Celebrating 10 Years of V Smiley Preserves
2023 marks ten years of business for V Smiley Preserves. In celebration, we’re re-introducing three archival flavors: Sour Cherry Quince, Plum Kumquat Date Cardamom and Strawberry Blackberry. Join me on memory lane!
The Viceroy offered tiny kitchens and big closets (and felt central to everything in Seattle)
The Viceroy at 505 Boylston boasted big closets that I filled with pickles, crocks of Rumtopf, peaches, apricots & pears in syrup, tomato passata, and finally, 100s and 100s of jars of jam.
On Nov. 5th 2012, I wrote the following house party email invite: “All summer, while folks have been having babies, hiking the Cascades, working on their tan in the park, and sailing the seas, I have been working out this question of mine, can you make beautiful preserves with just fruit, honey and lemon? It was a summer of hot steamy experimentation (in the kitchen sense), some flops, and some triumphs…on November 17th I'm hauling out the jam I've made, so you can taste it, on its own, in dal, with braised chicken, folded in grains, alongside cheeses, on bread, biscuits, and muddled with cream, etc, you get the picture. JAM PARTY!”
(Above) My jammy house party where I opened up and sold months of honey jam research and development to a group of friends and co-workers.
Working for Chef Renee Erickson and Marie Rutherford at the Whale Wins gave me the confidence to transition this body of work into a jam business as they provided affirmation and one of my first wholesale accounts while also putting the preserves on the restaurant menu.
My first jam kitchen was located at Phyllis Buzzini’s Alaska Silk Pie on Airport Way. I cooked jam on 2 commercial burners with support from a residential gas range. It was slow going. I did most of the work while listening to KUOW public radio on Amy’s paint splattered boom box.
The view North from my Sodo (South Downtown) shared kitchen. I worked in the hours after Phyllis and her team finished up, which meant dusky nights and late evening bike rides home through the International District, climbing the southward slope of 12th Avenue.
Over our 5 years of life together in Seattle, Amy and I cared for 2 community garden plots. Mostly, we grew tomatoes and herbs like scented geranium (pictured here), tutti frutti hyssop and lemon basil that I used in the preserves.
Our 6oz label is a narrative and modular design and the blank label from Nova Askue really showed this modularity off, with the preserve type (jam / marmalade / butter) available for a checkmark below the baled jar drawingd. (Cranberry Apple Quince eventually got an official label but boy did I write a lot of these labels, probably a little over a thousand).
For the first year, I used my bicycle trailer (that Amy got for my 29th birthday) to pick up and move cases of fruit to the commercial kitchen, but it was remarkable how physically difficult it was to transport fruit this way. Fortunately, our fruit orders got bigger and we qualified for more direct deliveries straight to the kitchen.
I still use some of this signage today though the vertical banner printed on laminated paper at the Fremont FedEx location only made it through two seasons of West Seattle Farmers Market. This picture must be from the week that the Seattle Seahawks won the Superbowl. 12th man! IYKYK
Archival Flavors -
Kicking off our April archival flavor re-release, we cooked Sour Cherry Quince and Plum Kumquat Date Cardamom. Followed by Strawberry Blackberry…
Sour Cherry Quince
If you have ever wondered why quince appears in 60% of the recipes in the latter quarter of the year, the story winds through Sour Cherry Quince circa 2013 and you can see the kitchen notes, titled “quince jam mishaps” in the video at the top of this page.
Sour Cherry Quince always reminds me of our West Seattle Farmers Market customers who gave me so much confidence to carry this wild honey experiment onward.
We have VERY limited inventory of this flavor. Once it’s gone, it’s gone!
Next up: Plum Kumquat Date Cardamom
For months at the Whale Wins restaurant in Fremont (Seattle), we served this conserve with Cascadia Creamery’s Glacier Blue. Flavors like this, with lots of notes (warmth and sweetness from dates, piney aromas from toasted cardamom, bright plums for color and acidity and woodsy kumquats), make beautiful cheese accompaniments.
As each part of the flavor reveals itself on your tongue, you are circled back to the milk fat, jammy detours that actually keep the focus on the cheese.
I stopped making this flavor when I moved to Vermont because I couldn’t source the right plums here. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the Duarte plum variety grown by Tonnemaker Orchards in Royal City, WA made this flavor. Last summer, boxes of New York grown plums arrived in late August with a distinct dappling and intense, tart flavor that reminded me of Duartes. I texted Kurt Tonnemaker with pictures of the fruit and he kindly wrote back noting the fruit certainly looked related to Duarte plums, which inspired me to tuck away a few pounds for winter when kumquats and more time for small batch work arrived.
Final Archival Flavor: Strawberry Blackberry
For the berry heads! From the flavor archives.
I love a berry jam and in 2013 when I spied a Blue Chair Jam Co. (my teacher, Rachel Saunders Bay Area jam company) label that said Strawberry Blackberry Geranium Jam, I HAD TO TRY MY HAND at a honey version.
I stripped this flavor down (no aromatics, just fruit) and in the process of testing this recipe, found that I liked it with just a tiny, tiny bit of plum in the mix. It provides body and plumps out the berry flavor.
This is available on its own or in packs for 3. Whenever we bundle, we discount. Get it!
