Grandad’s Orchard Blueberry-Peach Jam

I picked up a jar of Grandad’s Orchard Blue­ber­ry-Peach Jam at a farmer’s mar­ket here in Fort Wayne.

The list­ed ingre­di­ents are sug­ar, blue­ber­ries, peach­es, pectin, all­spice, cloves, cin­na­mon. There is no nutri­tion label, so I had no idea how many grams of sug­ar per table­spoon (oth­er than the fact that sug­ar is list­ed first), and the young lady tend­ing the table was not help­ful on the sub­ject. But I thought I would give it a try.

A knowl­edge­able observ­er would note the inter­est­ing tri­fec­ta of spices: all­spice, cloves, and cin­na­mon. A quick glance at google search results shows them used for mulling cider, etc. That would be OK. A blue­ber­ry peach jam that has a fla­vor of being mulled.

But that’s not what I tast­ed. I tast­ed pump­kin pie. The tex­ture is not pump­kin pie, but the fla­vor is. This made for an odd peanut but­ter and jel­ly sand­wich. Per­fect­ly edi­ble, but strange.

A keen eye might also have not­ed the hash marks on the label. I put them there. I have on occa­sion kept track of how many sand­wich­es I got out of a giv­en jar of jam. There is quite a wide vari­a­tion on this depend­ing on the tex­tures of the jams. I knew as soon as I made the first sand­wich that this jam was not going to go far. In fact, as the hatch marks show, I got only five sand­wich­es from this jar. The jar was $5.00 so it added $1.00 to the cost of each sand­wich. Tastes strange and is expen­sive! Look­ing at my records I show the fol­low­ing size jars pro­duc­ing this num­ber of sand­wich­es: 20 oz., 23 sand­wich­es; 16 oz., 16 sand­wich­es; 12 oz, 13 sand­wich­es; 10.5 oz., 13 sand­wich­es; 8.5 oz, 11 sandwiches.

So five sand­wich­es from five ounces is not much. And the $5.00 for 5 ounces is expensive!

For the record, here is a pic of the por­tion of Grandad’s Orchard Blue­ber­ry-Peach Jam I put on the sandwich:

The label shows a web­site: www.bigsistersalsa.com which does show Grandad’s Orchard prod­ucts, but I can not find the blue­ber­ry peach jam there.

White Tea Key Lime Raspberry Preserve

I have nev­er been able to drink any bev­er­age with the word tea in the name. It is dif­fi­cult for me to not spit tea out. Hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble stuff.

But key lime stuff is usu­al­ly very good. And Rasp­ber­ries are fantastic.

So Deb­by and I were trav­el­ing home from out north­east a few years ago and we stopped I don’t know where but I’m think­ing it was far west New York near Pennsylvania.

I browsed the pre­serves. And there it was: White Tea Key Lime Rasp­ber­ry Pre­serve made by Cher­chies in Malvern, PA. I almost did­n’t get it due to white tea being not only in the name, but first!! On the oth­er hand, it was only $5 (at that time) for 13.5 oz and there was the key lime and rasp­ber­ry part.

So I bought it. I’m a bit more adven­tur­ous than I used to be.

Out­stand­ing pre­serves. Great fla­vor that is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than any­thing I’ve ever had. Not just dif­fer­ent, but good dif­fer­ent. It’s been awhile since I ran out so I can’t be more spe­cif­ic. But I sure was sor­ry when I ran out.

I can’t wait to be out that way again. I’ll be stock­ing up a bit the next time I find the stuff.

Maybe I’ll even break down and order some one of these days.

Wilson Farms Jam

I for­get what it was Deb­by and I were doing in that part of Indi­ana ear­li­er this sum­mer when we hap­pened upon Wil­son Farm Mar­ket. Well, we were dri­ving around to see what we might see when we hap­pened upon the mar­ket. I sim­ply do not remem­ber why we were in that part of the state.

Any­ways. We stopped at the mar­ket and looked around, Deb­by look­ing for fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles and I, see­ing food in jars start­ed look­ing for the jams.

I bought one jar of Red Rasp­ber­ry Jam with No Gran­u­lat­ed Sug­ars Added. It has only five grams of sug­ar and the ingre­di­ant list shows red rasp­ber­ries (always nice to see the fruit come in first!), white grape con­cen­trate, pectin, and water. And it cost $4.99 for 18 ounces!

And the next time we are down that way, I’ll buy more. Excel­lent jam. Not at all too sweet. The bulk of the jam con­sist­ed of bits of rasp­ber­ry still intact and had a good fla­vor of red rasp­ber­ries. If you like red rasp­ber­ries, I don’t know how you would not like this jam.

The only nit I would pick is the amount of water added. Not that the prod­uct is thin par­tic­u­lar­ly, but I think it could be thick­er than it was.

Wilson Farms raspberry jam label
Wil­son Farms rasp­ber­ry jam label

Peanut Butter and Jelly

A few years ago (I real­ly have no idea how many, three? four? five maybe?), I aban­doned the prac­tice of eat­ing lunch out. I used to eat out five days a week, but it got to the point that I could no longer afford to do so.

I start­ed “brown­bag­ging” it. A cool­er, sev­er­al cans of caf­feine free Coca-Cola, and two peanut but­ter and jel­ly sand­wich­es. The first jel­ly was what I found in the fridge, Welch’s Grape Jel­ly. Then a few jars of Smuckers.

Over time, when Deb­by and I did any trav­el­ing, I start­ed buy­ing jars of jam at var­i­ous gift shops, winer­ies and oth­er retail stores that we stopped in. As the cans of Coca-Cola decreased with bot­tles of water replac­ing them, I also began to learn what I want­ed in a jam.

I much pre­fer pre­serves to jel­ly; I like to have some pieces of fruit in the jam. I learned that if the sug­ars were over ten grams in a table­spoon, it would be too sweet (today there is only water in the cool­er, no Coca-Cola.…not even in the house!). Also, I avoid any jam that lists corn syrup or any thing like it in the ingre­di­ants. I also pre­fer that the ingre­di­ant list begins with the appro­pri­ate fruit and the few­er ingre­di­ants the better.

Two week­ends ago, Deb­by had a week­end with her daugh­ter in St. Louis. One of the places they went to was the Mis­souri Botan­i­cal Gar­den. While there, Deb­by, being the lov­ing, thought­ful per­son she alway is, bought a jar of jam for me. She checked the label. No corn syrup and 2 grams of sug­ar per serving.

It did not take long for me to check the nutri­tion label when Deb­by gave me the pre­serves. “Two grams of sugar…gee, that might not be sweet enough,” I thought to myself. But I had just recent­ly fin­ished off a jar of jam that had only five grams of sug­ar and it was excel­lent. So I looked for­ward to try­ing my new preserves.

Just a cou­ple of days lat­er, I fin­ished the jar I was using and opened my new pre­serves. I made the sec­ond sand­wich with the new stuff, the first sand­wich with the last of the pre­vi­ous jar. Then I licked the knife.

It tast­ed very sweet.

When I ate the sand­wich­es, I knew imme­di­ate­ly when I bit into the one with the Mis­souri Botan­i­cal Gar­den Black­ber­ry Pre­serves. It was sweet. Very sweet. Too sweet.

There is no way in heck that those pre­serves have only two grams of sug­ar per serv­ing. That jar is so sweet, I can’t even believe that the two is a mis­print for twelve. Twen­ty one maybe. It is not edible.

I will fur­ther com­ment that the pre­serves have a tex­ture more akin to jel­ly than to pre­serves. There is lit­tle if any pieces of fruit. It is hard for me to judge due to the over­whelm­ing sweet­ness, but the black­ber­ry fla­vor that I think I maybe can detect is good.

I won­der if Deb­by can get her mon­ey back?