Fresh strawberries just scream, “Summer is coming! Summer is coming!” Also, “Eat me! Eat me NOW!” Equally.

I was shopping at my produce place the other day, and ran across a steal of a deal on some organic, local strawberries that were on the edge of mushiness. A WHOLE FLAT for $9.95. Strawberry freezer jam begged to be made. Then, in the middle of my mixing and stirring, I remembered a bag of culinary lavender I recently ordered, for the purpose of making these, and had a floral epiphany. Strawberry jam with lavender! It was a downhill slide from there, in the best possible way, into a pool of sticky goodness.

While many freezer jam recipes call for a ton of sugar and pectin in order for the stuff to set and jell properly, there are ways you can get around using that processed heart disease powder. I used some raw, local honey, full of minerals and nutrients that the body can appreciate in small doses. I decided to forgo the pectin in this recipe, and call it a “compote” instead of jam, since it didn’t thicken to jam-like consistency. If you want your jam to be jam and not compote, but still retain its mostly from-the-ground-and-hives quality, you can get a packet of Pomona’s pectin, made from citrus, and follow the instructions in the box.

The quantities here would make about four pints of compote, but I happened to have this whole flat, see? So I quadrupled the recipe, and infused half with culinary lavender.

Strawberry lavender compote

4 C fresh Hood strawberries (they’re the most delicious)
1/2 C raw honey
Juice of half a lemon
1/2 t. culinary lavender, crushed into fine powder

Use a potato masher or a pestle or the bottom of a heavy jar to smash the strawberries into a juicy, mushy mess. Mix in the honey – it will take a few minutes, because room-temperature honey doesn’t really want to mix with anything, but it’ll happen. Whisk in the ground lavender, then the lemon juice.

Ladle into freezer containers. I used four-ounce mason jars, because this is a great giveaway preserve, and those masons are the perfect giveaway size. Leave a half-inch of head space, so the glass doesn’t crack (if you’ve used glass; leave space either way, though).

Freeze, and thaw as needed, to savor the spring for months to come!

30 May This entry was published on May 30, 2015 at 2:54 pm. It’s filed under Collection and tagged freezer jam, fresh produce, honey sweetened freezer jam, honey sweetened jam, jam, lavender, no pectin, organic produce, pectin free, portland organic gardeners, strawberries, strawberry, strawberry freezer jam, strawberry lavender compote, strawberry lavender freezer compote, strawberry lavender jam, u-pick. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.