The Fine Art of Making Jam

When I was a little girl, my mother got me into the kitchen at 8 years old and began teaching me the fine art of baking and cooking. By the time I was 12 years old, I was doing the cooking and baking for church social events and family dinners at home. Desserts were my specialty, and my collection of cookbooks at that age was impressive! I still have my battered but trusty "Joys of Jello" cookbook, and I still make recipes from it.

My family had one acre of land within the city limits of Seattle, complete with a barn, a chicken house, and a very large vegetable garden. We'd spend the spring months planting the garden, and summertime was filled with picking the produce from the garden and the large number of fruit trees on our property. The two Royal Anne cherry trees were huge, and my brother and I would climb onto the top of the tree on hot days, find a comfortable position on the limbs, and eat cherries until we were almost sick. Funny what I can remember after all these years!

My mom was an expert at canning fruits and vegetables, having grown up on a farm in North Dakota. We'd make literally dozens of jars of jams and jellies, and they'd find their place on large shelves in the basement. "Putting up food" is a lost art today, but it certainly was imporant when I was growing up to have food from the summer last all year in the beautiful glass jars with the gold-ringed tops.

While my canning is limited to making jam, I still enjoy growing the raspberries, picking them, and turning them into something that I can savor all year long.