Around The Yard and $1.58 Strawberry Jam Experiment

Hey everyone-Happy Bloomin' Tuesday, I'm also joining the Homestead Barn Hop! The lilies are starting to open up, I tucked mini's into the corners of the strawberry garden. The pink ones haven't bloomed yet.

My Stella D'Oro's are pretty now too.

Mulberries are in! 

In years past I've laid old sheets on the ground to gather them as they fall, 

this year I'm just picking some off the branches as they ripen up.

Now for my experiment... 

Martha at The Kitchen Cookie posted about a super simple strawberry jam, it only requires two things, strawberries and dried pineapple. Well, three if you count a good food processor.

I was curious!

Ingredients: 

1 1/2 lbs strawberries

8oz dried pineapple

Note: This pack of pineapple is 6oz-$1.58 at Walmart. So I used my kitchen scale and added 18oz of strawberries. (I only saw sugared pineapple at the stores, so that's what I used)

Directions: 

1. Process the strawberries a bit.
2. Please take about 5 minutes with your chef's knife chopping the pineapple up before adding it to the processor, the finer the better. It is important! I showed the pic of how it looks out of the bag, then how I cut it up. This is good and easy, but not worth burning up your food processor!
3. Process a little bit of pineapple at a time till smooth.
4. Mine made 3 half pints.
5. This is a freezer jam.

Thoughts:

1. This is good, plenty sweet.
2. I have a KitchenAid FP, just add a little pineapple at a time.
3. Either keep your hand over the chute or add the cup, strawberry juice will be shooting all over the processor!
4. This is very tasty, just a little thin, Martha says it should thicken up in the fridge. She suggests adding more pineapple if you think it's too thin. I suggest pouring it over ice cream if it's too thin:@) Probably would be great on pancakes or crepes too!
5. Actually, I'd hold out a few berries until after the pineapple is processed, then add them if it seemed too thick.
6. Last thought on the consistency, some of my berries were frozen so maybe they had a little more liquid then all fresh berries.
7. I'll have enough strawberries to make a batch of regular jam, so I thought this would be fun to try.
8. Would I make this again? If I had extra berries, yes!

Have a happy day!