My Grandmother makes the best jam in the whole world, hands down. I can't stand the taste of cooked jelly/jam/preserves/whatever. It loses some of the rich flavor and doesn't really taste sweet anymore. She makes what many call freezer jam. I just know it as Grandmother's jam. I have always wanted to learn how to make it, but have never had the oppertunity. My favorites are her strawberry and peach, but she makes figs, scumpernog, and several others. She agreed when I was up last week to teach me how to make it.

The first thing that you do is to take your strawberries and decap them. Then you rinse them and cut them into smaller pieces as Granddaddy is doing here. Measuring them out as you go.

While he was working on that Grandmother was finely mixing the sugar and geling powder.

When Granddaddy was done cutting them up, I got to mash them a little, so that they were juicy but not completely pulvarized. I then added them to the sugar-geling mix. And while I had to stir them for three minutes, Grandmother and I talked.

Finally, we were ready to get out our steralized jars and lids. We had them boiling on the stove the whole time.

Then we filled them.

And while they were still hot, to help them seal tighter, Granddaddy tightly shut them.

In all we made three batches and I brought 12 jars back to Florida with me, plus a few of Grandmothers previous batches.