strawberry jam

Yesterday the kids and I went out to Verrill Farm in Concord to pick some strawberries -- 7.5 lbs, in fact. We ate and ate them, and also made jam, 7 half pints. I gave one to Aaron who came for dinner last night. I made the jam last year, too, using a recipe from a yard-sale-purchased Vegetarian Epicure, book 2. I'm too stubborn to actually buy pectin to add to the jam, and my jam-making skills are slightly less than rudimentary, so it is a little more syrup-like than jam-like, but it tastes good. Oh, and I only got two of the lids to actually vacuum seal, so all of it is stored in the fridge.

Of course, it's a funny thing about jam: I don't really like it. I always think I'm going to like it, and I try it valiantly -- but really, I so love toast with butter that I can't bring myself to adulterate it with jam. Same drill with peanut butter sandwiches. But Jon loves it, and I love making it, so there you go.

I also made some pita chips from the leftover pita from Wednesday night's dinner, which we ate with carrots and hummus. Annie helped. She loved brushing the olive oil on the pitas. And I made pizza for dinner, a couple of which I topped with a combination of beet greens -- heavenly -- and spinach, sauteed with garlic, oliver oil and salt. The rest had a more traditional tomato sauce on them, based on a recipe in Peter Reinhart's American Pie, which is my typical sauce recipe.

I'm hoping to pick more strawberries and make some more jam before the season finishes, but I'm not sure it'll happen. The kids' interest waned quickly.

Now I need to go shape sandwich bread for its final rise in pans, and make some dough for rolls to rise overnight in the fridge and shape and bake tomorrow morning to take to a friend's for a cookout tomorrow afternoon. Oh, yeah, and cook dinner, which will involve black beans -- one of my standbys I'll write about another time.

One final note: I managed to get to the Indian Grocery today in search of amchoor powder, but I couldn't find it. Oh well, just an excuse for another trip sometime. I did get some spicy snack mix, some fresh mangoes and some ground cumin, though.