My Copper Jam Pot

This is a story about falling in love. If that sentence made you roll your eyes and almost instantly lose interest, would you stick with me if I told you it was with an inanimate object?

Yep...you guessed it. The love that I speak of is with a copper jam pot. If you want to read a blog post about whether preserving with a copper pot is safe, why copper pots are considered great for jam making, etc, then I suggest that you immediately stop reading this blog and click here. Her post may have been written in 2010, but it is thorough and is certain to answer all of your questions. Be sure to scroll through all of the comments as well as there are some hidden gems throughout.

Now lets get back to the matter at hand. Love. L-O-V-E. The kind of love that makes your throat feel dry, your heart beat faster and all logic to simply slip right out of your brain.

At first, I have to admit that this love was of the shallowest kind. I fell in love based on looks alone. I was immediately pulled in by the beauty of the hammered copper jam pot with it's gleaming brass handles. It's alluring angled sides made this pot one that I could simply sit and stare at for hours. I wanted it simply because it was sexy. You heard me...this is one sexy pot!

Sure, deep down I hoped there were other factors at play when I was entering my Visa # on the online order page and staring at what was really an exhorbinent dollar figure in the total column considering I was just buying a pot for making jam. But were there?

With each number that I entered I would tell myself that there were practical advantages to this purchase. The angled sides of the pot allow for better evaporation and shorter cooking times. That copper is an excellent conductor of heat. It all just sounded like 'yadda, yadda, yadda" in my mind. And I hit ORDER while I still knew instinctively that I had just completed the purchase on looks alone. I was shallow and I could live with that.

I practically bounced right out of my skin on the day it arrived. I couldn't open the box fast enough and when I finally pulled it from it's paper wrapping and held it in my hands I let out a little gasp when I finally saw it in person. Ridiculous really, but true.

Then today I took it with me to the commercial kitchen to make a batch of marmalade. It was the first time I would put it to use. I kept admiring it's brass handles and all of the other physical attributes about it that I loved. But I knew I had fallen into a different kind of love when I actually tasted the finished batch.