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GRAM HARRY’S HOME-CANNED GARDEN-FRESH RASPBERRY
JAM
Excerpt from This is the Place:
The Christmas fruit thing came to Stella’s closed eyes. It had happened just before
Stella and Garret’s first Christmas as a married couple. The Eccles family was cracking
nuts for Harriet’s infamous fruitcake. Stella was certain that, over the years, more than
one molar had been broken on shell fragments in Harriet’s cake. Stella was trying to pick
the sharp debris from the mix in the bowl.
“Hand me the nigger toes. I’ll crack those,” Bernice had said.
Stella looked at the bowl, the assorted nuts hard and unyielding in shades of
browns, like a bowl full of topaz gems. “What. Which... What are you saying, Bernie?”
“Yes. The ones that look like nigger toes.”
“
They’re called Brazil Nuts, Bernice. Braz-il Nuts. There’s a whole lot in a name
and these,”—Stella picked one up between her thumb and forefinger—“are Brazil Nuts.”
“Well, you don’t have to take it personally. You aren’t colored.”
“No, just not acceptable.” Stella remembered that her face felt bloodless and her
hands tingled.
“Well, this is just like you. Uppity.”
Stella picked up her uppity coat from the back of the chair she had been sitting in
and tilted her head—a “let’s go” motion—at Garret. Harriet put a bottle of her homemade
raspberry jam in Stella’s hand.
“Take this,” Harriet said. “It will taste real good on your toast in the morning.”
Gram Harry’s Home-Canned Garden-Fresh Raspberry Jam
Ingredients:
2
quarts red raspberries. (Gram Harry picked hers ripe from bushes behind her house.)
7
cups sugar
½
1
bottle fruit pectin
box canning wax
1
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