Jam!

Nathan's mom and grandma are dead serious about making jam, and so when Kathryn decided jam would be a good wedding party favor, she turned to the expertise of Team Placerville. We went up there on Sunday and had a full-day jam-making extravaganza, and by the end of the day we had approximately 115 jars of jam.

Before we arrived, they'd already made fig, fig-rhubarb, apricot, and peach jam. We canned the peach jam, then made blackberry-apple and strawberry jams.

The only other time I've participated in jam-making was in Romania when the neighborhood kids were climbing over Doru and Mona's 10-foot wall to steal peaches, so one evening Doru went out and picked at least 100 peaches off the tree, and then Mona made jam as well as those canned peaches that come in fruit cocktail, and after that peaches became the third part of the tastes-of-Romania triangle, along with pork and garlic.

I've always been intimidated by the long-term storage and bacteria factors of jam making, and also by the giant pot, but after the crash-course, I think I could attempt it on my own, as long as we were working with the jars that make the pop to let you know they're sealed.