JOY ALONG THE WAY: CRABAPPLE JELLY IS THE BEST

When you're looking on the grocery shelves for apple jelly, you'll find that simple label on the side of the glass jar, "Apple jelly." You won't find "Granny Smith apple jelly," "Jonathan apple jelly," or "Winesap apple jelly." But there is one that always tells its source as if proud to say so, "Crabapple Jelly." It is different in color and taste and perhaps memory of the making. That is, if you're making it yourself.

My memories, old and new, mingle together as I open a hot buttermilk biscuit, spread the butter and then the crabapple jelly. We didn't have a crabapple tree in my earliest jelly-making memories. My part in it was to traipse over a hill to the homestead of the Harvey family. Everyone knew the Harvey's crabapple tree and their generosity of offering the apples free to anyone who cared to come and take them away. Crabapple trees usually bear heavily.

The trick was to get there at just the right time, when the apples were judged to be ripe but before others had beat you there and all the apples were gone.

The Harvey family made no reservations, made no lists and no notification, even though they knew some would come bearing a loaves of freshly baked bread, molasses cookies or hulled walnuts.

Lou and I, conniving brats, would sometimes walk home from school with the Harvey children before taking a longer way home over the hill. Maybe the next Saturday I would show up there with a Devil's Food cake Mama had just happened to make as a gift for Mrs. Harvey.

Another old memory is the crabapple tree that grew alongside the lane leading from the highway up to the big, two-story, brick home of Laura Beggs. Overshadowing the memory of the crabapple tree, however, was the fact that no matter when my friend, Thomza, and I would arrive at Laura's big comfortable kitchen, there would be an array of different coffee cakes cooling on her table. We could choose to have a piece from any one of them, or all of them if we could manage it. Although the coffee cakes were the highlight of the day, still we came away with buckets of crabapples.

A more recent crabapple tree in my memory stood near the line separating the homes of Ruth May and Homer Yount. I haven't been by recently, the tree may be gone now. But for several years it was the source of my crabapple jelly, queen of all jellies.

Crabapple trees grow wild from Siberia to Northern China. Maybe that's what makes them so "crabby." You know, snow and cold and all that stuff.

Some people tell me they have made crabapple cider. I've never tasted any of this and my mouth puckers a little at the thought. Crabapples are not the sweetest of apples. Maybe this adds to their crabbiness.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.