bread and jam
With six quarts of strawberries from an early-morning picking expedition on Saturday sitting on the counter, we spent Saturday evening making a batch of jam. Well, Leah actually did most of the work, as I tried to get Harvey to go to sleep, but since I handled the picking duties solo I suppose it wasn't too unfair. I also made bread. This evening I thought hard about repeating the feat—bread and jam at the same time twice in three days!—but in the end only managed the bread end. Can you believe it, there weren't quite enough strawberries left for another full batch. Rather than trying to fudge the recipe, I figured I'd just save the mashed-up berries for strawberry shortcake tomorrow, and wait on more jam until I can get out to the farm again. There's still a bunch more of strawberry season in front of us!
Naturally in the midst of all this industry I was feeling pretty excited—and I might even say smug—about my homesteadly craftiness. However, when I happily reported scoring a whole lot of strawberries at $2.50/lb my enthusiasm was deflated a little bit by certain smart shoppers of our acquaintance who reported finding even better prices on California berries at Trader Joe's—and those are the big berries! That is as may be, but working with my local berries this evening, after they'd been in the fridge less than two full days, I couldn't help but wonder how the CA growers keep their product edible. Magic? Chemicals? In any case, I will retain my sense of superiority by imagining that cross-country berries, never mind the price, can't compare in jam production to our local product.
Of course, neither are anything like the strawberries from our own garden. They'll never be jam though: Harvey is eating as fast as I can pick em!