I spent last weekend making jam.

I mastered the principles a couple of decades ago, mostly out of curiosity and also out of a need to use some of the apples, plums, raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb that were piling up from our garden and the local U-pick near where we lived at the time.

I made much jam and jelly that one year, gained a brief and unjustified local reputation as a kitchen goddess, and quickly moved on to less sticky and less tied-to-stovetop pursuits.

I prefer to support local preserve makers and purveyors for my jam needs.

But last weekend — well, needs must.

Somebody, while tooling away with power tools in the garage, had tripped a breaker. In the process of getting the circuit back online, a number of power cords were taken out of sockets between the panel and the garage.

One of the power cords belonged to the freezer.

Now, over the summer, I had frozen quite a few kilograms of berries purchased from the region’s farm stands. The idea, as it is every summer, was to lay up enough fruit to get the household through the coming........

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