Making Jam with my Best Girl

Come for lunch on a Saturday or Sunday to my house and you’ll see my kids eat the same thing every single day. PB&J, or Peanut Jelly or Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches. Since they eat their lunch during the week at daycare, I don’t feel nearly as bad about them having PB&J a few times on the weekend – they love it. LOVE it. Sometimes we cut the bread into fun shapes, always make them eat the crust – and every once in a while they get special bread! Mostly because we’ve run out of regular bread and they get hamburger buns or the heals.
With all these sandwiches – we go through a lot of jelly, or jam. We’ve battled this out before – you know I’m a jelly girl. I know it’s actually jam because it’s made with fruit and not juice. Well – it’s going to remain jelly.
Recently I discovered, to my horror, that we only had one jar of jelly left from last year in the freezer! Oh NO! how could we ever manage? Then I saw the local grocery store had a sale on Strawberries - $1 a pound. That’s unheard of in the beginning of March! SO cheap! Off I went and bought a bunch and some Certo – my handy secret pectin. The strawberries were really pretty and sweet too! Not sure who was growing these babies in winter – but hats off to them!
I asked my best girl to help me. Every jelly maker needs an assistant – how else would I stir in all that sugar? Bronwyn did great. She made sure I correctly cut the tops off the strawberries, tasted a few in the process, make sure to lick her fingers appropriately after all was said and done. She really wanted to help pour the jelly into the jars, I drew the line there. She really does enjoy helping in the kitchen and I love her by my side. She’s a good helper. It very much reminds me of when I would help my mom in the kitchen. I’m loving the time we spend together and hope when she’s older she’ll do the same with her kids. She does plan to have kids… at least she tells me she wants to be a grandma someday. I did explain that the process of grandmahood does often begin with motherhood – but at 4 ½ she’s may not totally ‘get’ that quite yet..