Several lifetimes ago three women neighbors and I took up jogging. It proved to be a great way to start our days (6:30 AM), a satisfying way to maintain fitness and a reliably effective stress diffuser as we escaped the all too dependable hour of “Where’s my…Look, I have to get going or I’ll be late…Who drank all the milk…It’s not fair; I’m always the one who feeds the dogs…Do I have to do EVERYTHING” operetta that otherwise began our days.

For the four of us those mornings really were about age-old female bonding we missed with full time jobs, high school kids, pets, houses, yards, gardens and community activities. Our jogging carried no expectations and no rules, just running, talking, encouraging, pointing out interesting birds, listening to problems, slowing down if one of us was tired or pumping harder together as we prepared for an upcoming 10k. The group lasted five wonderful years before we moved on with our lives, marriages and professions.

This week, twenty some years later, the bonding was rekindled for two of us with a day in my kitchen making jam. The ritual of picking, washing jars, comparing recipes, stirring fruits and adding pectin connected us as friends and fellow foragers stocking our larders.

I love making jam. Every summer when berries appear in the garden, at roadside stalls and in farmers markets I imagine fruity aromas rising above the jam pot, and the process of picking and freezing berries begins.

My favorite old standby jam is mixed berry: raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. Most years an untried berry or fruit tempts me, and I make a few special jars. Yesterday there were two: Damson plums and gorgeous, tiny red wild plums.

The only part of making jam that I can’t seem to resolve is the ghastly amount of refined sugar it takes for jam to set up. So every few years I rebel, add less than the recipe calls for and produce soupy jam that has to be re-cooked with more sugar. I sigh, pay the sugar penance, redo the jam and acknowledge my silliness. This week was the third year of adding enough sugar the first time; I probably should mark my reminder calendar for next September.

Wild Red Plum Jam
Makes 4 half-pints

Ingredients

1#(about) plums (Their less than 1” in diameter size produced 2 ½ cups fruit)
1 red Bartlett pear, peeled, cored and chopped (happened to be in the fruit bowl, slightly over ripe)
Pulp from 1 orange (also in the fruit bowl)
4 ½ cups refined sugar
¼ tsp. pure orange extract
1 ½ envelopes Ball’s Liquid Pectin

Procedure

Follow directions for cooked fruit jams on the recipe in the Pectin box.