Concord Grape & Plum Jam
Today I honor friendship, and my friends who are my chosen family.
These friendships have been especially important during a pandemic, keeping me grounded and connected as well as offering a space to vent the many concerns and frustrations these times have brought on. With one friend we may start off talking about the recent success and failures we’ve had with our sourdough loaves, next moving on to a Facetime walk through her garden where she proudly shows me where she dug and what she planted. Some days a friend and I have long meandering conversations about parenting during a pandemic, motivating kids and trying to keep them on task with their schoolwork. Sometimes I speak with another friend who owns a local business and we try to navigate the catastrophe of the current economic situation. Yet another calls me because she believes that I will squeal with delight over her recent purchase of a Morello cherry tree, and we become excited thinking about the cakes and preserves that we will one day make from its fruit when we can reconnect.
A decade ago, soon after I moved into my Portland neighborhood, I fell into a fast friendship with a neighbor. With kids of similar ages, we have shared many occasions together — hiking, camping and exploring the coasts and mountains of the Pacific Northwest, walking to and from school with the kids scootering ahead, and visiting pumpkin patches around this time of year. We’ve spent many, many hours talking, dreaming and supporting one another as we have moved through our lives. She’s one of those friends with whom I can spend weeks or months without talking, but then once we start again, we pick up right where we left off.
We never know what life may throw at us, and this year her parents found their Concord grape arbor heavy with fruit but unable to process them into jam as they normally would. This past weekend, my friend and her family harvested the vines between rain showers, and brought three red five-gallon buckets to the bakery. where the grapes were given a quick rinse and spread out onto towels to dry overnight in the fridge. Sunday morning the AM bakers tediously destemmed the grapes, and this week I will cook them to extract their juice. Then I am going to add the Italian Prune Plums that I wrote about a few weeks ago, and stir, stir, stir, until the mixture bubbles and splatters, reducing to an intensely flavored sweet-tart jam.
In honor of friends, family, tradition and coming together to help those around us, this week our Secret Item is jars of fresh Concord Grape & Plum Jam. They’re available for our newsletter subscribers only, so be sure to join our email list for access to all of our weekly specials.