Did you ever taste an apple, a tomato or an orange right off the tree? It tastes so much better than store bought and the nutritional value is incredible.

The freshness of a product plays such an important role in its taste and nutritional value.

My generation, in its evolution, is losing some basic knowledge on how to cook and prepare food, getting dependent on what the food industry is willing to feed us.

A few years ago, when I had an orchard in my French country house, my grandma taught me how to make jam. I made jars and jars of plums, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, fig…jam.

We are educating ourselves and buying healthier, making the food industry change some to offer us a wider variety of organic “healthier” products. But, it is still hard to find store bought products that contain only healthy and nutritious ingredients and it will never replace the quality of what one can make at home.

Jam is one of those basics.  Have you ever made jam? Do you know how? Do you know what the jam you buy is made of? (Read the label and you might be surprised)

The jam you buy in store might :

• contain as much sugar as fruits or more (1lbs of sugar or more for 1lbs of fruit)- in the homemade one, you can reduce the sugar content (in the video you’ll notice I use 1/2lbs of sugar for 1lbs of fruit).
• Contain a lower quality sugar (bleached refined beat sugar) and even high fructose corn syrup – in the homemade one, you can use a good quality sugar like brown cane sugar or coconut sugar.
• Contain other chemicals, colorants – at home you can choose to use only natural ingredients.

You might be so surprised too by the difference in taste it makes.