Strawberry Jam

I absolutely love canning! I think it is one of the best way to provide for a household when you're a housewife. I feel that you are making full use of your fruits and vegetables and supplying food down the road.  A couple weeks ago I made some strawberry jam. I had taken advantage of a buy one get one free sale on 1 lb boxes of strawberries at our local super market. I had grand ideas of eating them but about a week later they still sat in our fridge...I can't let them go to waste so I decided to whip up some strawberry jam!

Strawberry Jam

Start out by sterilizing your jars and lids. This recipe made 4 half pints of jam. I always sterilize more than I need, just in case. There are many way to sterilize jars, but this is how I do it. Place your jars into a canning basket in your canning pot filled with enough water to cover the jars( I use a stock pot), make sure the jars aren't too crowded and bring the water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, add in the lids and rims, cover and set your timer for 10-15 minutes.

While your jars are being sterilized, gather your ingredients. You'll need two 1 lb containers of fresh strawberries, washed. 3 cups of sugar( if strawberries are in season and rather tasty, you could use a little less) and 1/4c of lemon juice.

Cut off the tops and halve the strawberries. (I worked with one 1lb container at the time.) Then slightly mash the strawberries in a bowl. They can squirt, so I would recommend wearing an apron. 

 

Once you've mashed your strawberries you should have around 4 cups.

Next add your strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice to a heavy pot. Stir to evenly mix and heat the mixture on low until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat to high to bring mixture to a full boil. Stir often to keep mixture from burning until the jam reaches 220 degrees F.

While the jam is cooking, your jars, lids, and rims should be sterilized. Remove from the water and place on some paper towels.

When jam is done remove from heat and using your canning funnel and a ladle, fill your jar leaving about 1/2 inch of space at the top. Make sure the rim of the jar is clean and top with a lid and screw on a rim, tightly.

Place your filled jars into your canning basket and place them in your boiling canning pot. Process the jam for 10 minutes.

Remove the jars and let them cool on a rack. In the next few minutes you should start to hear the pops of the lids. There you have it! Tasty, delicious jam!

I hope you enjoy! This recipe was inspired by this recipe I found on allrecipe.com. I like this recipe because It's so easy and tasty on a piece of toast or fresh bread!

 

I will be gone the next couple of weeks. I'll be heading down south to Arkansas to meet my newborn nephew and spend sometime with my brother and sister-in-law. I'm looking forward to some nicer weather seeing we're currently getting 12 inches here...isn't Spring starting tomorrow?!?!

 

Mr. and Mrs. Paintings

So it has been awhile...I'm guilty of not posting for almost two months...time just got away from me. Hunny and I have just been busy with everyday living and I'd find myself at the end of the day thinking about how I need to blog and then a wave of exhaustion would sweep over me and I'd be climbing into bed instead, but I'm back!
Hunny had his birthday at the end of January and we had his sister, brother-in-law and their kids over for the weekend. I told Hunny to choose whatever kind of cake he wanted and I would bake it for him...he likes to be different and he chose a marble cake with mint chocolate frosting...And I baked it up for him. Used this recipe for the marble cake and this recipe for the frosting, modifying it by making it  mint chocolate by adding 1/2 cup of cocoa powder and just the tiniest amount of mint extract, because that's all you need for it to be minty, trust me, this stuff is powerful! Check out the result!

 The cake didn't last long, and even though this wouldn't have been my choice of cake, Hunny loved it!
February came rolling in and with it an awesome, crazy blizzard, as well as little snowstorms here and there...I'm way over shoveling! I'm pretty sure we received well over 3 feet of snow in February...and of course, our old house and the poor radiators couldn't keep up with the bitter cold...we finally called a heating company when all but two radiators quit working...it was horrible, but they got them back up and running and of course, now it's starting to get close to 50 degrees (F) out...such is life...February also started off by the birth of my little nephew, Noah! Ahhh! I can't wait to go visit him in the South in a couple weeks! I love newborn babies! I also had a procedure done on my foot in February that had me laid up for a little over a week...I'm glad February is over!
I did, however, find time to do a new art project. I came up with the idea of doing Mr. and Mrs. painting to hang up on our sides of the bed awhile ago, but I just got around to making them a couple weeks ago....Here it is!

I started out by purchasing two 18x24 canvases, some mod podge, a couple sponge brushes, fine sand paper, four eye hooks, and some black ribbon. I already had some paint on hand. I used Winsor &Newton Galeria Acrylics in Titanium White, Mars Black, and Yellow Ochre. I also, stole some newspaper from a box of mine I have yet to unpack filled with all my 4-H trophies and ribbons....I have a ton and I need to figure out what to do with all of it! 

I first painted the canvases with mod podge and pressed the newspaper on top of it. I tried to make some of the newspaper wrinkle to give it texture. I then painted mod podge on top of the newspaper and left it dry.

I then painted over the newspaper with a mixture of the Titanium White and Yellow Ochre. It made a new sandy beige color. Then the canvases were left to dry. I then lightly sanded the canvas to let some of the newspaper show through.

Next, I scoured the internet for a nice typewriter font. I was super picky because I wanted it to look just like it did in my mind. I believe this font is called King. I love it! I printed out mrs. because I could use it for mr. as well in a huge font size just to my liking and cut out the letters to use as stencils.

I placed to stencils in the middle of the canvas and traced around them with a pencil.

Next step was to paint in the mr. and mrs. with the Mars Black paint and let the canvases dry. While they were drying I painted the eye hooks black. Once everything was dry, I (as well as my muscle, aka Hunny) screwed two hooks into each canvas evenly spaced from the middle. I then cut two equal lengths of ribbon, I think it was around 20 inches each, threaded one through each canvas and simply tied the ends in a bow.

The Finished products! I love them and wish I could get a better picture of them because this doesn't do them justice! 

I hope you enjoy this project and it'll inspire you! I hope to do another post later in the week or early next about the strawberry jam I made and canned today! Stay tuned!