My moment of Zen: Pear Vanilla Jam |
In these very busy times, people often ask me how I possibly
have time to preserve food and the answer is simple…I make time to do it. I have a 50+ hour week job and a husband and
kids, but I take the time to preserve food every year. Why?
First of all, canning provides me the opportunity to slow down and spend
some time with family and friends.
There is no “hurrying up” the process; the time it takes is what it takes. No shortcuts, except that many hands make the
work light. To borrow the old phrase
about “making hay while the sun shines”, Mother
Nature waits for no one. When
the strawberries are ripe, you’ve got a short window to make jam. No putting it off for a few weeks. I can remember coming home from a long work
week and spending a stormy Friday night with my friend Ellen putting up peaches
and drinking wine. Best happy hour
ever!
Preserving food grown locally
requires me to make a connection with a farmer. I have my favorite farmer’s phone numbers
programmed into my phone so a quick text
is all that’s required to know whether there’s a bushel of tomatoes waiting for
me to make into salsa. The foods I
preserve must be better (and often cheaper!) than what I can buy in the grocery
store. A jar of my homemade salsa is
way more delicious, and costs about half, of anything you can get on the
shelf. But the most important reason
why I preserve food is that when I open that jar months later, I have the
memory of making it. Currently, the jar
of pear vanilla jam shown above is sitting on my desk at work, getting ready to
be added to some yogurt and granola for my lunch. But just seeing it reminds me of last fall,
when I was deep in the process of making that pear vanilla jam.
At first, I was going to pick some pears from
my friend Liz’s tree, but by the time I got there, they were gone. As usual, Mother Nature had no time to wait for me. Then, in late fall, I drove out to the west side of the state to
meet up with some friends and on the way back, I stopped at a farm stand in
Michigan’s “Fruit Belt” to see what was left on the shelves. Nothing but pumpkins and apples, but then I
spied a bag of pears in the back! YES! I got back and the pears languished in the fridge a few
days. I carved out some time to make
the jam, adding some vanilla bean scrapings for good measure because I thought
it sounded good. The pear jam (along
with other items from the canning pantry like red currant jelly and wild grape
jam) were gifted to family and friends all through the holidays. My daughter and her boyfriend came home from
college for spring and had some for breakfast….they thought the label said
“Pearl Jam”, which made them laugh.
They loved it so I sent them back to school with a jar. And now a jar sits here with me in May in my
office, reminding me to take some time to enjoy it, and plan what I am going to
put up this summer.
Here’s to the
future!
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