Jam

by Lee C. Neff

Here, let me show you the secret cupboard where I keep my jam. See, there is still one jar of Peach-Brown Sugar-Rum, another of Grandchild Blackberry Jam, two jars of Plum Chutney, and one golden treasure: Pear Preserve. A total of five. But don't tell my sister Penny. She always says she's out of jam and that I should mail her another half dozen jars. But I know better. I once caught surreptitious sight of her horde of chutney and jam, hidden behind the canned tomatoes and tuna fish in her pantry, so I know she hasn't really eaten every, single bite. She just wants to be sure she doesn't run out.

I know just how she feels.

It all started because my mother preferred homemade peach jam to Dundee orange marmalade, my father's favorite. So as a child, having two sweet choices for toast did not seem to me the least bit extravagant. I recall, from about age ten, peeling the juicy peaches, stickiness puddling around my elbows, propped on the kitchen table. Mother always put a pit per jar into the kettle, to enrich the flavor, and we cooked the jam until it was s sublime, caramel-peach confection, irresistible by the spoonful, and the perfect crown for meringues and vanilla ice cream.

Southerners are born with a sweet tooth, my genetic heritage. And I glory in satisfying its demands.

Western Washington , however, cannot brag about its peaches. So my garden has no peach trees. It's not that we didn't try to grow peaches. When we moved here, the garden included two, old semi-dwarf trees, with little fruit and considerable leaf curl, so we wisely replaced them with two varieties recommended for our climate, the “flavorful” and curl-resistant “Frost,” and “Harken,” “the best flavored peach in our climate.”

Folks here haven't picked peaches on a sunny afternoon in Texas, or Georgia, or Maryland, or bitten into a warm peach held in one hand while waving honey bees and yellow jackets away with the other. Sublime honeyed peach flesh. Neither “Harken” nor “Frost” measures up.

So when both trees drowned in the perpetual rain of Seattle 's winter of '99, I was not sorry. I bought good Eastern Washington peaches at the local farmer's market, for I can't live without Peach Jam, or Peach Chutney, and can't imagine the purgatory of life without Peach-Cantaloupe-Walnut Preserve or Blushing Peach Jam, a heavenly mixture of peaches and raspberries.

Fortunately for us jam-loving southerners, Western Washington is a fine place to grow other sorts of fruit. In fact, this really may be Paradise on Earth, for only a few years of experimentation will broaden almost any preserver's horizon. Loath to live with just-enough, last summer and fall, I canned twelve sorts of jam and chutney, filling the cupboard with one hundred and three pints of pride. Having such an abundance of gilded glass is an immense satisfaction. And as long as this visual plenty doesn't diminish too quickly, I enjoy being generous with my treasury.

Like many others who live in south Seattle , we have several Italian prune plum trees. Not as fragile as the heat-loving peach, the prune cooperatively permits itself to be halved, pitted and frozen without any additional ritual. Then Plum Chutney, popping with ginger and mustard seeds, or Plum-Hazelnut Jam, not to mention Plum Jam with Curacao, can be made on rainy fall days. And if there happen to be a few halved plums left over, they provide the ideal opportunity for a neighborly sharing of plum cake and tea.

Then there is the fruit that is designed for children's hands. Putting youngsters in charge of picking blueberries, strawberries, raspberries or black berries doesn't necessarily guarantee that there will be fruit available for canning. But now that there are thornless blackberries such as “Arapaho” or “Loch Ness,” to tempt small hands to reach every single ripe jewel, you have a chance to produce a few small jars of Grandchild Blackberry Jam, just enough for small visitors to enjoy on their winter toast.

Finding recipes for these delicacies was not nearly the challenge of finding good ways to use the fruit of our gawky Bartlett pear tree. Like applesauce and apple cider trees, pears require thoughtful winter pruning and several dormant oil treatments. Still, little critters and scabby skin may the ripe fruit. Religiously, we pick these imperfect treasures on August 25 th , lay them on sheets of newspaper in the basement to finish ripening, and then try to use them all before they rot.

Pear flesh lends itself to glorification. So it is tempting to bake pears with red or white wine and serve them with raspberry or butterscotch sauce.

Then again, a preserve we call Punchy Pear Jamboree—a jazzy mixture of pears, pineapple and ginger—is an admirable way to use too many pears.

Another favorite is Pear-Pistachio Jam, at risk of being mindlessly spooned straight from jar to mouth, the way adolescents shell and eat pistachios.

But the confection I look forward to most is the simplest: Pear Preserve, a recipe found in a small remaindered cookbook, A Glut of Apples & Pears, by Ann Carr. It has five ingredients: pears and sugar, of course, and then the juice of one orange, a bit of white vinegar, and a smidgen of butter. Oh, my. I save this modest-looking treat for true connoisseurs, part with each jar as it if were a first-born child. One gives certain gifts only to those who can prove they deserve and will appreciate every morsel.

But my sister Penny called yesterday, desperate because she was out of jam, sure I must have a few more jars to share of a few frozen plums to turn into chutney and wondering which sorts I had already canned this summer.

I lied. I told her that I would check to be sure, but that I didn't think I had any left from last fall. That the pears and plums weren't ripe yet, and that I hadn't gotten around to purchasing peaches.

If she had called saying she needed a kidney transplant, I would have leapt heroically at the opportunity. Surely we are a “match.” After all, her southern genes probably contain just as much jam as mine do. Well, all right, I might part with one or two jars. But I'm having an awfully difficult time finding a box….