While I can honestly say I enjoyed my first winter - a house toasty with warming fires, the soups, stews, cookies, picture perfect snowfalls, time to read and dream - it’s been a slow spring and I am more than ready! My new favorite majolica potter from the Cote D’Azur, Delphin Massier, has done much to vanquish any gloom, with sunny plates of hundred-year-old blooms until the real ones come.

Bad news first: the calamondins peaked while my back was turned and filling orders in November. By the time I caught up they were gone, an early season’s end brought on by bad weather. Through great effort I have managed to secure new supply lines for my exotic citrus, but this one got away.

Undeterred, I’ve revived a more than adequate replacement. The Five Mandarin Marmalade is back - with kumquats standing in for the calamondins, Rangpur limes, Clementines, Sumo and Minneola mandarins. Great color, superb flavor! Another coup and somewhat of a miracle: a commercial source for red currants from Eastern Europe, where they’ve never lost favor. And so, the Red Currant Jelly is back in stock, with a reliable source, for now!

The call was coming from a stranger in Alaska. This was several years ago, and the desperate jam-maker on the other end was wondering if I, too, was having my pectin fail. I was. Recipes I’d used for years stopped working, and now it seemed I wasn’t alone. The mystery has never been solved, and things that wouldn’t set I just stopped making.

Over the years I’ve worked with the French producer and tweaked my methods. The jams are firm enough now when refrigerated, and the superior flavors have never faltered, so the Apricot Jam and Pear Ginger Jam are back - with a new one, Semi-Seedless Blackberry Jam - my best new product in years.

Blueberries and blackberries I tend to lump together, but fans of one will often tell me they have no time for the other. There are differences, and appropriate enhancements bring each into its own. While the Blueberry Lemon Jam wanted pineapple, raspberry, and lemon, the Semi-Seedless Blackberry Jam wants orange, Thai ginger, and haunting floral notes of cassia - the blossom of the cinnamon tree.

This rare herb I first encountered catering a Chinese feast in San Francisco. The recipe called for pears poached with cassia. I found the ingredient in Chinatown, then spent the next 20 years trying to find it again. Now, thanks to online shopping, I have! I’ve strained out two-thirds of the blackberry seeds but left some whole fruit for texture. A balancing act of multi-layered flavors, I am excited to share this with you!

A few White Fruitcakes are still available, before the rest go on to age. And as a special surprise, ingredients turned up for a small batch of Rangpur Lime Syrup, so good in summer drinks and salads! For those who mourn the passing of this product from my regular listing, I suggest you stock up now!! Like a chilly spring, it won’t last.

All my best to you for a season of promise and fresh starts,

Robert Lambert
Kewaunee, Wisconsin
April 2022