The Time I Started A Fire + Also Made Some Jam

Last year I started what I want to be a new tradition for myself.  Last year I made strawberry jam for the first time.  There is a fantastic strawberry farm close to where my husband works, and last May one of his co-workers brought me two flats of fresh, amazingly delicious and ripe strawberries.  I decided it was time to make some jam.  This was so significant for me because it was the first thing I actually tried and did after my son died.  So I see it as a step of bravery and something done with a lot of love because it means so much to my heart.  That is why I decided to make it a tradition for myself.  So when this strawberry season rolled around, I was ready to go.

We bought a flat of strawberries from Tidwell’s Berry Farm, and I got all of my supplies together.  My friend, Becca, had been asking me about strawberry jam since I made it last year, and she wanted to do it this year with me.  I went to her house one night after our kids were in bed and we got to work.  We had such high ambitions — we wanted to come out of this with a lot of jam, so we decided to quadruple the recipe.  That included 32 mason jars, 10 cups of mashed strawberries, 4 boxes of pectin, 28 cups of sugar, and a bunch of lemons.

We were off to a great start.  Who doesn’t love making jam with a friend late at night?  And then things took a turn.  We should have split the jam into 2 stockpots to cook, but we didn’t, so when the jam started to boil, it boiled over.  A lot.  And smoked a lot.  Until it just turned into fire.  Becca and I just stood there looking at it.  And as it got bigger I think the shock started to wear off and we knew we had to do something.  She started yelling for her husband except she wasn’t really yelling.  I think subconsciously she didn’t want to wake the kids so she was whisper yelling.  So her husband didn’t hear her and didn’t come downstairs until he smelled smoke upstairs.  I threw a pot lid on it finally and that put the fire out.  Then came the clean up. There was so much smoke and burnt stuff — it was such a mess.  I’m not sure what the right thing to do was — to just throw out the jam which itself was not burned and just devote ourselves to cleanup or to still try to can the jam somehow and let Becca’s husband clean up from the fire.  We chose the latter.

Becca called her mother-in-law and got some ideas of alternative ways to can.  So we used the dishwasher, hot water, and a coffee pot to can the rest of the jam while her husband cleaned up from our fire into the wee hours of the morning.  We came out with 32 jars of jam and thankfully, their stove is actually still usable, and they’ve been very gracious about having a stove that looks like it’s been on fire.  It was also a moment for us to all review our fire safety.  And it was definitely a night and a jam making experience that I will remember!

The aftermath once the fire was out.  It was not a good site under that lid.

Our jam turned out good.  It doesn’t taste like fire, but I do call it “fire jam.”  Making jam is really not that hard.  It takes a little bit of time but as long as you don’t catch anything on fire then it’s just a couple of hours.  It’s very cheap to make and makes for great gifts for people, too.  I just don’t recommend making a quadruple batch.  From my experience, that doesn’t go so smoothly.

A fantastic beginners guide for making strawberry jam is here.  The Pioneer Woman gives her delicious recipe and tells you step by step how and why you need to can the right way.  And there is nothing about fire in her post.

If you’re wondering where to get fresh, local strawberries one of our contributors, Jennifer, compiled a list of pick your own farms here around Knoxville.

If canning and homemade jam interests you, I wrote a post last fall about making apple butter.  No fires involved.

Have you ever made strawberry jam?  Do you use fresh picked strawberries?