There is a difference between jam and preserves. Jam is sweet fruit you spread on toast. Preserves are a frozen moment in time—a piece of summer that you can carry with you the rest of the year: high grass, long naps, warm evenings, your front porch…
My neighbor Mary Wellington makes preserves.
Mary is a farmer. And not only a single-family farmer--a single farmer. She works three acres of very diverse orchards of Glenn Annie canyon all by herself, on which she grows over fifty varieties of fruit.
Her preserves were so treasured and ubiquitous at local farmer’s markets that many people came to call her “The Jam Lady.” Her Blenheim Apricot jam is intoxicating. Her Blood Orange marmalade is insane. The red raspberry is well… indescribable. But Mary Wellington preserves more than fruit.
If you wander up Glen Annie you will find a two story clapboard farmhouse peeking out from behind the persimmon tree. Mary will greet you with her typical burst of enthusiasm and a clap of her hands. She will launch into an impromptu tour of her orchard and its latest bounty: You will flit from tree to tree sampling God’s offerings in a feast of the senses that is literally Edenic. (I know I get religious about food—but I was raised that way.) Taste the Santa Rosas… Smell the outside of this blood orange… Look at the color on these apricots... Oh don’t mind the bruise—just taste it.
I had never heard of M.F.K. Fisher until I started working at One for
the Table. She was/is apparently one of the most famous food writers of
the last century. I rarely read about food, only branching out
occasionally to pick up Gourmet, Food & Wine or Cooking Light
depending on what recipe was featured on the cover. In recent months I
discovered I was one of the only ones not familiar with her work,
because her name kept popping up in various pieces on this site as one
of THE people everyone consulted when it came to enjoying good
food. Finally, intrigued by her reputation and tired of reading murder
mysteries, I decided to see what all the fuss was about...and found a
new friend.
There are times when I scrutinize my outfit before I leave the
house, and find it absurdly, compulsively over-accessorized. It’s
then, as I grab my keys and prance out with red sneakers, mismatched
bracelets, and a brooch shaped like a turnip, that I’ll find myself
thinking of her. Subtlety, in many things, is often advised; but I,
heeding Anne of Green Gables, rarely listen. If at a dinner party,
after I’ve gone on and on to someone about a book they’ll probably
never read, ignoring every attempt they make to escape me, she’ll just
appear in my mind. And often, when faced with a moral dilemma, like
whether to leave the last bite of pie for the person I’m sharing it
with, or to request that my upstairs neighbors stop rollerblading on
the hardwood floor, I’ll ask myself:
Forty-seven-years-old and I could not remember the last time I cracked an egg. So it was a bit surreal to find myself standing with Ludo Lefebvre, a top chef, and have him ask me to separate dozens and dozens for a multi-course dinner for 80 people. I took a deep breath and secretly hoped I would not be the reason my wife’s nightmares about this evening would actually come true.
, began filming 
My daughter has the kind of relationship with her grandmother that I envy. I have only one memory of my maternal grandmother; she’s lying in a hospital looking small and old offering me Schrafft’s sourballs out of their clear glass jar. At 55, after birthing 13 children, she died of breast cancer. My paternal grandmother lived with us for a year when I was a girl so I have more memories of her. In each one she is wearing black from head to toe and in all of them, clutching her rosary beads.