Bonne Maman

 

Back in May I wrote about having a lot of empty jars on hand. My favorites are the Bonne Maman jars.

While what we buy a Bonne Maman product for is truly great (I particularly love their Apricot Preserves), for some reason their jars are just as great.

These are the re-purposed Bonne Maman jars from my own refrigerator. After that blog post I heard from several of you saying you love them just as much as I do.

We are not alone.

Since my studio floor is being refinished (along with the floors in my office and master bathroom) my studio is off limits, so I have been reading. I am reading Martin Walker's A Murder in Springtime, one of his Bruno, Chief of Police novels. I love these and have read all of them.

In the books, Bruno cooks. Walker has even collaborated with his daughter to collect Bruno's recipes into a cookbook, but I digress.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when reading chapter four...

"...Bruno prepared his vinaigrette, measuring his ingredients by eye and instinct into a Bonne Maman jam jar saved and washed for this very purpose. ..."

How many of us do the same? I know I do.

Got a Jar?

What can I say? I love containers of all kinds. Boxes, jars, bins. I'm a sucker for that stuff. Since I make my own salad dressings, and often things like barbecue sauce, chili crisp and the like, I keep jars. I keep them in the bottom part of my dry sink. Lately though, I don't have any room for more. I remembered reading something from Martha Stewart some time ago. She said you don't need to keep saving jars. 

And I thought, well, I should go through mine to get rid of some. Then I thought I had better get them all out to see just how many I had. The photo above doesn't even show all of them. I found two small bins filled with jars.

Turns our WAY TOO MANY! I'd like to say I was surprised, but when I thought about it, I wasn't. I reuse some sizes more often than others. 

So I sorted through them, choosing the ones I used most often, and then checked they were all clean, had good clean tops and set them aside. I got a trash bag and practically filled it with all the others and brought them outside and put them in the recycle bin.

The remainder now fit perfectly in my small hutch. And henceforth, whenever I empty a jar of anything, I can just throw it away. 

On quilting news I am now hand sewing the binding of the Blitzen quilt and will start on the student bird quilt later this week.