Today I was listening to Rose talk to a young local woman about recipes.  I heard of things I’ve never heard of before like fireweed honey and fireweed jam, wild cranberry jam, and rhubarb jam.  Fireweed is a beautiful flower that sprouts up after a fire has cleared out an area.

Rose said that for fireweed jam, she gathers up a whole bunch of the flowers, cuts the stems off and packs them tightly into a kettle.  She boils them and then strains the flowers out of the liquid.  She uses pectin and sugar and then pours the jam into jars to set up.  She says it’s a beautiful pink color and tastes really good.

For wild cranberry jam, Rose says it’s too bitter unless you add strawberry or raspberry Jello and sugar.  She likes to cut big slices of rhubarb for rhubarb jam and leave it a little lumpy, not smooth like my rhubarb sauce, so that you get little lumps when you spread it on toast.  Yum!

She indicated that she might teach me how to make some of these things.  I hope so because they sound delicious.