Catbird Lessons

Or, I should have figured this out a long time ago.

Although I make as much of our jam and jelly as I can, time and questionable crops often leave us buying some at the grocery store.

And it ALWAYS ends up getting tossed. We will enjoy some delicious toast or ice cream with some kind of exotic jelly, then forget it is in the fridge, and voila, mold.

Then last summer the boss bought me a gigantic jar of grape jelly for the catbirds and orioles.

So big that most of it was still left at the end of summer. I stuck it in the freezer for this year. When I started to feed it I discovered that it was easily spooned even when frozen, so I just left it in the freezer. When it was gone I bought a new jar and did the same.

Now everybody is using my catbird food on their toast! (We ran out of homemade strawberry.)

But, lesson learned. From now on when we buy jelly at the store it is going into the freezer so we will get to enjoy it much longer. 

I feel kind of foolish considering that I do about ten batches of strawberry freezer jam every year and eat that right out of the freezer sometimes...oh, well, live and learn.