Kindred jamming spirits

In late 2012, I taught a Canning 101 class on Pickling (we made pickled ginger carrots). In attendance was a woman, S, with whom I've become friends, not least because she totally grooved on the Type-A way that I rearranged the julienned ginger so they were more evenly distributed throughout the carrot sticks. S is the one who introduced me to Blue Duck Tavern and also to the highbrow Canadian mustard outfit, Kozlik's. We email regularly and often run into each other at Whole Foods and this past week, S emailed me ask if I could come over and taste some of her jams and chutneys and catch up. Yesterday worked swimmingly for us both, and I enjoyed a couple hours in her beautiful home. She sent me home with an incredible goody bag of stuff she recently schlepped back from Ontario- a Canadian cheddar and a bottle of local Riesling, a jar of Kozlik's horseradish mustard, tomato jam, pickled strawberry jam, peach chutney and zucchini salsa. I know! Right?!

The boys ate about half the jar of salsa with their picnic dinner, I immediately tasted the mustard as I am an enormous fan of horseradish (this has some serious punch!) and I opened the peach chutney to serve with the meal I made for T and me. Zucchini-feta fritters, seared chicken slathered with Penzey's barbecue rub and cooked in bacon drippings in my trusty Lodge, and Israeli couscous with lemon, parsley and skillet drippings. One bite of chicken with chutney and couscous made me awfully glad I had more of everything. Sublime!

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= awesome dinner.

Thank you, S, for your friendship and generosity!