My story:
My childhood summers were spent on my great grandmother’s farm just off Fox Hill Road in Eastern New Providence. There’s nothing like the smell of guava jam to instantly transport me back to mumma’s kitchen, eight years old and begging to stir that big pot of bubbling fruit. In those days, I liked neither guavas nor jam. I enjoyed picking the fruit, helping to prepare it and especially
the smell of jam cooking, but I couldn’t see the point of all that work just to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Though, the time spent with mumma was always worth it. Many years later, during the Jollification in 2006, I had an encounter that would forever change the way I thought about jam. The Jollification is an annual three-day festival at which local artisans exhibit their crafts. I helped mumma sell jam to hundreds of people, wondering more and more with each sale what it was that people loved so much about it. I never had any doubt about the quality of her jams; who could when every person who came the table to try it exclaimed that this or that flavour was the best they’d ever had and no one else made it like Ma Wells did. Her booth was always busy from start to finish and I was amazed at how many people she knew personally – and their people too, as we like to say. One day I was asked to set aside a case of the largest sized jar of seagrape jam for a local caterer who was one of mumma’s favourite customers. When Alexandra came to collect her jam, I couldn’t help myself but to ask what on earth she planned to do with all of it. She even shared the recipe, “just combine it with a little dijon mustard, vinegar and olive oil”. So easy, so unusual! Once I tried it later that night a simple truth was revealed; jam can do much more than PB&J. This experience awakened a passion in me. Immediately I wanted to know everything about mumma’s jam. How she learned (from Catholic monks who visited her home on Long Island in the 1930’s) where she got her recipes (she developed each one herself!) and how she made them taste so good (by always being generous with the fruit) and her most important lesson of all – to never sell a product I wouldn’t happily pay for myself. I was no longer content to just help her sell jam; I needed to learn how to make it, and all the ways it could be enjoyed. In the years that followed, helping mumma was more fun than ever. I met so many people who, like me, were thrilled to discover that you could make a glaze for roast pork from guinep jelly, or homemade barbeque sauce with guava jam and that mango chutney paired perfectly with cream cheese. Sweet or savory, there’s an exciting application for every fruit grown in this country. Over time I noticed that people were beginning to expect something more from food. Slowly but surely the organic movement took shape. Local eating came into vogue. Today, modern Bahamians crave food that is simultaneously inventive, exotic, authentic and sustainable; feeding the mind, body and spirit. I share this same hunger. Having grown up with my great grandmother’s jam as a constant throughout my life, I am proud to carry her legacy into the future, preserving her traditional methods and following in her footsteps by developing recipes of my own. Nowadays I live on another farm, with my husband and his family, where mango trees grow leisurely by the sea. I still don’t like peanut butter and jelly. Jam is capable of so much more.
