I’m blessed to work with people who love to give gifts for Christmas. Sometimes my haul at work is more than I get from Santa. One of my most memorable gifts was a jar of homemade peach preserves from my friend Erma. These were so delicious that I had to take the jar home to Mom and Dad for them to try. Now one thing you should know is that Mom’s favorite fruit is peaches. This will help explain the later shenanigans in this story. Now fresh peach preserves are not easy to come by around here. My mother took one taste had suddenly had the crazy eye. She took the jelly and wouldn’t give it back. She was obsessed with it. She hid it from everyone. This may sound like an exaggeration but it’s totally true. She was bent on not sharing a bit of it. especially with Dad. My dad apparently doesn’t have taste buds and just eats whatever he can get his hands on until he’s full. He will just take jelly or some other condiment and smear it on a cracker, with no concern at all for trying to ration out portions, etc. He eats for sustenance. He has even eaten cat treats unknowingly on more than one occasion simply trying to satisfy hunger. So of course she was afraid he would get into it and there would be no more preserves.
Now flash forward a few days later to me being told I have a call in the office. It’s Mom, frantic on the other end, “I heard a noise in the night. I knew as soon as I heard it what it was. It was the sound of a knife scraping the bottom of a glass jar. My preserves are gone!” Somehow, despite her best efforts of hiding it, Dad had clearly found it, and the rest as they say is history. To this day 15 years later, Mom has never forgotten that incident and if you so much as mention the word peach we have to relive it once again.
So how exactly did Erma learn to make jelly that warranted a frantic phone call?? Making jelly is a skill that was passed down to her from her mother and grandmother. The families lived close together in rural Texas. Making their own jellies and preserves was something that the family did regularly, like many families did at the time. Not wanting that tradition to stop, Erma has passed this finely honed skill down to her daughter, and now granddaughters. In fact, it has become a thriving family business.
Her granddaughter Ally and her daughter, Carla, began making jelly from the fruit in their garden as a fundraiser so Ally could travel to Europe with the Arkansas Ambassador Concert Band in the summer of 2009. They sold jelly at festivals, fairs, and by word of mouth.
- 5 pints of fresh peaches (sliced)
- 8 cups of sugar (no wonder mom likes it)
