Although strawberries aren’t exactly my favorite fruit (I ate too many when I was young and foolish and didn’t care about earning a living wage, and I was hungry.), I love them with rhubarb. Rhubarb. Rhuuuuuuuubarb. Our Rhubarb plant is old and venerable. It started out life as an ignored rhubarb and never got watered regularly when it was a mere sprout. But it never let the lack of water stunt its growth. Year after waterless (well, rain, but no sprinkler) year, it grew. Huge leaves would appear and as we never did much with it, die back as fall approached. After about 5 or so years of neglect, I started to garden seriously. Well, semi-seriously. I did a great job of growing zucchini and making Zucchini Relish, which I have recently been informed is called Chow-chow in Tennessee. But that meant more regular watering for M. Rhubarb, which in turn meant more vigorous growth. We still did very little with the Rhuuuuubarb.
Then one day my hubby discovered strawberry-rhubarb pie. A co-worker brought in her version of it. Hubby took a slice home with him, so I could try it. Up until that time, my strawberry-rhubarb pie experience was limited. Village Inn and it’s ilk. Rather tasteless. I think people buy it because they remember what it used to taste like…..because once I tasted this pie? I will never go back to pre-made SR pie again. So a tradition was born. Every spring, hubby buys strawberries and I harvest some rhuuuuuuubarb and he makes pie. Delicious. He takes it to work to show it off and I get to eat the remnants. He never eats it. I don’t get it. He makes this delicious pie and doesn’t eat it. I am forced….FORCED…..I tell you, to eat it because it will go bad if I don’t. And bad strawberry-rhubarb pie is something you don’t want to deal with. Ask me how I know.
*crickets chirping*
OK. Ill tell you. Once, I didn’t eat it and we had problems in the kitchen for a week! The sink clogged up and there were ants in the garbage and everything in the fridge had this reddish-green slime on it, like it had been slimed by a strawberry-rhubarb pie. *Shudder* Never again.
So! Now I like the strawberry-rhubaaaaaaaarb mix and have decided to make Strawberry-Rhuuuubaaaarb Freezer Jam. I attempted last night. I took a recipe for 5 half-pints and doubled the amount of fruit because I wanted more than 5 half-pints. I kept the amount of sugar the same and the pectin the same, because I understood that pectin reacts with the sugar and I didn’t want to mess up that part. Welllll, you guessed, I messed. I now have 10 half pints of lovely-tasting strawberry-rhubarb syrup. I put it in the freezer and will pass it out to unsuspecting friends as the year passes. See? It pays to read my blog. Consider yourself forewarned.
I hope this works.... 