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Buckets of Slobberies

Getting good produce for decent prices around here is tricky. Unlike the great state of Washington, there are very few berry patches and the peaches grown here are downright nasty looking. I made a couple of batches of strawberry jam back in May (when strawberries were on sale), but we have already run out. Our children are jam and jelly snobs because they rarely will eat the store-bought stuff. Homemade just tastes so much better. So, I had to figure out a way to get my hands on some inexpensive strawberries in large quantities.

In one of the grocery ads, I noticed a very small side note advertising 30 pounds of frozen strawberries for $34.99. So, I decided to give it a try. In fact, I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I bought 60 pounds. When I went to the store to get the strawberries, they brought out two large food storage buckets.

On top of the buckets was this thick layer of frozen sugary stuff. I thought, "Uh, oh. How am I supposed to make jam with syrupy berries?" I had no idea that they were going to be packed that way. I did a little research, and everything I read about making jam from frozen berries said, "Make sure to buy berries that DO NOT have sugard added." Great! But, I really wanted some jam and I really didn't want to take 60 pounds of frozen strawberries back to the store. So, I just improvised. I mean, really, how bad could it be?

The results were great! I only got halfway through one of the buckets.Using just that many strawberries produced 3 batches of jam and two batches of strawberry syrup. I only had to use 1/3 of the sugar in the recipes because of all the sugar in the berries. I divided the remaining strawberries into smaller containers to refreeze and use for waffle topping, pie, or whatever.
I was very impressed with myself for figuring out how to adjust the recipes I had to accommodate all the extra sugar in the bucket, but Andrew was even more impressed. When
Andrew says "strawberry" it sounds to me like "slobbery." So, this is what I heard over the two days of my strawberry jam project:
"Are we getting the slobberies?"
"Does the store have slobberies?"
"You have slobberies in your car."
"Are you getting slobberies in the freezer?"
"The slobberies are on the counter."
"Why do we have slobberies in buckets?"
"We're going to make some slobbery jam for you, Emily!"
"Oooh, yummy slobberies!"
"Can I have slobberies?"
"Wow, that's a lot of slobberies!"
"I have slobberies on my shirt!"
"You have slobberies on your shirt!"
"You made a slobbery mess!"
"This is some yummy slobbery stuff!"

Comments

Chalonn said…
I'm VERY impressed..please post your jam recipe!!!
September 2, 2009 at 10:42 PM
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