Pozzy-wallah - (1914) A man who is inordinately fond of jam.
Example: “Daniel was always a different sort of child, but who could have imagined he’d grow up into such a pozzy-wallah?!”
there are still a few jars of my jam on the shelf at the Greenwood Gourmet Grocery, at least there were the other day when i bought some. i don’t think there is any more jam anywhere closer than 3 months in the future.
that’s right, folks, this saturday (11/21) will be my last appearance of 2009. i’ll be back with strawberries in may, to start the season all over again. my jam is for sale at a number of fine local retailers, and will be available until they run out. they are: feast, albemarle baking company, the happy cook, the greenwood gourmet grocery, and pollak vineyards.
Here are the flavors for this weekend:
Peach + Raspberry!
Pear + Ginger
Pear + Lavender
Pear + Hibiscus
Peach Blackberry + Lemon
Peach Blackberry + Lime
Peach Blackberry + Ginger
Peach Blackberry + Rosemary
Double Plum
Double Plum + Lime
Double Plum + Ginger
Rhubarb + Lime
Rhubarb + Ginger
more press: http://www.northernvirginiamag.com/gut-check/2009/09/03/all-summer-in-a-jam/
this weekend at the city market:
pear ginger
peach lavender
peach + lime
fig
fig + lime
rhubarb + lime
white peach + hibiscus
plus whatever i can whip up tonight.
the jam season is ending (last year i sold my last jar on november 1st) and the holidays are coming. so buy jam while it is here… or you’ll turn around one day and it’ll be gone.
And now, a reading from the book of Jam According to Daniel.
A long time ago, the people consumed jams filled with preservatives and artificial sweeteners.
Then Virginia-based artisan producer Daniel Perry came onto the scene, armed with little more than a love of local, in-season fruit and a palate for good flavor.
In time, his use of spray-free produce and flowers (whenever possible) helped to heal junk-tainted taste buds by creating purer products.
The humble maker’s secret recipe involved one pound of fruit in every jam-packed jar. Cooking it for longer minimized the need for sugar; he also banished pectin.
The people gathered to rejoice in such combos as raspberry and rhubarb, peach and lavender, and hibiscus and white peach.
And it was good.
(http://www.dailycandy.com/washington_dc/article/73519/Jam+and+the+Holograms)
if you’re wondering about the holograms, please refer to the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jem_(TV_series)
i’ll be at the market this weekend, at my normal place near the bottom of the hill, and i’ll have plenty of flavors.
i’ve got peaches, raspberries, blackberries and plums to work with, so i think the spread’ll be looking like this, with a few last minute additions, as usual:
yellow peach
yellow peach + lavender
yellow peach + raspberry
lemon peach blackberry
shiro plum + raspberry
blackberry + lemon
peach + lemon
peach + ginger
see you there!
for a change of pace, i will be located near the bottom of the hill at the city market tomorrow, 3rd tent from the end. it’s the most used entrance and pretty flat, so i’m not too worried about it. hopefully old friends will be able to find me and i’ll make some new ones. as to the jam itself, there is much news to relay:
blueberries are gone (unless i go to petersburg to pick them, which is a pain in my keister)
raspberries are gone (but i have some peach + raspberry jam left)
rhubarb is nearly gone (i’ve been promised some by radical roots but it won’t be available until next week)
plums are here (santa rosa plums this week, shiro plums next week, damsons in three weeks or so)
peaches are going strong (clingstones are fading, semi-clingstones have arrived, and clingstones are on the horizon)
blackberries are going to be here soon (by the bushel!)
i am going to be out of town from july 26th until august 2, which means I WILL NOT BE AT THE MARKET ON AUGUST 1 (it’ll be the first market i’ve missed since i started the season in early may). i won’t miss any other markets, i promise, until i run out of jam at the end of the season. see you at the market!
a month or so ago, once i had gotten into the swing of things for jam season 2009, i realized the fundamental truth of jam, the basic self-evident conceptual unit of it all. i think i had discovered it last season but forgotten over the cold winter months, and anyone who produces enough jam, perhaps 800 or 1000 jars in a stretch, will most likely come to the same conclusion. i will attempt to explain this below:
humans project patterns onto random events in pursuit of an illusion of control. the recent discussion of celebrity deaths, how they “always” come in threes, reminds me of this human tendency. such assertions have as much validity as voluntary response polls, since coincidental causal relationships are invulnerable to conflicting data, and only supporting evidence is included. it is another facet of this same conceptual battle to frame unfamiliar concepts within conventional constraints that leads us to habitually anthropomorphize anything we encounter. this sort of behavior is very human and not necessarily wrong, though it is hypocritical, but that quality is the most human of all.
the secret of jam requires a slight acceptance of the jam’s own intentionality, and an attribution of some very human qualities. it does not want to be overcooked, you know, so it will tell you when it is almost done by hissing and popping popping very loudly. once it starts “talking” to you in this way, audibly, the jam is telling you that its time to get your jars, lids, funnel & ladle from their boiling water bath. once the jam is really finished, it will start to leap out of the pan and burn you. little flecks will begin to appear on the walls, ceiling, your clothing, and any exposed patches of flesh. i’ve been burned many times on my hands and arms, as would be expected, and occasionally i lean to close at this stage and burn my face. once the jam is leaping out of the pan and burning the jam maker, it’s obvious that the jam is finished, which is the beautiful simplistic secret truth of jam. it will tell you when it is almost done and it will remind you when it is completely ready, with excruciating pain if necessary. what could be easier?
i’ll be at the market very soon in spot 58, next to maggie the pottery lady, across the aisle from megan & rob at roundabout farm and partway down toward curtis the dahlia man.
here’s an approximate flavor list:
blueberry + lemon
rhubarb + lime
rhubarb + ginger
raspberry + rhubarb
raspberry rhubarb + ginger
strawberry rhubarb
strawberry rhubarb + ginger
cherry rhubarb + lime
peach + strawberry
yellow peach
peach + raspberry
peach + everything (1 batch of peach jam + the leftover samples for all of the flavors that have passed; strawberry, cherry, rhubarb, blueberry, raspberry, lavender, thai basl, ginger, lemon, lime, etc.)
see you there!
Lisa’s writing is very visual and matter-of-fact, which lends emphasis to the beauty and simplicity of the subject matter: http://alocalnotion.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/sayonara-strawberries/ here’s a free sample:
“The date was May 5 2009, and despite days and days and days of cloud cover interspersed with rain, strawberry season had come to Central Virginia. A few days before, a friend in-the-know (Daniel Perry, of Jam According to Daniel) had his buddy ‘jump the season’ by picking berries in North Carolina and then dropping them off in Charlottesville so that he could begin jam production for the year. By burning up the ‘U-Pick’ phone lines, working websites, and lots of personal inquiries he had discovered that ripe red strawberries could be picked at any number of local operations – if you didn’t mind wet weather and wet berries.”
peaches are here!!!!
tomorrow at the market i’ll be in the same spot as last week and the week before, in the blessed shade under the trees at the back end of the parking lot. i’m nestled snugly between cricket’s fabulous baked goods and a veritable mountain of lavender. it’s a pungent counterpoint to the delectable wafting odor of frying pork that calls marketgoers over to babes in the woods for a sausage on a bun. the lavender plant that i bought with jam last week will be in my jam very soon…
flavors this week: peach jam, peach + raspberry, cherry peach + ginger, cherry rhubarb + lime, rhubarb + lime, rhubarb + ginger, strawberry + lavender, peach + lavender, raspberry + rhubarb, blueberry + lemon.
see you there!
i’m picking cherries today, buying peaches tomorrow, picking cherries and buying rhubarb on tuesday, picking raspberries and blueberries on wednesday (and buying plums hopefully), picking them again on thursday, and i think that’s about all i can fit into the next week. i’ll be at the wednesday market (Farmers in the Park at Meade Park) and at the saturday market as usual, in the same spot as last week.
sorry for the recent scarcity of posts. lots of jam to make; new retail outlets are popping out of the woodwork! update on that to come soon, and more pictures, i promise.