For as long as I can remember, my mom has been making strawberry jam. Her mom taught her and she taught me. My mom used to make like five batches at once. By herself. With two kids. Can you say super mom?! But once you have homemade jelly (is there a difference between jam and jelly?), you can never have store bought again.

We were looking for our recipe and my mom found “Katie’s Jam”, a hand written recipe (by me) for freezer jelly. When I was probably seven years old. And I don’t even know what freezer jelly is.

This year I made sure to take some pointers from my mom.

• You can’t use the canning lid more than once.
• Instead of scraping the foam off the top, you can use butter so you don’t have as much foam. We don’t do that, we just scrape the foam off the top.
• Wipe the tops of the jars with a damp cloth so the lids stick.
• Once filled and sealed, turn the jars over so the heat seals the lid.
• The jars need to be hot.

Some of my favorite ways to eat fresh, homemade jam are on buttered toast, on oatmeal, on toast with cream cheese, or I bet it would be good on a lemon cake with vanilla ice cream. But maybe the best way is straight out of the jar with a spoon while watching the Hallmark channel.

My mom has a super top secret family recipe that I cannot share. Just kidding. I think we used the recipe on the sure jell box haha. Just make sure you ask your farm stand for jam berries, which are basically extra ripe berries!

*yes, that is a Parks & Recs reference. Please tell me you watch it, it’s hilarious.