in which i blame facebook and other things

My blog has been suffering terribly. I blame it all on the time I spend keeping up with friends on Facebook. And homeschooling. Oh wait, we're done with that for the summer. Um. Well, I'm keeping busy otherwise with things like: homemade bread, yogurt, and strawberry jam--and other food 'experiments'. Out of state family/company. Along with the normal, mom/wife-duty things. And many other things too lengthy to write or bore you with. hmmm.

Well, all that to say...AT LEAST I've been taking pictures for all the blog posts yet to come! Some day soon--not making any promises on a specific date--I will begin catching up here. The posts will be back-dated in somewhat of an effort to cover-up my lack of blogging/laziness/whatever. They will begin back in February. Yes, 2010. And yes, I purposefully did not use proper sentence structure. Yes, I am qualified to home school our kids. I think.


*note--first 'back post' is already up! Feb 14

strawberry time!

This afternoon the kids and I went to pick strawberries. It was HOT, but the pickin' was so good and the strawberries so HUGE. We picked 6 buckets (4qt size) in an hour! Once we were home, I got busy making jam and freezing some for smoothies.

Check out this beauty! It nearly filled the palm of my hand and it wasn't even the biggest one!
The finished product! I made about 2 buckets into jam and got 27 jars!

I'm rather embarrassed to say that I've never made jam before! I just never liked how much sugar is needed and oh, I don't know, lazy maybe? Well I found out about a recipe using way less sugar and SUPER easy to make, so I decided to try it. What's that? You want the recipe? Sure!

2.5 cups strawberries
1 cup (or less) sugar--- I used 3/4 cup
2 T. instant clear jel
Place in blender or food processor in order given and pulse until clear jel is mixed in. Fill jars and freeze.

How easy is that?! And it's yummy too!