Strawberry Jam for Brooke

I love fresh strawberries. They take me back to summers when I was little girl playing outside with my sister. We would rise with the sun, eat as quickly as we could and then it was off for adventures, usually staying outside until we were forced to return indoors at the call of dinner. My sister and I were not the dresses and dolls kind of girls growing up. We were more the climbing trees and scraped knees type. We spent a large portion of our childhood in a house surrounded by woods. In the summer time we would spend entire days playing outside and eating fresh berries that we would pick. On more than one occasion my mother would dress us up for an event and then tell us to behave while she was getting ready. When she finally would call us to leave she was usually not very excited to find the two of us covered in bright pink berry juice from grinning sticky face to shoeless toes. So making strawberry jam from fresh, local berries always makes me smile with fond memories of growing up with my little sister.



Strawberry Jam

Ingredients:
3pounds fresh strawberries
1c sugar
Juice of one large lemon


Wash and cut the stems off the strawberries. Then cut then in half (or if they are really big maybe cut them into thirds) and place them in a large sauce pan with or pot. Pour the sugar over the berries and stir to coat. Cover and allow to sit at room temperature for 3 to 4 hours.
Place over medium heat and gradually bring strawberries to a boil. Pour in lemon juice. Cook at a high temperature and stir until mixture becomes thick, this will take 15 to 20min. It will look like jam when it is ready. Take off of the heat and allow to sit uncovered for about 12hours (or start eating by the spoon full like I did).