Jam Session

There is only one way to seal the essence of summer: [insert favorite summer berry/fruit] JAM. It's a time consuming process, but when that cold, foggy January morning arrives, I couldn't be happier than to pop the seal on a jar of homemade raspberry jam.
I thought my studies would not allow for any time to take advantage of summer leisure however, I couldn't pass the opportunity up. Thursday evening Sue and I decided to roll up our sleeves, mash the fruit, add the sugar and seal up summer in jeweled jars of raspberry and apricot jam. Yum!
The process get's exciting. You start with a flat of berries and within a matter of minutes they've turned to shimmery, bubbling, stickiness. Talk about a sticky situation...It gets kind of intense when the sticky concoction starts to bubble up. It gets foamy and starts to splatter and the stir-er lets out a few, small " yawch's " but never loses concentration. You have to get the timing just right so your jam thickens. Otherwise you have syrup, which of course, is not a bad thing but it's not what you launched out to make. At one point, we even had flames rising off the stove, but we maintained our composure, got the precious jam in jars...and then took care of the flames.

I'm looking at a rather large bowl of grapefruit on my counter. You know what that's going to turn into? Grapefruit marmalade. Now that the jam making has started, I just can't stop. I feel like I'm missing out on summer. (I think it has to do something with a heavy summer school load?) But I'm going to tackle it all and have lots of jam to boot. Summer is going too fast and I'm frantically trying to keep up with it all. I think taking time away from studying actually makes me more productive in the long run. (At least that's what I keep telling myself:). I've got two more weeks of this grueling academic stint. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. One of the "dropboxes" for one of my classes if full (Yeah!). And my other classes are coming to a screching halt. I feel like a monster snow-plow, zippin' along the road, pushing tons of ice, gravel, snow and dirt. It'll take a while to actually come to a stop, but at least the official summer session will be over! I still have several essays to finish up, a few more books to read and online discussions to participate in. I've come this far, surely I can make it another two weeks!