Is there anything better than homemade bread smothered in freshly made jam?  I really cannot think of a single thing that sounds better than that at this moment.

I have been eating freezer jam from as far back as I can remember.  Each and every time I went to visit my Grandma and Grandpa Dietmeier, I could be assured that there would be a fresh jar of homemade jam in the fridge just waiting for me to dig in.  My all time favorite treat was when my Grandpa Dit would give me a scoop of butter pecan ice cream with homemade jam on top.  Oh my.  My mouth is watering right now at the simple thought of it!

I want to be sure my girls have these same fond memories of delicious home-preserved food as I do, so I have been making freezer jam for the past four years.  I normally make my jam from strawberries I buy at the farmers market, but this year I whipped up a batch with the black raspberries we picked this past weekend.  It seemed to make the entire process so much more invigorating to know that we picked all of the berries with our own hands, and then made the jam as well.  Yummy!

Another first this year is that I switched away from the pectin I was using in years past and moved to Pomona’s Universal Pectin.  And let me tell you, I loved it!  I ended up using 6 cups less sugar than I would have to make the same amount of jam with the other pectin!  The taste was amazing because you could taste the tartness of the berries so much more than you could when all of that sugar is in there to cover up the natural flavor of the fruit.  I would recommend Pomona’s to anyone thinking of making jam this year.