Blue Ribbon Jam: White Peach & Strawberry Jam (Conserve) ~ Takes two 2013 Blues!

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July’s been a jammin’ month! Summer fruits are at peak abundance. Warm-to-hot daytime temperatures make our farm market purchases ripen quickly.

Overflowing our counter top baskets, filling the house with enticing fragrances, the stone fruits – apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, and plumcot/pluot/aprium crosses – tomatoes, and avocados demand we eat them or preserve them within a few days.

The last delicate ‘White Lady’ peaches were softening into succulent juiciness filling the kitchen corner with summery perfume. Three pint baskets of organic strawberries were approaching over-ripe in the refrigerator…the time to use them was NOW.

Strawberry jam happens not to be one of my favorites (I prefer strawberries sweet and raw), but it is considered a jam ‘classic.’ Always keen for a flavor twist away from ordinary, I thought why not combine them?!!

Our favorite fruit vendors, Brenda and her husband, can’t even sell all they bring to the farm markets, so the overflow is donated to Salvation Army for food kitchen. Even the food kitchens get overwhelmed with summertime’s abundance and occasionally turn away the beautiful ripe, ready-to-eat fruit! Seems a shame.

Rediscovering the Art of Preserves

Making preserves and canning is what folks did in my grandparents and great-grandparents time. And what our  European relatives with gardens still do, where produce is tied to the seasons and locale. And where too much of a good harvest, gets preserved. What a delight to eat hand-crafted fruit jam in the dead of winter or to add bright orange winter squash to a springtime soup…

Happily, enthusiastic cooks of younger, and not-so-young generations are rediscovering how easy, creative, and satisfying making preserves can be. Several delightful food blogs are dedicated to the ‘art of jam’ (see resources listed at the end of this article). You can find numerous books on preserving. Everyone has their favs. Some are considered kitchen library standards.

My favorite jam recipes come from old-fashioned cookbooks purchased in my teenage years, others from my parents’ era, and a few written by European or Australian authors because the recipes don’t use commercial pectin. I’m an au naturel* gal preferring to cook with authentic, wholesome, organic or non-sprayed, ingredients just as nature makes them. My preserves & recipes only use pectin from their fruit ingredients. No packaged pectin to dilute the fruity goodness!

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*au naturel French [literally: in (a) natural (condition)]
adj & adv

1. naked; nude
(No. I don’t cook in the nude….though I do like to swim nude in appropriate locations.)

2. (Cookery) uncooked or plainly cooked
(I prefer genuinely creative, home-style, cuisine, not overly fussy, and definitely NOT plain.)

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged
© HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
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