I Tasted Summer This Morning

Yes, that's right: I tasted summer. It's been fairly cool today, but still, I tasted summer.

This was the day we made Christmas jam with my mother. We make at least a couple of batches once each year. It's our favorite jam--a cranberry/strawberry jam. It's called Christmas jam because we can only make it during the holidays--since that's when fresh cranberries are available around here. (Is that true everywhere?)

The summer part is from the strawberries. The ones we used this time were especially good because we'd frozen fresh ones this summer, in anticipation of this day. They were not our strawberries--the late freeze decimated our crop--but they were from middle Tennessee, at least. And oh, did they taste good this morning!


Christmas Jam

12 ounces of fresh cranberries
Two 10 ounce packages of frozen strawberries
4 cups of sugar
3 ounces of liquid pectin
wax (optional)

Slightly chop the cranberries in the food processor. Mix chopped cranberries, strawberries, and sugar in bowl on the stove top. Bring to a boil, and boil for 10 minutes. Add pectin, and boil additional 1 minute. Put jam into warm jars and boil in a water bath for 5 minutes. As an alternative to the water bath, let the jam cool after being placed in the jars, and pour hot wax over the top. This does just as good a job of sealing it as the water bath (sometimes better), and it doesn't cook the jam any more. Yield: 6 half pints.