I have always had a penchant for the Depression arts (I was knitting way before it went all hipster) and Anne inspired me to try my hand at some old-fashioned canning. I've always been a little freaked out by the principle. It's kind of godly, the whole process of canning. You're stopping time itself! In a little jar! But this season's strawberries are so exceptional that I decided to just dive in, head first, into the grandmotherly craft.

I researched and found two recipes that I wanted to try: the strawberry marsala rosemary jam from this article and my own favorite way to eat strawberries--with balsamic vinegar and black pepper--translated into jam by Gourmet magazine. But then I figured I should probably do something a little less fancy for the first batch, like regular, generic, PB&J-component strawberry. Esteban and I woke up extra early on Saturday morning and defied darkened skies to score 16 pounds of perfect ruby red strawberries. Clearly, I do nothing in a small way. I went off to our local farmer's wife store to buy canning stuff. I spent $70 on water bath canner, rack, jar lifting dohicky, jar tightening thingy, 12 of Ball's new Elite wide pint jars with platinum lids (aka Hipster Crack), and something called "pectin." Then, I went to the grocery store, because I grossly underestimated how much sugar I would need, and also, I had to get a lot of lemons and some rosemary. After all of that, I was more than a Benjamin in and still didn't have any jam. Damn.

I then spent the entire afternoon hulling strawberries. Why did I have this great idea to buy every strawberry in the entire world? Why? I stained one of my custom shirts from circular accessories, which irritated me, and by the time I was done with the shopping, supply getting and the hulling, it was dark outside. I stowed the berries in the fridge and then realized that I had way more berries than jars. Awesome.

We quested for more jars the next morning, but the Ball Elite should be renamed Ball Elusive and I decided to just use what I had for a first smaller batch, as recommended by the preserving pros. I stirred, I pectin'd, I stirred some more and then I had a giant pot of the most delicious jam that I've ever tasted! Must have been the metric ton of sugar called for in the recipe. Seriously, wow, with the sugar. But it turned out that jam making and the subsequent processing and canning was no more scientific than being able to boil water. If you know the difference between "boiling" and "not boiling" you can totally make strawberry jam! Or get fancier and do chutneys or preserves or full blown marmalades.

Esteban, like me, remembered his grandmother canning, the long miserable process and fully suspected that I'd throw myself into the idea of jamming but when faced with the reality, I would say "screw that noise" and go watch Gossip Girl. So when he got home and saw seven shiny little jars full of ruby nectar, he was impressed, but when I grabbed one of the little containers of extra jam that I stashed in the fridge and fed him a spoonful, he said, "Wow, well I guess you just hit that right out of the park." Because seriously, I hate to pat myself on the back but you guys, it's really amazing jam. Of course, I could have probably preserved chopped liver with 14 cups of sugar and it would taste great, but there's something very special encapsulated in those jars sitting on my counter in perfect, military precision. It might be a little bit of wild strawberry goodness but it also might be the extra helping of domestic nirvana. As God is my witness, I'm never buying jam from the store again.