When in doubt, make jam

I recently posted about the excessive anxiety I suffer when buying birthday presents for other people's children. Well today, I made birthday present history, at least in my opinion. It might not make the birthday girl's head spin around, and Bela will probably wish she were the one who got her the paper dolls with sturdy, reusable dresses, but...

I also recently posted about the almost  40 pounds of strawberries my family managed to pick last week on a trip to Indiana.

Today was one of those days I won't forget easily; one of those days where all in one fell swoop I solved at minimum three "problems" facing me in one afternoon.

• Problem 1: Chris was out running errands all day, and I got up at 5am to run with my CARA group. This meant that I was tired, cranky, alone with the kids, and without any concrete entertainment plans. 
• Problem 2: The biomass of the strawberries in my freezer was literally weighing on my mind. Must. Make. Something. I already canned 14 jars of strawberry jam, but, eh, there were 6 gallon-sized freezer bags left.
• Problem 3: Another birthday party tomorrow.

So today, we made a totally kid friendly version of jam: freezer jam. It does not require any special equipment, it does not require a lot of time spent around boiling water, and it does not require highly sterilized jars. In case you don't have kids, the three aforementioned requirements would have made this project an infuriating one to do with my children.

I'm including a link to the recipe here, in case you find yourselves with a surplus of strawberries and rhubarb. It was good. Very good. Bela was in charge of the portion of the jamming that required sharp objects: chopping the rhubarb into pieces and mincing it later in the food processor. Mae was my master strawberry smoosher and sugar shaker.

We quickly churned out 5 half-pints of strawberry-rhubarb freezer jam, and that's when I got inspired.

I ran out and bought a cute child's apron (didn't feel like sewing); I printed out a recipe for Bela's favorite Thumbprint Cookies (you know, the kind you dent with your thumb and fill with JAM?) and glued it to girly paper, and I carefully wrapped up a jar of Strawberry Jam and a jar of Strawberry Rhubarb to use in the making of the cookies. Genius? Maybe. Totally dorky and worthy of some 6-year-old eye-rolling? More likely.

But I can hold my head up high about this one. I even threw in a copy of the freezer jam recipe for the birthday girl's parents.

Happy Birthday indeed.

PS - We threw the thawed strawberry leftovers into the blender and made homemade popsicles with them. It was like killing 4 proverbial birds with one awesome stone.

From: Lorna Sass' Complete Vegetarian Kitchen