Mimi's Strawberry Jam

Our strawberry season, here in the berry capital of Canada, is short but sweet.

Other berries follow suit ... raspberries, blueberries and blackberries ...

but the berries that make it into jam every year are strawberries.

Our local, naturally grown, berries are not large,

but juicy and sweet.

I began making jam with my mom, who was used to cooking jam until it looked right. 

There is something about acquiring the skill or knowing when jam has the right gel,

especially when cooking without pectin, as she often did.

Over the years I've played with the box recipe and what I've learned from her

and come up with a recipe that has become a family favorite.

Not too sweet, not too marmalade-like, a tad runny, so that it can easily be spread onto a scone or into that hole in a split Zwieback.

The overseas grandkids call it Grammy's jam and our local ones call it Mimi's jam.

Jam that has been made in the various places our kids have lived and also been tucked into countless suitcases, including the suitcase that arrived in Indonesia this week. 

The recipe is posted on the MGCC site as light and runny strawberry jam.

It was so much fun to take time for a three generation cooking day!

Natalie is the one who first called me "Mimi" (short for Grammy).

I thought, at the time, surely the name would not stick to teenage years.

But here she is, Mimi's girl, who just finished ninth grade.