Quick Strawberry Jam

I’m feel­ing like a bit of a cheater this week. While all the par­ents I know are rapidly dete­ri­o­rat­ing in an end-of-the-school-year death spi­ral, I’ve got a bounce in my step. Many of you are won­der­ing how you’re going to pack another two week’s of lunches and I just fin­ished my last. Laura can’t remem­ber where she put Scarlett’s back­pack but I’m pulling out my suit­cases. (This woman deserves a medal for her hilar­i­ous descrip­tion of the end of year blues.) By the time you read this my fam­ily and I will be in Ger­many, on our way to a fam­ily reunion. The fact that it was booked for the third week­end of June means that Esme’s miss­ing the last week of school. Darn.

Even this post is a bit of a cheat. But it’s one that’s in your favour so I think you’ll for­give me. With all of the Ontario straw­ber­ries crowd­ing the shelves at our gro­cery store it seems a shame not to think of as many ways as pos­si­ble to be using them. We go through a lot of jam around here (I’ve told you about Julian’s sugar addic­tion, yes?) so when I saw this recipe for quick jam over on Martha Stew­art I thought I’d give it a whirl. I halved the recipe just to see if we liked it and I’ll def­i­nitely make the whole batch next time. It was really fast to make and the taste was amaz­ing. It’s fresh and light and just pure straw­berry good­ness. It’s more of a fruit spread than a true jam — it doesn’t have any of that jelly-ness — since it’s not made with pectin. The kids loved hav­ing it on their morn­ing toast and I was think­ing it would be great between two lay­ers of sim­ple cake. Let me know if you try it!

Photo by Maya Visnyei