“If you’re ever in a jam, here I am,” is a line from the song “Friendship” written by Cole Porter. I know he wasn’t thinking about jams or jelly when he wrote that line but I have been. My most uncomfortable jelly moment occurred at a chic, cocktail party in Washington, DC. Waiters passed trays of hors d’oeuvres, conversations were peppered with dropped names, it was a party for ‘the movers and shakers’ on the political scene.

Grapes - watercolor painting by Carol Egbert

There was caviar, pate, platters of unfamiliar cheeses and even an oyster bar. I was twenty-five years old and impressed. In the midst of this exotic spread, there was a chafing dish filled with sweet and sour meatballs that were irresistible. I asked a fellow meatball-spearing guest if she knew how the meatballs had been prepared. “Oh,” she said, “these are always served at Peter’s parties. He’s related to the Welch’s, the grape people, and this is his favorite way to eat grape jelly.” Trying to keep up my side of clever party banter I added, “Yes, of course, and the meat balls are filled with peanut butter.” With an un-amused shake of her head she said, “Actually, the sauce is made by combining equal portions of Heinz chili sauce and Welch’s grape jelly, the culinary merger of two important families,” and walked off.

Jam unexpectedly came to my rescue when I was a passenger on a Russian train traveling from Mongolia to Siberia in the mid 1980’s. I was weary and homesick and craved a pot of freshly brewed tea flavored with a squeeze of lemon and a bit of sugar. I went to the dining car and asked the waiter, chef and busboy (all the same person), for a pot of tea.

The tea came in a small, dented metal teapot, along with a chipped mug, a spoon and a small pot of strawberry jam. I asked why he had brought me a pot of jam when there was nothing to spread it on. He explained that there were no lemons on the train or probably anywhere else in Siberia and, more importantly, real Russian tea was flavored and sweetened with jam rather than with lemon and sugar. I put half a teaspoon of jam into the mug, he shook his head, took the spoon and added a very rounded spoonful of jam to the mug, filled it with tea, stirred it vigorously, handed the mug to me with an expectant smile and hovered as I sipped. The tea was very strong and quite smoky, the addition of the strawberry jam made it palatable and a few hours later we parted as friends when the train pulled into the station in Irkutsk.

It was a jar of peach jam in my pantry that saved the day last summer when I was preparing the dressing for a brown rice and papaya salad for a potluck picnic. I had forgotten to buy a jar of mango chutney and had no time to make a trip to the market but I did have a jar a peach jam in the pantry. Combined with spices, vinegar and oil, it provided the sweet note that made the salad sing. Since then I always use peach jam rather than mango chutney when I make this salad. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Apricot almond conserve, flavored with amaretto liquor is a golden mixture I made to send to my sons for their holiday dinner.

Apricot Almond Conserve

I used scissors to snip half a pound of dried apricots into strips. I combined the apricot pieces with one cup of golden raisins and three cups of water. I covered the fruit and left it to soak overnight in the fridge.

The next morning, I tipped the fruit into a saucepan and added about a cup of water to make the liquid come halfway to the top of the fruit. I added the grated zest of one orange and simmered the mixture for fifteen minutes. When the fruit was very tender, I added one cup of orange juice and the juice of one lemon and two and a half cups of sugar and cooked the conserve, over medium heat, stirring constantly until it was thick, about thirty minutes. I added half a cup of slivered blanched almonds and cooked it for five minutes more, removed it from the heat, stirred in three tablespoons of amaretto liqueur and ladled the conserve into four sterilized half-pint jars. I sealed them following the manufacturer’s directions, labeled the jars when the conserve had cooled and asked Charles to package them up so that they could be mailed to the Noah and Matthew.

There are labels for these goodies that can be downloaded and printed from my blog, a little gift from me to you.

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I tasted red pepper jam for the first time at a Christmas open house hosted by my friend Leah. She had centered a block of cream cheese on a red plate, dumped (her word not mine) a jar of red pepper jam on top and surrounded the cheese with crackers.

Leah comes from Atlanta and was amazed that I had never tasted this party classic. She generously shared the collection of cream cheese dip recipes that she had found in her Junior League cookbooks. Leah is a self-described ‘dump-cook,’ she doesn’t measure ingredients and doesn’t cook what she can buy. She used pepper jelly from the market but I prefer the flavor of homemade hot and sweet red pepper jam. This jam uses liquid pectin to thicken and has never failed to gel. Here’s how I did it:

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Jellies, jams and conserves packed with sugar and spice are gifts that are welcomed by almost everyone. They bring glowing color to the table and add zing to savory dishes as well as to sweet ones. Consumable treats in recyclable jars are a sustainable way to say happy holiday and they don’t need to be dusted.

Even though berry season has passed, the wild grapes are gone and any apples still on trees belong to hungry birds or deer it’s possible to make preserves with dried fruits like apricots, peaches, raisins and seasonal fruits like cranberries, oranges, lemons and grapefruit. The addition of spices, herbs, vinegar or liquor makes these gifts from the kitchen special.

Bright, ruby red, cranberry-rosemary jelly is the right color and flavor for the Christmas season. The color comes from the cranberries and the combination of citrus and rosemary makes it compatible with pork, turkey and if a hunter helps supply your larder, with venison and game birds. Here’s how I made it: … read more

The delicate, white blossoms of spring have been transformed by sun and rain and with help from the bees into the bounty of red, green and yellow apples of early fall. They fill trees that have been planted in orderly rows in orchards, solitary trees carefully tended in gardens and trees growing wild in abandoned pastures and at the edge of the forest.

Nine months after we moved to Vermont, I saw branches of white blossoms on trees near a deer trail. I mucked across a muddy stream and discovered that our house had come with a long abandoned, five-tree apple orchard. The trees were growing in a hollow, overrun with weed trees, sumac and tall grass. We left our first harvest to the deer whose narrow paths had led me to these trees. The following year we rescued the trees from the weeds. Since then, we share the apples with the deer.

The first step in making anything with apples is harvesting them. I found a small wire fruit picker that looks like a basket with fingers at the hardware store and clamped it to a long pole. It made it possible to harvest the apples without dragging a ladder to the orchard. Apples have a natural, waxy coating that prevents dehydration so I don’t wash them until I’m ready to cook them. After I picked the apples, I made applesauce and apple jelly with the same pot of apples. Here’s how I did it:

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I was driving home from the library when a bear ran across the road in front of my car. It’s the third bear I’ve seen that wasn’t behind bars in the zoo. The other two were performing bears, dressed in vests and hats on the street in Istanbul. This naked, energetic, black bear brought to mind, Blueberries for Sal, Robert McCloskey’s book for children that combines the joy of finding and gathering wild food with the possibility of meeting an animal or two in the process. Although it was too late to look for blueberries, the sight of the bear reminded me that September is wild grape time in Vermont.

It’s easy to spot wild grape vines that have climbed trees, utility poles and wires to reach the sunlight and their yellowing leaves are the signal that it’s harvest time. When cooked with sugar, the grapes that Charles and I harvest each fall become an intense grape jelly. I made eighteen jars of jelly with this year’s harvest. We will spread it on toast, use it to flavor yogurt, give it to friends and enjoy the rest slathered on sponge cake in divine jelly rolls. With just grapes and sugar and a bit of water the jelly is easy to make. Here’s how I did it:

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