of July!