Confiture!

I'm posting in time today for breakfast/ petit dejeuner...Jam anyone?I love jam almost as much as I love macarons...
I spent a lot of time gazing at these jam jars of Christine Ferber confiture at the Lafayette Gourmet.Just a portion of the different flavors/ parfums Christine Ferbier makes. You can make them yourself if you get her book.Everybody makes jam!
Pierre Herme works with Christine Ferber to create special flavors that tie in with his pastry collections.French patisseries have jam too.

I was influenced by jam from an early age...

I adore their handmade labels. The French labels with handwriting on them are especially endearing - as if your grandmother made them.

That's why I redesigned the Paris Breakfasts banner as a jam jar label.

A real grandmother was at the SALON DU CHOCOLAT selling her jams. Grandmere Ezilda Lapasse Depardieu of le jardin des gourmandises from Domaine du Tronchay. You can go and stay in her Chambres d'Hôtes and eat jam morning, noon and night = Heaven. I bought the "Fruits Rouges" made of (all red fruits) fraises, cassis, groseilles, griottes, framboises =Maim

La Roseraie du Val-de-Marne, 3-Day 🌹Sale, Confiture Parisienne, Lancôme Cafe de la Rose

This past week was ROSE WEEK 🌹

Last Sunday I headed out to La Roseraie de Val-de-Marne to paint the roses 🌹 Take ligne 7 to last stop, Villejuif-LouisAragon end of the line. Then bus 172 (in front) for 10+ minutes to Sous-Prefecteur Eglise etc. It was windy, cold and looked about to rain any second. I got back on the 7train & came home 🏡 

Maison Christine Ferber

I remembered that, while browsing the macarons at Pierre Herme, I fell victim to a jar of jam. Christine Ferber jam or confiture to be precise. This is very precise, intensely fruity jam.

Her jams are also sold at Lafayette Gourmet. But Maison Ferber makes special flavors in tandem with Pierre Herme's latest collection/obsession. Vanilla was the Fall collection's preferred flavor, so I got apricot with 2 sticks of vanilla sitting inside the jar. Pierre Herme's description: Delicieuse confiture d'abricots legerement parfumée a la vanille de bourbon. And it was VERY delicieuse jam lightly perfumed with Bourbon vanilla.

That delicieuse you could eat it straight out of the jar. Christine Ferber's jams are so delicieuse they have a habit of disappearing before you know it. Ferber is a 4th generation jammaker/baker and lives in Niedermorschwihr in Alsace. If you love to cook you can try making her recipes,
Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber.
If your French is good you can read more in this Linternaute interview. If you live in France you can order 12 different Ferber jams online at Pierre Herme. I'll stick with eating the jam straight from the jar - it's a rather small jar anyway.

What's your favorite jam? 

Homage to Jam

La confiture,watercolor 5.5" x 7.5

I know comparisons are odious, but French jams/ confiture are just so damn pretty!

Tell me these are not simply gorgeous. I dare you! Ma confiture,watercolor 5.5" x 7.5French jams are so well dressed too...Ta confiture, watercolor  5.5" x 7.5
And their surrounding interiors are nothing to sniff at either.Were lace doilies invented so Fr. jam could sit on them?
It isn't just French sailors who get to wear the blue and white rayees/ stripes either. And who invented the checked tablecloth pray tell? It has to be the French, so their jam jars could be decked out in the remaining scraps. Non? Not all French jam is sweet by the way. At the Salon du Chocolat, there was chocolate-onion confit to be tasted and bought. I know it sounds weird but believe me it was divine.

Everybody makes jam. Much as I LOVE jam, I am not about to make it myself.

You need way too much equipment and there is all that so-called "cleaning up", which entails licking the bowl, the spoon, the pot etc.
As a matter of fact, no jar of real jam is allowed to cross my threshold. I have a tendency to eat jam straight out of the jar, like a container of yogurt. I have no self-control with jam. Only the tiniest mini jam jars are allowed and the lids of these do not unscrew. I tried. These are all of 1/2" high. I do have an EXTREMELY large collection of miniature jam jars.

C'est comme ca.

BONNE JAMNEE!

More Jam

 Abricot confiture, original watercolor

Back to Jam again.

Which entails looking first at French fraises or strawberries YUM!Strawberry confiture, original watercolor

I'm interested in the look of French jam as well as the taste..

 I've been researching how French jam got these little cloth hats.. By the way this jam is made by top pastry chef, Sadaharu Aoki. I've yet to find out but I did find instead that: Marmalade was created in 1561 by Mary, Queen of Scots' physician, when he mixed orange and crushed sugar to keep her seasickness at bay. And the feasts of Louis XIV always ended with marmalades and jellies served in silver dishes. The average US kid will eat 1,500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by high school graduation. Per capita consumption of jam in the US is approximately 2.2 pounds annually. Alfred Hitchcock loved French confiture of groiseilles so much, he had it flown to all his film locations so that his breakfast addiction could be satisfied. Even Marie-Antoinette was a jam addict, as were the Sun King and Victor Hugo.

I found plenty of French vocab for the jam lover:

Pots de Confiture
Confitures a l'Ancienne
Confitures maison
gelée

In France Christine Ferber is called "la fée des confitures" the jam fairy.

 My jam collection...none edible. All the jars are 1/2" high..ahem
 

I let out the call for more jam on Flickr, not being satisfied with just the 4 jars on the tray. Spunky Grind showed off her mini collection. They look real don't they? Spunky sent me her mini strawberry jam.If you have any 1/2" jars of jam around the house you could spare let out a shout. If you know why French jam jars wear hats PLEASE do let me know.
BONNE JOURNEE

Confiture de Christine Ferber

Christine Ferber, original watercolor

Can we ever have too much jam?

Maybe I should re-phrase that... CanI ever have too much jam, preserves, confiture?

Christine Ferber Confiture, original watercolor

Just give me a spoon and a good jar of jam and I'm as happy as a clam. Which is why I can never bring jam into the house. I'll eat it!

It's also why Paris is one land mine after another for me.

Everywhere you go there is jam (confiture) staring you in the face like here at Chateau Vaux le Vicomte. - ahhhh...pear with walnuts.. YUM!

 Did you know that ANGELINA sells JAM!? YUP they do.

My dad used to make strawberries preserves in the summer - he was from Iowa. And my grandmother used to arrive bearing gifts of huge jars of cherry preserves. Is that the root of my obsession? These days all I'm allowed is very tiny jars of jam  Doll house size in fact... Quelle domage? Of course Maxie can have all the jam he wants. Here he is at cafe Le Valentine in the 9th. What's your favorite jam? BONNE JOURNEE!

Jam Trouble - Les Confiture Letter

It's that time of the month again when I go through torture creating the newest Paris Letter.

Inspiration for October's letter came last Spring when Coco Jobard showed off her wonderful old Alsatian jam(confiture) dish towel. Jars of luscious fruity jam spell Fall to me. I'm crazy for the hand-written labels, the fluted glass jars. Jam on toast or a croissant plus tea and a good book is the best no?

But researching jam for 3+ weeks is maybe not the best kind of immersion for the easily tempted.

These jam hats (chapeau pot de confiture) made me swoon. You can find a wonderful variety of hats on Littlemarket.com.

Some of the best hats are worn on the best jam made in France by Alsatian Christine Ferber. She hand-ladles her heavenly jams into each pot to maintain quality. I dream of visiting her shop in Niedermorschwihr if I ever figure out how to pronounce it. These jams are in the new Galerie Lafayette's Food department, moved across the street from the main store.

Three glorious floors of food boutiques and mini restaurants and everything is clearly marked out. Le Grand Epicerie feels like a maze since they redid it. I forever get lost and can't find what I want.

Do come prepared and wear battle gear to browse the huge jam department at Galeries.

If you plan to make jam yourself you'll need a different kind of armor.

Head over to Librairie Gourmands on 92, rue Montmartre 75002 for the best selection of cookbooks in Paris, two floors of them. some are in English. All of them gorgeous.

Their windows right now are full of jam cookbooks. I bought this one though I'll never lift a wooden spoon or stir strawberries in a copper pot. Look for 'cuit au chaudron' (cooked in a caldron) on the labels. Traditional copper pots are great conductors of heat. You want to cook your fruit quickly and evenly.

They have adorable boxed preserves sets with all the essential  accoutrement for jam-making. So tempting.

Researching jam requires a visit to La Chambres au Confitures. There's a new branch in the Marais.

Inside it's wall-to-wall jam divided into seasonal flavors. You can sample every jam in the place and I almost did before deciding on fig. See my sampling spoons below.

If you're like me, you have 'impulse control issues'. Then its best to stick to collecting miniature jam jars. Once jam enters my house it's 'Gone Girl' in the blink of the eye.

Painting jam, on the other hand, is a perfectly safe endeavor for the jam-addicted. It is advisable to work from photographs not the real thing.

Frenchy script on jam jar labels (etiquettes) always intrigues me. My first banner for Parisbreakfast was a jam label. If you're mad for these little paper stickers the best source is BHV, second floor craft department.

I used mini jam jars to sketch from, to minimize the damage of wolfing down big jars of apricot jam in one fell swoop. Size matters.

Parisbreakfast readers often ask for old watercolor still lives so I made this Paris letter more washy.

Finally, after too much jam research, the October letter is done and on it's way to you.

You can see ALL of the October letter uncovered on Etsy. If you've been resisting subscribing here's an enticement. A jar of pear jam (an original watercolor 4" x 6") sent as a bonus if you subscribe to the Paris Sketch Letters. This is the perfect time of year for jam don't you think.