You might say Marcia Fordyce (pictured) has jam and jelly in her blood.
As a child, she would stand by in the kitchen as her grandmother and mother heated fruit, sugar and pectin into sweet, sticky spreads.
Fordyce eventually picked up the homesteading hobby herself and today sells her line of Copper Pot Preserves at the café she runs in North Vancouver, Copper Alley Café, and at a variety of summer farmers' markets in Vancouver.
Fordyce says she aims to put her own gourmet twist on the traditional home-cooked treats she was raised on.
Through experimentation, she has come up with some intriguing flavour combinations such as her raspberry chipotle jam or her pear, honey and sage jelly (the latter inspired by Christmas holiday fare).
Recipes aside, the most important thing Fordyce considers when making her small-batch preserves is the quality of the contents.
"All the ingredients are B.C. berries and fruits. I use best practices in trying to get all my fruit locally from the farmers that are at the farmers' markets," she says.
Those locally grown berries will last her through the winter.
"Right now I'm using frozen berries from last year because I just stockpile them by the flats and freeze them," she says.
Of course, some ingredients, such as the oranges she uses to make marmalade, are not grown in B.C., but she says she tries her best to support the vendors she meets at the farmers' markets.
That attention to quality pays off when it comes to taste, she says.
"I'm a believer that the quality of the product you produce is the quality of the ingredients that you have."
Making her own jams and jellies allows Fordyce to not only experiment with flavour combinations, but to use less sugar than the commercially produced jams found in supermarkets and try recipes with and without pectin.
Copper Pot Preserves are included in the breakfast baskets Fordyce assembles for the catering business she runs out of her Riverside Drive café. Much like her preserve recipes, her catering menu changes with the seasons.
"Our philosophy is very much just fresh, simple, home-cooked comfort food. I really like to use local ingredients. Sometimes we use organic, sometimes we don't, but it's just really what's in season," says Fordyce.
She is already brainstorming ideas for preserves to sell at this summer's markets.
Grapefruit marmalade will likely be on her vendor's table. She also hopes to branch out from fruit and start selling homemade pickles (which she already serves in her café) as well as pickled carrots and beans.
"There's always new recipes on the go," she says, "they're all stuck in my head somewhere."
