Strawberry Picking

For the past 4 years, a few of my girlfriends and I pack up the children and head out to a farm to pick strawberries on Memorial Day. We make a day of it by leaving early, picking for a bit, sharing a picnic lunch and then heading home to let the kids run while we make an enormous amount of extremely delicious freezer jam.  We end the day with dinner. It's become a tradition and I love this day!

We are all Moms with two full-time jobs. We rarely create Pinterest worthy moments.  On Strawberry Day, however, we get a little out of control.  We dress the children in strawberry themed outfits and eat lovely lovely food while imbibing lovely lovely drinks. This takes weeks of planning, but we find we're getting better at it each year.

I actually made the skirts the first year for the girls. They've outgrown them now and I spent a good 6 months looking for decent strawberry fabric before I found super-cute skirts waiting for me at Crazy8.

We make very simple jam using instant freezer pectin. 

• Chop strawberries & mash them. You could use a potato masher like I did for the first three years or you could figure out much sooner that your food processor is 1000 times faster at this. You'll need  about 3.5 cups of mashed berries. Leave a few chunks! This is homemade jam, people.  
• Add 4 tablespoons pectin and 2/3 cup sugar. If you are using store-bought berries you may need more sugar. Check by tasting,
• Stir it well and let it sit for 10 minutes or so. Then ladle it into freezer safe jars and freeze it! 

We're going to keep at this as long as we can. Do you think teenagers will wear coordinating clothing in a few years? 

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