Strawberry Pickin' with Grandma/Safta

Last Sunday, we spent the day with my Safta Tzipi (safta = grandma in hebrew) and decided since the strawberry fields had just opened up to go pick some strawberries. Then, she taught us how to make strawberry jam!

Basically, there are farmer fields all over the place that open up their fields to be picked by people for a fee per kilo. There's blueberries, strawberries and raspberries during different times of the summer. I'm excitedly waiting for raspberry season to start in mid-July! And the best part was that you could eat all the strawberries you wanted while picking. Greg never quite believed this and would only eat the strawberries if he was crouched down or turned away discreetly from the farmer operating the field.

When we got home, Safta put us to work cleaning and slicing the berries for the jam. She didn't need to use a scale or anything - she just knew how much sugar to put in for each cup of strawberries. Safta taught us a few good tricks to use and now we have about 3 or 4 jars of jam sitting in our pantry. Yum!

Our jam at the start - the fruity chunk phase

The next phase - foamy darkness with a magical self-swirling spoon

The final phase - deliciousness in a jar!