{"id":185,"date":"2014-06-08T15:22:06","date_gmt":"2014-06-08T22:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/?p=185"},"modified":"2014-06-08T15:59:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-08T22:59:11","slug":"straw-bal-pep-jam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/straw-bal-pep-jam\/","title":{"rendered":"Straw-Bal-Pep Jam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We were away for a little while, vacationing in the Southeast. Visiting friends and family, a beach where you can take off your clothes and just stand around in the water, mosquitos, humidity, etc. So we left feeling like\u00a0we didn&#8217;t want to come back to plain old San Francisco. Sure it&#8217;s beautiful every day, but it gets cold every night! Then I walked to the market&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"strawberry balsamic black pepper jam\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/leighadactyl\/14361009021\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3896\/14361009021_0f4637cf38.jpg\" alt=\"jam in jar\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more keep reading...--><\/p>\n<p>Though to be fair, I walked to a weekly farmer&#8217;s market from one of the places we stayed in Atlanta. But at our neighborhood market in San Francisco, to which I walked on a beautiful, mild, sunny, breezy day (after C played on the playground and our dog ran around off-leash frolicking with other city dogs), strawberries were on sale three pounds for a dollar (and a couple of days later, avocados were on sale eight for a dollar! Will the ridiculous produce deals never end?!).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying we&#8217;re sold on the city, but maybe it&#8217;s not so bad.<\/p>\n<p>Back to the strawberries. I really wanted to make more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/strawberry-hand-pies\/\">hand pies<\/a>, but I didn&#8217;t want to bother with a crust. But I have been thinking about a strawberry balsamic black pepper jam since I made some with a friend, I don&#8217;t know, maybe five years ago? It must have been before we both had kids (or at least before we both had two kids each). I remember we were staying at her house in Mobile and she had loads of strawberries from a u-pick. We made and canned some jam, and ate some right away on crackers and slices of sharp white cheddar.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"english muffins with jam and butter\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/leighadactyl\/14391461373\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5491\/14391461373_748a427d39.jpg\" alt=\"english muffins with jam and butter\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have never canned jam before and have really only canned things on my own once or twice (and not what I&#8217;d consider successfully). I didn&#8217;t can this jam, but plan to keep one jar in the fridge for up to a month (dipping from the jar with a clean utensil to lessen contamination) and the other jar in the freezer for up to three months.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Straw-Bal-Pep Jam<\/strong><br \/>\nAdapted from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epicurious.com\/recipes\/food\/views\/Strawberry-Preserves-with-Black-Pepper-and-Balsamic-Vinegar-14034\">Gourmet, June 1997, as detailed on Epicurious<\/a><br \/>\nYield: 2 cups<br \/>\nTime: about 45 minutes<\/p>\n<p>2 cups strawberries, trimmed and roughly chopped<br \/>\n1 cup sugar<br \/>\n3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar<br \/>\n3 Tbsp water<br \/>\ngenerous grinding of black pepper (I did 30 turns on my mill, but it could have used more. The recipe calls for 1 tsp)<\/p>\n<p>Bring all ingredients to a boil. Leave on a low boil\/high simmer for 30 minutes or more, until thickened a bit, stirring occasionally. Transfer to jars. Store in refrigerator or freezer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We were away for a little while, vacationing in the Southeast. Visiting friends and family, a beach where you can take off your clothes and just stand around in the water, mosquitos, humidity, etc. So we left feeling like\u00a0we didn&#8217;t want to come back to plain old San Francisco. Sure it&#8217;s beautiful every day, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sweet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":187,"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.leighadactyl.com\/food\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}