Pecan Pie and Strawberry Jam

I consider my grandmas freezer strawberry jam the best jam in the enitre world.  It's sweet, there's big chunks of berries, it's gooey, red and delicious.  I've always wanted to know how to make it so today I asked.  I was expecting her to rattle off a few lines from memory, but no, what I got was what I should have known it would be, the simplest of recipies pulled straight from the side of the box.   Grandma is of the WWII generation, she grew up on recipies from the sides of boxes and guess what, those are some damn fine recipies.  Last night we had this amazing pork chop in mushroom campbell soup rice, yum.  But I degress, today was about jam, oh so wonderfull strawberry jam.

So here's the recipe from CERTO
2pt strawberries
1 Lemon
Discard stems and crush (grandma says to do the 'mashing' with a potato masher, not too fine though!)
2 C mashed strawberries
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
4 C sugar
1 pouch CERTO: according to the box CERTO is the premium liquid fruit pectin

1) mash the berries
2) stir sugar into berries let stand
3) combine CERTO and lemon juice
4) combine everything and stir till all sugar crystals have desolved.
5) containerize-gma says you can even put this jam into ziplock bags and it'll be fine.  Stores up to one year in the freezer or 3 weeks in the fridge.

because of it's pectain it doesn't really freeze, well it sort of does, but then it doesn't.  You just have to trust me on this one.  It's yum. like you find things in your pantry just to put this on yum.  Sometimes I just use the ole' 'but my nutritionist says that jams' better for you than peanut butter' excuse.  Mom just shakes her head at me and laughs.

FYI
if you want to cook the fruit, add a bit of butter or margiarine to reduce the foaming, fruit should be at a rolling boil when you add the pectain.

if you are under 3,000 feet the processing time is 5 minutes, if you are over 8,000 feet it's about 20 minutes.

p.s. sorry about the lack of photos, I'm tired of trawling the web for images, I'll soon have a new digital camera again and will update old posts.