Remember the Friends episode where Monica makes tons of jam in order to gain control of her life {this is the same episode with the “hug and roll”…good stuff, people}? That’s kind of what my parents’ house looked like yesterday.
“I need a plan, a plan to get over my man. What’s the opposite of man? Jam!”
Mom had an idea to make jam and give it to wedding shower guests as their favor. Great idea! But…none of us had made jam before. Google to the rescue! I came across a blog post by Intimate Weddings that seemed straight forward and fairly simple so we went with it.
Since we’re using Mason jars for the flower arrangements at the wedding, I knew WalMart had an excellent selection of canning tools and a huge selection of jars in all different sizes. We settled on the adorable 4 ounce quilted Ball jars and picked up a starter utensil kit since we were basically starting from scratch.
After a little math and some goofy “concentrating” faces in the middle of WalMart, I decided we needed about 14 pounds of strawberries, 18 cups of sugar, and 1 1/2 cups of lemon juice (though I think you can scale back a little depending on your taste preference). We got home with all of the ingredients and equipment and got to work…
Rinsing, hulling, mashing, simmering, stirring, simmering, boiling, filling. Repeat x3.
7ish hours later we had approximately 60 ounces of jam {48 – 4 ounce jars and 6 – 8 ounce jars}! Can you tell I’m slightly excited? After each batch I even squealed “it looks like JAM!” I really couldn’t believe what Mom, Belle, and I did. It was such a time consuming process and truly a labor of love. Once we dress these little ladies, they are going to be so precious and hopefully all of the shower guests will love them!
Overall, I would definitely recommend Intimate Wedding’s tutorial but be warned that this does come out slightly thinner than Smucker’s Jam from the grocery store. From what I’ve read, this seems to be the norm so I’m not worried. It tastes so good and I cannot wait to slather this all over a biscuit!
Im just hoping I get invited to this shower!
Of course!