Connor has been strawberry picking with me every year since he was one (or almost two, really, since his birthday is in late July). His first year, it was all I could do to keep him from sitting on and stepping on the strawberry plants. (Needless to say I didn’t get much picking done that year). By year two he’d figured out how to avoid the plants for most part (thankfully!), but was only interested in eating the berries. He was reasonable at picking by three, though still only a few berries would end up in his basket, since he mostly preferred to play nearby in the shade while I picked. This strawberry season however, at four going on five, Connor is in a new place it seems. When we first got to the fields this year, he insisted that he wanted his own container to put his berries in, rather than sharing mine, as I’d suggested. He proceeded to do a good bit of picking (along with the requisite eating, of course). Then he plunked himself down on the straw between the rows and carefully removed all of the stems from his berries. (Why he wanted to do this in the field I don’t know, but he was very sure he needed to do it right then and there.) On our way to pay for the berries, I suggested to Connor that he could combine his with mine and we could weigh them together, but he made it very clear that this was not at all what he had in mind. He finally explained to me that these were his berries, with which he wanted to make his jam, and how could he possibly do this if his berries were mixed up with my berries? My son, wanting to make jam, unprompted by me? How could I argue with that?!? So, we kept the berries separate, and when we got home, Connor put his in a colander and rinsed them off with the hose in the back yard. He wasn’t too sure what to do next, so I delicately suggested that for jam the berries would probably need to be mashed up. Apparently he liked that idea. (Anything that involves mashing food is usually popular in our house….) Connor dumped the berries into a big bowl, went out on the patio, and mashed them up with a fork, meanwhile explaining to me that he wanted to make his jam all by himself and wanted to do it however he wanted to. Thankfully I had a brainstorm and realized that he could make freezer jam that he wouldn’t have to cook, so he could conceivably do it by himself. But, I didn’t have any liquid pectin on hand (which he would need to make a no-cook jam), and it was almost dinner time. Somehow I managed to convince him that he could put his berries in the fridge until the next day. So there Connor’s mashed berries sat, in the refrigerator, waiting for me to have a chance to get to the store to buy some liquid pectin……..TO BE CONTINUED
CanningCraft » A Jam of His Own (part 2)
July 20th, 2011 at 17:54