After catching up on some sleep we decided to go to the Kitsilano Farmers Market to a complete and utter disappointment. It’s not quite time for much of the produce to be in season so there was mostly lettuce and leafy greens. And did I mention how friggin expensive it is? It makes Whole Foods and Granville Island look like a discount! Ryan, feeling sorry for me and being in a weak moment, let me convince him to go to Langley’s Driedger Farms ( http://www/driedigerfarms.com/ ) to get a few flats of strawberries. There is also the more tourist-friendly Krause Berry Farms which sells berries for about the same price (marginally higher). At Krause they have a porch serving shakes, corn pie (delicious), and other farm-stand goodies – definitely worth a visit: http://www.krauseberryfarms.com/ . At the farmers market, they were selling strawberries for $8/lb ($4 for half a pint). At the source, they were being sold for between $1.50 to $2/lb!! I bought about $50 worth and went back to start jamming. Jamming strawberries or overripe strawberries at the farm were the cheapest at $1.50/lb and make the best jam due to peak flavour.  They also had u-pick for $1.50/lb. The jars I used were from the brand Bernadin, probably the most well known of them all. Their slogan on each box of mason jars is “because you can” hahaha….

Here are some shots of the day. As well, Ryan borrowed another one of Ying’s lens’. These shots are all taken from a 35mm lens. Vern is looking perky and ready for his close-up.

Each batch of strawberry jam yielded about 8 cups per 4 cups of strawberries and, get this, 7 cups of sugar!!! Unfortunately you can’t reduce the amount of sugar because the jam won’t set. And you cant double the recipe either for the same reason. We did about 6 batches and made a really big dent in our 22lb bag of sugar. And by the way, all that jam was only made with 10lbs of strawberries. The rest of the 15lbs (1 flat) of strawberries were washed, hulled and frozen on trays to fill my freezer for the winter. I did the same with blueberries last year and am down to my last 1/2lb of berries. 1-days work for almost 10 months freezer-stash of berries is pretty good.