All Summer in a Jam

Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

Summer is waning and that is bad news if you’ve become addicted to the regular pleasures of the flesh. The luxurious nectars and succulent flesh of summer fruits that is.

Take heart, however. As the dwindling crop of summer’s stars (stone fruits like peaches, plums and cherries, or anything from the berry family) is mourned, you can always keep a little bit of the season nestled safely in a glass jar on your cupboard shelves to get you through the long, bleak winter.

By what sorcery you might ask allows you to cram all the sensory experiences of summer and its bounty into a stubby glass jar?

Nothing less than the wizardry of Charlottesville-based jam maker Daniel Perry (just FYI “jam maker” is the technical term). According to the tag line for his Web site jamaccordingtodaniel he muscles “one pound of local fruit into every jar” of jam that he crafts. 

When you speak to Perry about the process of preserving fruit, it does seem more like an act of alchemy than mere cookery.

“I get to take a moment, freeze it, and put it in a jar,” he muses in regards to the ephemeral nature of working with seasonal fruit. He isn’t so much making jam the way you think of your grandmother dutifully filling infinite rows of glass receptacles as he is “preserving the fruit in its own essence,” which sounds much more philosophical.

Procure your own bit of seasonal wonderment through Perry’s Web site, at the farmer’s market in Charlottesville or at Blacksalt in D.C.  His Web site states that his jam, “will last for up to a year in a cool dark place; once it has been opened, a jar can sit in the refrigerator for a very, very long time.” (A very, very long time is also a technical term.) 

Perfect. We actually just need to sustain ourselves until next May when the summer cycle repeats itself and we can again indulge in the fleeting pleasures of the, ahem, flesh.

Tags: Amy Loeffler, Daniel Perry, Gut Check, jam, Northern Virginia Magazine