4-INGREDIENT CLEAN STRAWBERRY CHIA JAM
- 1 lb fresh strawberries, hulled & chopped
- 2 tbs chia seeds
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 3 tbs honey OR 3 1/2 tbs lemon-infused honey from Savannah Bee Company
We tried our hand at a garden for the first time this year. We did lots of research, built two raised beds, and were gifted some seeds by our farmer landlord. We germinated, sifted soil, and timed all of our planting to coincide with the best season. Some sprouts popped up, and we felt SO ACCOMPLISHED! WE DID IT! WE GREW STUFF!
And then, the first week of May, a late season frost rolled through. And despite our efforts of blanketing the beds, we lost a whole garden-worth of sprouted squash, corn, peppers, and lettuce. Sad face. We replanted, but all that’s growing in that bed now is mushrooms.
Meanwhile, there has been some out of control mystery brush surrounding the garden shed. We didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t make any trouble last year, so we decided after some debate to leave it alone. A couple of weeks ago, my husband came in from some yard work with a photo of a bright red plump little fruit. A strawberry. From the mystery brush.
A couple days later, in he comes with a whole bowl of ripe, juicy little morsels of summer sweet strawberries!
Well. Apparently we can’t purposefully grow garden vegetables yet but we can accidentally grow a whole bushel of strawberries.
Whatever. I’ll take it.
What I can’t take is food waste, and there are WAY too many strawberries for us to eat before these super-ripe super-juicy little nuggets start to turn squishy and sour. So I decided to try making homemade jam.
I hunted for a sugar free recipe, and happened across The Busy Baker blog, where I borrowed and adapted her chia seed thickened recipe to fit our stock of strawberries. I’m actually out of standard honey, so I used some lemon infused honey I like from Savannah Bee Company, but I think the tartness of the lemon would help cut the natural sweetness of these almost wild strawberries, so it worked out swimmingly.
Of course, jam takes a hot minute to bubble and thicken, and as you may know, I don’t sit well. So in the five-ish minutes it took for the strawberries to let go of their marvelous juices, and the fifteen minutes it took for the chia seeds to start doing their magic, I whipped up the batter for my almost clean banana bread.
Then, after removing the chia jam from the heat and letting it cool just a lick, I greased a pan, turned the batter, and cracked some walnuts over the top. So in less than thirty minutes, I had strawberry chia jam cooling and a banana bread ready to pop into the oven. Not a bad way to pass a half hour, if I do say so myself.
Which I do.
I’ll be freezing one of these jars and half of this banana bread as my baby meal prep, which you can read more about in future posts.
The rest we’ll be devouring – probably in the next week, with slices of banana bread topped with yogurt or a pad of Irish butter and a healthy dollop of strawberry chia jam!
PS – Your digestive system will thank me for this post. 😉
