Slammin’ Kudos

My very discerning friend, Lynn Eva Barber (Lavanga), recently ordered a jar of Strawberry Conserve. As with each order I ship out, I hold my breath and cross my fingers, hoping that the customer will not only appreciate the taste of my products but also appreciate the overall concept of human made food: the time, the effort and the ingredients which go into every jar.

So when Lynn sent me the following email, I finally was able to exhale knowing that my jam passed the test of her tastebuds. Here is a copy of her words of praise, along with her delicious looking crepes displayed on melamine servingware. See? Sabjimata jam fits in with the modern lifestyle aesthetic.

I am also relieved that my packaging can withstand the abuse of the US Postal Service, who obviously doesn’t give a damn about broken glass and jam not mixing well together.

Your jam arrived safely on Saturday despite the fact that the mail carrier threw (yes, threw it–KP saw her) onto the porch! Hello!?! It was marked fragile!

Anywho! The conserve is slammin’. It’s sweet, but has a nice tart finishing note. It would be perfect on cheesecake. Too lazy to make cheesecake though, I did fill some crepes with it on Sunday and it was excellent. Tasted like I had just made it for the crepes. Very fresh. Kudos! Nitai Gauramani enjoyed themselves. I took a pic of the offering for you.

xo,
Lynn

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Natural By-Product

Usually when I skim the foam from jam I can it and use it for our own personal cooking use. But this time I decided to freeze it and make sorbet. Since pectin is in everything these days from commercially produced yogurt to ice pops (go ahead, read your ingredient lables!), I was very confident that pectin rich jam foam would produce an awesome sorbet.

 

 

And of course, I was right!

 

 

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U-Pick Here

Strawberry season has officially begun! We have a few sources for local and organic strawberries around here and I plan to take advantage of them as much as possible. Last year the kids and I were home all the time and it seemed like all we did for the first two weeks of June was pick strawberries, eat strawberries, make strawberry jam and eat hot strawberry jam. This year we mostly drive back and forth to State College for pre-school.

When I was driving the kids home from pre-school Monday I passed the Amish farm and could not help but stop short at the sight of their sign. “Stawberries.” Although they have great organic produce, their strawberries were too costly for my jam op. Better to stick with pick your own.

I checked in with the local Hare Krishna farm to see what was going on with their strawberries but it looks like they will be peaking around next week. I then called Brummer’s Farm to find out their price—same as the Amish on the already picked but the pick your own was reasonable. I told Meg that I would be by on Friday morning to pick but she seemed to think I should come right away.

My husband was leaving for work in an hour and a half and there wasn’t much time. But I do tend to get fruit panic attacks when I think of berries ripening in the field. Madhava sensed that I was getting stressed out trying to figure out when I would be able to pick so he suggested that I grab a bucket and go.

In an hour I was able to pick 2 gallons of strawberries, which isn’t that much, but a start nonetheless. And it was enough to alleviate a strawberry related panic attack. For now. At least until next week when the strawberries peak at the Hare Krishna farm.

Hopefully by then my legs will adjust to the picking squat position. Either the pain I am feeling in my thighs is testimony to the really good workout gotten from berry picking or just more proof that my physical age is closer to 63 than 33.

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Slow Food Deserves Slow Shirts

So, my “Human Made” t-shirts should be arriving soon. I hope. They are taking longer than expected. To make? To ship? I am not sure.

These shirts are a mystery. I emailed the person who designed them to see if he is cool with me crediting him on this blog for the shirts. He is kind of a highbrow person and I don’t want to bring down his uber-image by associating him so intimately with my humble, earthy jam. I am very grateful to him for designing the shirts. Although he hasn’t responded, in this case I will not take silence to mean consent. But I will say that his initials are R.F. And he has a job. A job that pays into Social Security. I hope that doesn’t give too much away.

The shirts are being printed by TDT Silk Screening in New Jersey. I hung out in high school with the owner, Geoff Dagastino, and he is giving me a really good rate on the printing. Chris Daily out of Harrisburg offered to print the shirts for me, but his prices were higher than TDT’s. I wish I would have talked it over with him more because I just found out he would have matched TDT’s prices. And he’s local.

Anyway, my shirts are supposed to be in transit, but I am not sure if that is the case since as of yet I have not received the invoice. So if you want to know what I’m doing these days, its sitting around waiting for UPS to show up. I am taking a break from jam making because there isn’t much to can right now and I am just trying to enjoy having a cleaned up and put away kitchen for at least a week.

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