***2015 UPDATE! You can also make this into raw freezer or fridge jam! Simply put the chia seends into a high powered blender to make a POWDER (so genius, again, I love my Vitamix – it’s truly my boyfriend), and add that to the raw mashed strawberries with the honey. Jar and freeze or put into the fridge. SO EASY, SO YUM.

All of the exclamation points. To me, this is huge. Jam without all of the preservatives of pectin? Without more white sugar than actual fruit? Glory be indeed. Why might I take such a chance with my precious, organic strawberries picked from July, washed and hulled in freezer bags just waiting for the perfect jam?

Because I’m a lunar that way. I like taking culinary chances, in the name of delicious food that’s actually good for you. Healthy. Yet still TASTES GOOD. THAT’S MY JAM. All pun intended. 

Clearly, in a house with two toddlers and an old-fashioned food loving man, with all of the substitutions and experimenting I do with (refined) sugar-free, low-carb or gluten free baking and cooking, stuff’s still gotta TASTE GOOD. For me too. I’m no birdie and I love food. So. When a friend of mine whispered sweet nothings into my ear about how she tried out some jam making with chia seeds instead of pectin, I was like, COME HITHER TELL ME MORE. And then one of the 3 children under our feet stuck a finger up someone else’s nose or something and the conversation was left by the wayside.

Fast forward to way past strawberry season, with frozen bags of deep crimson heaven just waiting to be turned into jam. It was this past weekend after just having gotten home from apple-picking that I decided I couldn’t very well make apple butter and apple pie filling without first making jam. Seasonally speaking, I was way late already.

I don’t even know with where to begin on how much I love this jam. It’s preservative free, because NO PECTIN. It requires waaaaaaay less sweetener, because NO PECTIN. (Pectin requires obscene amounts of white sugar to work.) All of the added health benefits that come from chia seeds most definitely make my culinary nerd brain do a little dance…