Reprint - Love in a Jar

Since Bakerina’s sending people here suggesting something jam-related, I’m reprinting my guest-blog entry

Originally printed at Bakerina’s back in June 2004.  My how time flies.
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Love in a Jar
AKA, Apricot Jam

Yep, that’s what I did Sunday.  Four batches.  The kind made from a box of apricots that’re just at the point of melting into mush in the bottom of the crate.  The kind where you smell them and you say, “ahhhh” and you breathe way out and you put your head down in the box and you breathe way in and you think, “Clearly there is a goddess in charge of all this and she loves me,” and you breathe out and then breathe waaaaayyyyyy in and hold it until your head spins and then breathe out and bury your head in the box and do it again and again while believing for a minute that all is right in the world.

And then you turn on the stove and sterilize the jars and pit the apricots and add a splash of good lemon juice and pectin and sugar and nothing else and put two pots on the stove and make them both at the same time.  Sweat dripping down the small of your back and off the tip of your nose while you stir with both hands.  Hot jam.  Hot kitchen. The smell of cooking apricots and sugar.  Jars filled and inverted.  Hundreds years of tradition embodied in the liquid sunshine preserved on the counter for the joy of giving.  For the joy of opening a jar of summer in the middle of next winter.  Riches beyond compare.

And then.  And then there was just enough apricot puree left over for a blender full of fresh apricot daiquiris to wash away the sore back and summer-kitchen heat and the tiredness.  I know there is a goddess in charge and she loves me.  I have 20 jars of her love and a rum hangover to prove it.
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And now that you’ve got apricots on your mind, go here and buy Bakerina’s apricot-hazelnut version

Posted by 'mouse on 04/04 at 11:12 AM

  1. never once had apricots ever crossed my mind until i first read this one.  i imagine the odor just comes out of your pores for the rest of the day… (the apricots and sugar, not the rum...)

    Posted by goliard  on  04/05  at  08:55 AM

  2. I remember reading this and loving it the first time, but I forgot just how much I loved it until you posted it again.  ‘mouse, you are truly something wholly other—and I do not mean that in a backhanded or ironic or snarky way at all.

    goliard, you’re right:  that’s a fragrance that embeds itself in your hair and clothes and skin and never lets go.  When your apricot season reaches its height, let me know, and I will send you the perfect recipe with which to take advantage of it.  (We’ll need more leatherwood honey, though.)

    Posted by bakerina  on  04/05  at  09:25 AM

  3. This kind of writing makes me want to get nekkid and jump into a bathtub filled with apricot jam.

    There is no finer fruit than the apricot.  Dried, it is ambrosia; Dried and reconstituted as an ingredient in compote, doubly so.  Fresh, it is delicate, subtle.  And in preserves, heaven!

    Posted by Elisson  on  04/06  at  07:28 PM

  4. Oh, yes.  What magnificent writing ‘mouse.  Apricots, apricot jam, double pots of love.

    But, did you have to mention Bakerina has a new jam for sale?  I’m still waiting for the first package to arrive.  It’s just cruel, is all.

    Posted by boot  on  04/08  at  04:01 PM

  5. OK, Not sure if I want to be a mango or an apricot!!!

    Posted by Heather  on  04/19  at  07:41 AM
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