August 10, 2005

A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

Okay so maybe it should really be called a hot time in the kitchen.... But let me go back...

Two years ago, my grandmother taught my cousin, Michelle, and I how to make homemade Cherry Jam. We were up in Michigan at our log cabin in the midst of Cherry season. So we found a cherry orchard that would allow us to pick the cherries ourselves and went home to enjoy cobblers and pies and anything else we could think of. When we returned to the cabin, we remembered Grandmother's Cherry Jam. So we asked her to teach us how. Fast forward two years...

I asked my parents to bring me some cherries from Michigan this year so I could again make Cherry Jam. Which they graciously did -20 POUNDS of cherries!!! That's a LOT of Jam. To say the least. So I started making Jam. Sunday, I decided to make one more batch of Jam and be done with it. For some reason using the exact same pot as every other batch (and the same measurements) my jam began to overflow the pot. I turned down the heat and reasoned that it only needed to boil less than a minute longer so I would ignore the mess until I was finished. One, two, three seconds later, my pot is engulfed in flames.... Apparently cherries and sugar are highly flammable! I quickly grabbed my pot off the stove and turned off the burner. Flames are still there! I grabbed the flour container to try and smother it - no luck. Now I have a burner - on fire covered with charred flour! Wait - my mother has stainless steel burner covers - so I grabbed one and covered the flames! Success! It put out the fire.

So if you want to know what I did on Sunday - well, I set my mother's kitchen on fire and made some pretty good jam in the process!

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