Strawberry-Vanilla Jam-boree

Anytime I feel a little bummed or homesick, I like to make PBJ sandwiches. It's my ultimate comfort food, and I think making homemade jam and bread (that experiement will be published later) make it that much more comforting.
I had a HUGE bag of beautiful strawberries and needed to preserve them somehow, since I had eaten my fill. It seemed a shame to freeze them, because I tend to forget about things in the freezer...
So, I decided to make strawberry-vanilla jam for bummer days and not-so-bummer days.

Ingredients and Lab Equipment:
Strawberries
Vanilla
Sugar
Water
Pectin
Heavy Sauce Pan
Jar

Lab Techniques:
I mixed up the calcium powder for the pectin and stored it in a small glass jar. I mashed up the strawberries, which yielded about 4 cups of strawberries and put them in the sauce pan with a little water and added 2 cups of sugar. This is considered a small amount of sugar, but I wanted to retain the natural taste of the berries rather than make something overly sweet and sticky. I added the calcium water and brought the whole mixture to a boil. I reduced the heat, added the pectin and stirred for 2 minutes, until it started to thicken, and removed it from the heat as soon as the 2 minutes were up. I poured the hot jam into a jar and sealed it. I left the jar on the counter overnight to cool before I stuck it in the fridge the next day.

Lab Results:
Very comforting! With the reduced sugar, it wasn't as thick as jam, but the chunks of strawberries tasted like real strawberries instead of candied strawberries. I made so much of it, I won't be making jam again for a couple of months.