strawberry jams and recipe for jam 🍓🍓

This year the strawberries in our polytunnel did fantastic!!

For about 3 months I was picking around 1000g a day .

strawberries are a super berries

They taste sweet in fact content no sugar and also are a great anti oxidant for our bodies

we were able to have strawberries for breakfast, mixed into salads ,for desserts with yogurt or cream,strawberries with blackcurrants in a crumble and of cause we turned them in to jams to have on toast.

sadly we also have a hillside of strawberries which didn’t do as well as the indoor ones.

Their skins were harder the taste not so nice a little bitter not so sweet and they grew smaller.

plus as they grew at ground level all the damp wet and winds effected them.

It also effected the amount of weeds which grow so fast due to the wet damp and humid climates in Ireland

3 times over the growing season the whole bed had to be weeded

In total 8 hours of weeding each!!time we did it!!!

It was terrible and very little return from the strawberries

we have decided that if time allows and if we can find some free wood or bricks

Then if we try to grow strawberries outside again we will need to make at least 3 big raised beds to keep them in

we need to reduce the weeding load due to my health and pain plus my husband finds it very hard now to kneel due to 2 knee replacement s

so we learnt by our mistake no good having a huge strawberry bed ground level in wet Ireland!!

I have made enough strawberry jam for about 24 months for our family so that is all very good

some I made with honey a little healthier than our white sugar .Does not give the body such a sugar spike or effect insulin levels as much .However I myself only eat it in yogurt as a treat once in a while as I cannot have sugar due to insulin resistance.

But my boys love it

The other half I made traditional strawberry jam with white sugar

my recipe is a very simple one !!

((Ingredients ))

1 kg of strawberries with tops removed and cut into half or smaller for a finer jam

2 cups of water

6 cups of white fine sugar

((How to make))

put the cut up strawberries into a jam pan best or a very large pan

add the water

let simmer on heat

Once strawberries a little soft gently mash with potatoe masher

Then slowly add sugar cup by cup mixing until all sugar is dissolved

Then wait for it to reach a boil

keep at a light bubbling boil for 15 to 20 min

jam will thicken on the back of your spoon or you can test the jam on a cold saucer to see if it forms a skin

have your jam jars clean and sterilised by having had them in a pressure cooker in water for 5 mins

some people also put them in a dish washer hot to sterilise but I am not sure it’s as sterilised as the pressure cooker way but either will work

At this point you can use a funnel in the jam jars and pour the hot jam into them

be careful

Then put lids on them

once cool you can date and label your jams