We took the boys strawberry picking for the first time and it was amazing! It’s sometimes difficult to find an activity that all of them can do together just because they are so spread out in age. 
We ended up with about ten pounds of these beauties.
Now what? Logan and Riley LOVE strawberries but they cannot eat ten pounds before they go bad. Taylor (14 years old) is repelled by anything resembling healthy so he won’t eat any. What to do? 
I’ll make jam for the first time. How hard can it be? Famous last words.
First I washed them and cut off the “green parts”. Then I tossed them in the food processor and gave them a rough chop.
Oh my goodness I can smell them and they are heavenly already! So juicy and ready to go in my belly now! Okay, not quite yet. Patience.
I put them in a deep stock pot and added sugar and pectin according to one of the billion recipes you can find on Pinterest. (Rumor has it – the best recipe to follow can be found on the Ball canning website, but I didn’t know that yet. Do you see what’s coming yet?)
Okay so I’ve got my fruit, my sugar, my pectin, and my lemon juice cooking away. 
I remove it accordingly and pour into nine 8oz canning jars. When I check on it the next day I have the most scrumptious strawberry soup you can imagine. Oh no!!! Why didn’t it gel? How can I fix it? Dang it.
I searched online, asked people and everyone said it really couldn’t be fixed. Wha????? No. I’m not okay with that answer. My children picked these strawberries and I’m going to make it work.
Back in the pot, four cups at a time. I added two tablespoons of sugar and one tablespoon of lemon juice for every cup and cooked it all down. I poured it back into the jars and magically it did indeed gel up. It’s still a little soft but still what I would call jam and absolutely delicious!!
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