Apricot Riesling Jam

Please welcome Garrett McCord of Vanilla Garlic, who shares with us his latest jam recipe. ~Elise

I’m surprised that the food obsessed don’t consider Ernest Hemingway a proper food writer. Go pick up a copy of A Farewell to Arms or “Big Two-Hearted River” and pick any random page and the characters are either drinking or eating, though it’s more likely the former. He even titled his memoir, A Moveable Feast.

Recently when I was working on a paper for my a class in my Master’s program that was discussing the use of food and drink in Hemingway’s works as a profile of escapism. Now after so much reading and writing I usually have to escape myself and do so through food, which proves once again that life imitates art (and academia, apparently). However after all that food lit. study I decided to see whether I could cook

up something inspired by Hemingway.

I decided to invent a jam since Catherine in the novel A Farewell to Arms is pining for it as she crosses into Switzerland in a paddle boat in the middle of a storm to escape the Italian army. As for using apricots, Nick in “Big Two-Hearted River” downs a few cans of them in his pastoral journey for inner peace. Finally, since it was Hemingway I was dealing with, booze had to be used, no question. Finding a nice Riesling that paired well with the apricots I was all set to go. The outcome was a jam that I’m certain Catherine, Nick, Hemingway himself, or any literature lover will find perfect for smearing by some warm bread. The perfect accompaniment to your Summer reading.

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