The year of runny jam!


My grandmother, Lois, has made strawberry freezer jam famous in the Keesecker family. It has been an annual ritual since before I was born.

My dad and I carry on this tradition and get together to tackle this project each year during strawberry season. So last Sunday, my dad, Dani, Maya and I went to pick strawberries. I spent enough time picking strawberries (2 hours) to know that it's a job that I wouldn't want to have. It didn't take me long to figure that out, did it? We picked 55 lbs. of strawberries!


Then we went back to the test kitchen (my dad's house) to make jam. Although my grandmother's jam was the most delicious, we have come to realize it was loaded with sugar (as most good things are).We have been trying to make a jam that doesn't use as much sugar. We prefer the taste of the berries instead of the sugar, but we don't want to cook the jam either, since that tends to change the taste of the berries.

The regular recipe calls for 2 c berries and 4 c sugar in each batch. Twice as much sugar as berries??!!? So, my dad and I decided we would experiment in order to come up with a less sugary, just as yummy, no-cook freezer jam.

We ended up making our jam using the following recipe: 5 c berries, 4 c sugar, 2 pkg pectin.

It tastes good, but didn't set well, therefore the jam is RUNNY. Ultimately, however, we decided that flavor was more important than the consistency and continued on with the runny jam.

We are still on the lookout to improve upon our annual strawberry jamfest product. I found a couple of online recipes that seem to indicate that it can be done, while my dad found a low-sugar pectin at Bi-mart made by Ball that I think we will ty next year.

Stay tuned...

Regarding the City of Portland Triathlon, Claudia has decided to do the swim, which leaves me to do the 40k bike ride.

This shouldn't be too difficult. I already know that I can cycle that distance. It's the hills that I am concerned with. Click here to see the route. The bike ride is shown in red. The course is to complete that 8.2 mi loop 3 times. Anyone familiar with the route knows that the ride up Barbur Blvd and then up Capital Hwy and then up some more through Terwilliger is going to be a bitch...times 3!

My goal is to do the loop once this week to test it out. I gotta figure out what I am dealing with here.

This morning, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few items. I walked by the feminine hygiene section and noticed that smack between the tampons and the maxi-pads there was a rack clipped on to the shelf with individual Hershey's brownies hanging from it.

Is it really legal to prey upon women when we are at our most vulnerable, when we are completely hormonally imbalanced?

Ah, capitalism, thy name is genius.