• Preserves

    Caramelized Onion and Apple Chutney

    This month for the Tigress’s Can Jam, we were asked to get down and dirty with the allium family: onions, garlic, leeks, shallots, scalllions, and their ilk. Except for the few onions…

  • Words

    That Is So Not What I Meant

    When I launched this blog in 2007 — with no intention of writing about jam — I googled “Hitchhiking to Heaven” to find out whether anyone else was already using the name.…

  • Preserves

    How to Slice Citrus Fruit for Marmalade

    In recent months, I’ve logged an astonishing number of hours making marmalade. Many kinds of marmalade. I’ve learned that lots of recipes tell you to cut the peel into thin slices, but…

  • Preserves

    Speedy, Spicy Pickled Carrots

    There’s pressure canning, and then there’s canning under pressure. Today, I learned about the latter. I’m one of those weird folk who likes deadlines, but I’ve really been busting my butt the past…

  • Preserves

    Meyer Lemons Preserved Four Ways

    I’m a Meyer lemon fanatic. Everything about them makes me happy — the yellow weight of them in my pockets and palms, the flower-sweet but citrus-sharp fragrance they lend to my hands,…

  • Preserves

    I Can Jam . . . You Can, Too

    I packed away this blog almost a year and a half ago, and I didn’t expect to come back to it. Why start up again, when the world is aclutter with everybody’s…

  • Words

    Keep Your Hands on the Wheel

    Yesterday I asked my grandfather what he remembers about the Great Depression. His clearest memory is meeting a hungry man on the sidewalk and bringing him to the back door of the…

  • Words

    Shopping Psychosis

    Today I went to Bed Bath & Beyond to look for a bath mat. I should have known better. BBB has the power to induce in me a confusion and delirium unique…

  • Travel

    Quit Your Whining

    Sometimes all it takes to wake you up is a quick shift in perspective. That happened to me today, when my friend Janet reappeared after almost four weeks hiking solo in the…

  • Birds

    My Other Boyfriend

    A while back, Stewart came home from a trip and I told him I’d taken up with a guy down the street. My other boyfriend is a fat guy — big belly,…