Saving a Taste of the Summer that almost was... The Jam Jars of Autumn

Sept. 22, 2004

Spring was later this year, summer hardly came at all, and Autumn started early. In a normal summer my dwarf cherry tree produces its brave crop by July 4. This year it wasn’t pickable until the end of the month. Normally Autumn sneaks in here in the Upper Peninsula about August 13. That’s the date when the jet stream shifts south bringing with it Canadian air, changing the note of the rustle of leaves on the trees and bringing that unmistakable chill off Lake Superior. For us who yearned for the summer that never came, the question is “Now What?”
The answer is jam.

REVIVED SUMMER
There’s nothing like the fragrance of jam cooking in the kitchen to revive the excitement of the summer that almost was. The dwarf cherry tree never recovered from the invasion of army worms a couple of years ago, but we still have a few pounds of frozen, pitted cherries in the freezer along with the mere pound and a half crop for this year.
You might ask, what’s a guy who grew up behind a fur shop in downtown South Bend, Indiana doing making jam in Michigan’s U.P.?
It all started in Scotland, of all places, when my wife, Ulla, and I took an extended honeymoon that ended in Edinburgh with the birth of our first daughter. Back on April 14 in a year back in the previous millennium I bought Ulla a tiny jam making book, Ethelind Fearon’s “Jams, Jellies, and Preserves and how to make them.”
I had never made jam in my life. Though I fancied myself a survival cook, having been forced beyond pb & j sandwiches by a mother who was in business and had no time or inclination to cook much, I had never done the “get out the pectin and sterilize the jars” routines. Ulla experimented with wild Upper Peninsula fruit, using june berries, bilberries, choke cherries, and elderberries for jam, jelly, and syrup.

AMAZING STUFF
You can make preserves from almost anything. Thanks to MS Fearon’s tiny book and my wife’s experience, I got a fine introduction to the art of jam making. That book is full of amazing stuff you will never see in any American grocery store or even gourmet food shelf.
Think of jams made of Apple Ginger, Apricot and Almond, Berberis, Carrot, Cherry and Pineapple, Green Fig, Japonica, Kumquat, Lime, Marrow with Gin (or Whiskey), Raisin and Cranberry, Rhubarb and Pineapple (or Ginger), and Rose Petals, among others. That’s only some of the many jams in that little book that could slip into your shirt pocket (or apron). Then there’s a flock of preserves and marmalades all within 96 small pages.
Reading that little book gave me some understanding of the theory and principles of this culinary art. As a result, I devised a recipe for Pineapple-Ginger jam which the editors of “Cruising World” published in their book of recipes, “The Best of People and Food.” I’ve done some experimenting with marmalades made from otherwise discarded citrus peel. If a recipe fails, all I’ve lost is the sugar or corn syrup, the labor and the energy.
Now that our three-plus 90 degree days of alleged summer are over and we’re stuck in the house to escape a cold drizzle and frequent early autumn showers, it’s time to break out the collection of old peanut butter jars, bona fide canning and other assorted lids, start sterilizing them and preparing the fruit.

NO KUMQUATS
Alas, I have no kumquats, green figs, or other exotic fruits. I am not one to brave swarms of black flies and mosquitoes to pick the much sought-after thimble berries native here and almost nowhere else in the United States, but I do have some tart cherries.
The fragrance of jam in preparation drives away the autumn chill that has crept into the house. Like one of Hamlet’s witches over her cauldron, I stir the batch with a wooden spoon, lift the sterilized jars out of the bath, and ladle them full with the new jam. The lids are screwed on tightly and the jars go into the pot to be boiled long enough to kill any bacteria or molds that have intruded.
A batch doesn’t produce a whole lot of low sugar jam, in this case only three jars. With the price of pectin as high as it is, even if the fruit is free the jam is not. But for this city boy there’s a sense of pride and accomplishment to look at the fruits of my househusbandry labors.
There’s enough left over in the thick-bottomed jam pot for some post-potting samples spread on home made bread. Each season has its joys. Summer may be over, and color season not yet begun, but for now we have jam. Yum.

Harley Sachs is a contributing editor to the Express who divides his time between Houghton, Michigan and Portland, Oregon.