For many years, my family has many traditions of going to family events and gatherings. One of them is going to beautiful house in small village near Skopje. The house was built 30 years ago by my grandparents. When they were young they wanted to built house where our family can spend time together. In the yard they planted fruit trees and now we can enjoy the beauty and tastiness of the fruits. When my mother was little she learned the family tradition of making cherry jam.
She and my grandmother are now making cherry jam together. Now it was my turn of learning the tradition. I have always enjoyed the warmth of the family gathering especially those where I can learn a family tradition, such as making cherry jam. Cherries are very tasty fruits that grow on trees. A cherry tree will take three to four years to produce its first crop of fruit, and seven years to attain full maturity. We have 2 trees in our yard, one with white cherries and one with red cherries.
Although jam could be made from white and red cherries our family for many years is using the red cherries. They have a very short growing season. The peak season for cherries is in the summer. They are usually at their peak in June and in July to mid-August. When the peak season come we are all there prepared for the cherry jam making. At first all men are picking up all the cherries from the tree in big crates, buckets and boxes. Often we must remind them not to eat the cherries but to put them in to the crates, buckets and boxes.
We use special spoons to take out the seed. Now the cherries are prepared for the jam. Then we put certain quantity of sugars and the cherries in large pot on light fire and left to boil 2-3 hours. At this point, our family has 2-3 hours, the most beautiful hours for spending time together. This time is full with laughter, talking, singing and playing. Of course from time to time one of use is going to check and stir the cherry jam. The family secret that is passing from generation to generation is when exactly the cherry jam is ready.
The most common mistake that is made while making cherry jam is when you take out the cherry jam from the fire to late or too soon from the exact time. Finally, with spoon we put the cherry jam in the jars all together and it is ready. This cherry jam making is not common only to our family. Families from all over Macedonia and Balkan know how to make jam. Many families make jam with pleasure however there are families that think that buying the jam is a lot easier than making it.
Tradition of making jam has two positive things, keeping family together and spending beautiful time and also making something delicious such as cherry jam so the whole family can eat it throw the year. As above mention we can see that making jam is very easy we should only pick the cherries and boil them, but this making jam is precious because it gathered the family and make me realize how much I love and enjoy spending time with them. When I learn the jam tradition, I found that the time spent with my family is the most important ingredient in cherry jam making process.
