day 176: strawberry jam

that is one happy little peep with her jam
efforts for her friends :)

day 176 and today we are making and taking to others for our christmas spirit advent and also the kids book advent.  it is strawberry season here and as we live in strawberry central it seemed like a wise idea to make strawberry jam to make and give to our friends :)  so on to pinterest i went to find a strawberry jam recipe to try out.

in team A we have steve and my sweet mum (or granny as we refer to her) and they are making strawberry and balsamic jam, recipe courtesy of celebrate food and pinned to my 2011 advent crafts board.  and in team B we have myself and the two peeps and we are making easy strawberry jam using the recipe from chelsea's sugar jam :)  nothing like a bit of rivalry to make the best strawberry jam ;)

the peeps measuring out the strawberries

the peeps and i had two ingredients for our
jam: strawberries and chelsea jam setting
sugar ... the results were outstanding.

my sweet mum in team A working on the strawberry
balsamic jam ... this jam tastes so very good!

an incredibly cheesy picture of my husband stirring the jam

the renamed balberry (balsamic/strawberry) jam ...
honestly you guys in team A just couldn't go with
making jam you HAD to rename it to?

outcome:  mightly tasty!  both versions are superb, the B team chelsea recipe would be fantastic on english muffins and the very yummy strawberry/balsamic jam from celebrate food (or balberry jam as steve has renamed it ... does anyone want to borrow a husband for a week ;}) would be perfect for some good wholesome grainy bread like moleberg .... ooooh i am salivating just thinking about it!  luckily there are a couple of jam jars left over for us to have :)

my thanks to celebrate food for this recipe and to chelsea sugar for making jam so easy to do with their wonderful jam setting sugar :)

now for some gratuitous photos that i will be adding each day in december so you can get to know me and my family more and see how we celebrate christmas in new zealand ... and so my family that are miles away can see what we've been up to during the festive season :)  

this is the book the kids and i read for the
first ... such a cool book to start december
with.

of course the craft we did for the book also
combined with the christmas spirit advent
and we all wrote letters to santa.  then we
made the latest lego addition to our
winter village :)  LOVE LEGO in our HOUSE!

ben studious writing his letter to santa, since he was a
wee fellow he has always asked santa for a lego
hospital ... he is still waiting for one to turn up!

my sweet mum, contemplating what she
wants, she is hopeless ... she always writes
to santa asking for new gardening gloves!

once everyone has written their letters we each read them
aloud and see what everyone has written and asked for!
polly was laughing because she also asked santa
to bring granny some gardening gloves!~