The fruit of my labor . . .

I picked a big bucket-full of sour cherries from my in-laws this past weekend and decided to try my hand at making a cherry pie. They have this cool cherry pitter that I really went to town on, but unfortunately I didn't quite catch all the pits and we have found at least 11 pits while eating it! It was just so cool to see the cherries roll down one by one and then push the lever to pop the pit out, so I really got moving and I must have gone too fast and missed a few! Oops! It was still delicious - especially with Breyers vanilla ice cream! Now I have that song "Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy? Can she bake a cherry pie, charming Billy?" stuck in my head! I wish I had my camera when I was picking b/c Morgan came out and helped me and I loved the look of the tree with all these cute red cherries dangling off it - it reminded me of Mary Englebreight, Hilary! These flowers are from my flower bed out front. I thought this set up was so summery and cute!

Recipe for Strawberry Jam

I was asked to share my jam recipe, but I just followed the Quick and Easy Freezer Jam or Jelly recipe in the Sure-Jell fruit pectin box. I would type out the recipe, but I threw the recipe away already. Sorry! You have to buy fruit pectin to make the jam anyway, so I just follow that recipe. It's easier than hunting down a recipe all the time! :) You can also cook it and use a water bath, but the freezer method is much quicker! A few tips though - I bought three 1 lb containers of strawberries and used two full containers plus a few extra to make a double batch of the jam. It filled 8 containers (various sizes, but all about the same - see picture below in previous post) plus a small glass bowl for the extra jam. Not much to it! Good luck and enjoy!

Yummy strawberry jam!

I was itching for some delicious homemade strawberry jam, so since the strawberries were on sale I bought a couple packages and made some freezer jam Monday afternoon. It actually only took about an hour to make and turned out DELISH!!!!! It's got to be one of my favorite things about summer, besides home grown corn on the cob! I want to make more because it is SOOO easy to make, and I love having strawberry jam in the middle of the winter! It reminds me of my grandmas because they would always have homemade strawberry and peach jam when I was growing up. In fact, that's how I got most of my jars I used! MMMMM - a tasty treat!