jams of two seasons

The East Coast seasons are so hard-wired into my brain that I am surprised every year when I see strawberries at the farmer’s market in September – much less October. But there they are, alongside the pears and apples and other harbingers of fall.

For the last few weeks, I have thought that each week will be the last of the berries, so I grabbed a flat last week and jammed them up with a violet liqueur that I am in love with right now (hello!, in champagne and over fruit and added to a gimlet).

I am getting more and more ballsy with my canning. I now look at recipes for approximate proportions and then – snap! abandon them and wing it. I only thought of the violet when the jam was in its final boil, when I poured in a generous glug. After a few years of rigorously following a recipe and checking the temperature, I now realize that it’s hard to go too hideously wrong with canning experiments because if the preserves don't set and are too runny, it still makes perfect sauce for ice cream and mixing into plain yogurt.

And to throw my seasonal attunement even more off-whack, I picked the season’s first apples up in Sonoma last weekend. Gravensteins – the glorious heirloom variety that is sweet-but-tart and extra-crunchy. The apples used to fill whole valleys up there before the vineyards and second homes moved in.

I roughly chopped the apples and made spiced apple butter that smells like Christmas on the same night that I made the strawberry jam. It felt timely, because on the ride home from Yosemite we talked with our friends from Ireland about holiday traditions. We were bundled up and still smelled like campfire and even passed a snow plow, so the Christmas talk felt appropriate. Back at home, the apples boiled into a lovely russet color and smelled like warm winter nights after I added brandy and orange zest and ground ginger. I envisioned bringing a jar to Ireland this Christmas and spreading it on toast, while we’re still in pajamas and drinking strong tea.

Ultimately, that’s something I love about canning. While you’re preserving this moment, you can almost anticipate savoring it in an entirely different moment, in an all-together different season.

yes we can

Evan Sung for The New York Times

"Suspending plums in time, and syrup."

That phrase alone should make you want to read this recent article on the revival of small batch, home canning, in the New York Times. I love the idea of these jars sitting on our shelves like characters with story lines, prompting memories of certain farms or farmer's markets or the day we canned.

And for you local SFers, check out this project. You can help with a community canning project, or just buy the finished goods. Can't go wrong, either way.

a study in yellow

A new and enormously satisfying spring ritual is finding someone’s Meyer lemon tree to raid and making little pots of lemon curd. I made this batch early this morning, before heading into workland. And it came rushing back to my why the experience is so gratifying. Our kitchen gets great morning light, and there is nothing like the warm sun on your back as you hold lemons in the palm of your hand before juicing and zesting them, then watching the curd slowly thicken. It’s like time itself slows down and glows.

Everything in this recipe is so incredibly yellow, except for the sugar (I guess that just leaves butter, yolks and lemons). So the process makes for some gorgeous, spontaneous kitchen still life moments. The smell and the color of the curd is pure joy. So is the satisfying pop of the jars as they cool and seal. I am crazy about making this, I tell you.

One note: if you’re like me, squeezing and zesting lemons can start as a meditation but quickly become maddening. To cut down on the cursing, try two of my most favorite kitchen tools. This zester and this juicer. These will improve your life, I swear. I could almost make an infomercial about my insane affection for them. As for the curd, I used this recipe, with about half the sugar and more juice.

There are a million ways to use lemon curd: on or over toast, shortbread, gingerbread, pound cake, ice cream, meringues. Here's a new fave: lemon curd and peanut butter PB&L’s. It's low brow, and I love it.