Mulberry Jam

One Saturday in late April, Caroline and Iain and I were walking back from somewhere - probably Alon's or the Farmer's Market - and Caroline noticed the mulberries on the tree in Vita and Alex's yard.  She told us that she'd never known mulberries were edible, til one day when - as part of a school-organized field trip - she and some classmates and their advisor had spent the day riding MARTA and visiting local sites in Atlanta.  Somewhere they had come upon a mulberry tree, and her advisor picked some berries and ate them. 

We talked about making mulberry jam.  It seemed like it might be fun to do, even if it wasn't very good.  When I got home, I found a recipe on line, and emailed Vita and asked if it was okay if we picked some mulberries.  She said yes, and I bought some jars and pectin (we had plenty of sugar), but then I left town for a trip and we didn't get any made that weekend.

It wasn't til a couple of weeks later, on Mother's Day, that Iain and I walked up the street with a metal colander and picked what I guessed to be a quart of mulberries.  They were beautiful, I thought, so I took a picture of them:

Each berry had tightly attached to it a quarter-inch-long green stem.  In the instructions with the on line recipe I'd found, the writer said it was too much trouble to take off the stems, but I cut them off with scissors as I sorted the berries.

I washed and sterilized the jars and then started on the jam.  It didn't seem possible that the jam could boil - the recipe just called for berries and sugar and a little bit of lemon juice - but it did, and at some point something magic happened and it suddenly turned translucent and a beautiful claret color.  It was, I think, the most beautiful jam I'd ever seen. 

It also was, quite possibly, the best jam we'd ever had.  It was delicious!  I left a jar for Vita and Alex, and gave one to my friend Karen when she was in town.  Now we have about half a jar left, of the six half-pints that we made that day.  I was hoping that we could make another batch, but Caroline and I walked by the tree earlier this morning, and there are no more mulberries.

She is sitting at the dining room table across from me, now, eading the New York Times and eating wild plums that we just got at the Farmer's Market.  No more mulberry jam til  next year.  We'll just have to make do, somehow.