Straight To Mamaw’s Strawberry Preserves Recipe

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My childhood returned to me last week in the form of a brown paper package on my front porch. It contained a book full of recipes straight out of great grandma's Michigan kitchen—from my mother with love. Small notes about long ago hair appointments, the state of the weather, and making strawberry jam with a small red-haired girl were scribbled in the margins.

She lies in a nursing home bed now, not far from her once pristine farmhouse. Her fingers and mind crippled from time passing. Yet reading her recipes and the notes in the margins brings back sweet memories.

Every June, my fingers red and sweet from gathering berries in the sun, I sat on a rickety stool that threatened to topple if I wiggled too much, and watched my great grandma make magic. With the precision of the finest machine, she rinsed and chopped the fruit before grinding them to a juicy mush with the potato masher. She then dumped the entire bowl into a huge steel pot on the stove with a mound of pure white sugar and a box of pectin.

If I were lucky enough, she’d let me stir. The slight breeze, through the open windows, was never enough to cool my cheeks from the steam coming off the stove.

Ten minutes later, a dab of butter cleared the foam and we peered at the goodness beneath. My hands held each jar with a potholder as she ladled in the steaming jam. The pads of my fingers burned for weeks from sneaking tastes—lest I be deprived of jam for the 24 hours it took to set.

My daughter will never sit in my great grandma’s warm kitchen, but we will make her homemade strawberry jam—with a worn recipe book written in her own hand.

Mamaw’s Strawberry Preserves Recipe:

2 quarts of berries

7 cups sugar

1 box pectin

3 ounces lemon juice

3 teaspoons butter