Southern Belle Reincarnated: Mother's Day Jam Making

This past Sunday was Mother's Day. Most mom's want peace and quiet, solitude, relaxation, a day at the spa, some alone time away from the kitchen and household chores. Trust me, I love those things as much as any other mom, but I also LOVE spending time in my kitchen; it's absolutely one of my favorite things to do to unwind.

So, this year I took to my kitchen, decided to put some freshly grown and picked blackberries from my mother in law's garden to good use and made homemade jam. There is ABSOLUTELY nothing like piping hot biscuits right out of the oven served with sweet cream butter and a heafty dollop of sweet blackberry jam (wiping drool from keyboard now). I don't care how terrible of a mood you woke up in, those little gems would smack you right out of it and leave you with a smile on your lips (along with traces of purply goodness)!

After the success of the blackberry jam, I opted to try strawberry since strawberry season is in full swing right now. Unfortunately my mother-in-law doesn't have a strawberry patch, so I had to go to the local fruit stand and buy them. A little pricey, but, hey I won't complain....I got the blackberries for free so the cost evened itself out, right?!

I am slightly saddened to report, however, I didn't have as great success as I did with the blackberry jam as the strawberry jam turned out more like strawberry sauce! I do KNOW where I went wrong.....I ran out of sugar and decided it would be o.k. to just get by with what I had but in researching what went wrong after the fact, I found out that all measurements have to be EXACT! The final product turned out a little runny, but delicious nonetheless. I'll bake some mini loaves of homemade vanilla or lemon pound cake and give them away with the strawberry "sauce" and no one will ever be the wiser. I'm sneaky that way!