Both my mum and my grandma shaped my love for preserving. It is more than a habit or a hobby; it feels like an old, steady impulse to bottle, can, or jar whatever the season offers in abundance. Preserving is my personal way to mark time—a celebration of seasonality and a quiet tribute to humble produce.
When the garden is generous or the market overflows, I want to catch that moment and keep it. I preserve tomatoes into concentrated paste and purées that taste like summer, I turn blackberries into jam that brightens winter breakfasts, and I flavour apricot confettura with warm spices to remind me of late afternoons. Each jar is a pause, a small archive of a season translated into glass.
Preserving is also a favourite form of procrastination. When deadlines pile up, I often find myself in the kitchen stealing time to wash fruit, sterilize jars, and slowly reduce a sauce. The process calms me: the repetitive motion, the scent of simmering fruit, the gentle hiss of cooling jars. It slows the day down in a good way.
In this episode I open my mum’s pantry and walk through my grandma’s memories. We explore the best summer preserves: from rich tomato sauce to bright blackberry jam, from dense tomato paste to fragrant apricot confettura. Along the way I share practical ideas and small rituals that help preserve flavour and memories alike.
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Word of the day
Learn the Italian language of food, word after word. Every year more than two hundred people join our cooking classes, and from those conversations I compiled a small dictionary of useful words and pronunciations to help you move around the vast world of Italian food.
Today’s words are confettura and marmellata.
In Italian usage, marmellata traditionally refers to preserves made from citrus fruits—think bitter orange, orange, lemon, or bergamot—while confettura is the more general word for jam made from other fruits, like plum, apricot, or blackberry. On menus you might still see the two used interchangeably (for example, a crostata con la marmellata di albicocche), but knowing the distinction helps when you want a specific flavour profile.
The recipes we mentioned in this episode:
Have you made one of our recipes?
If you try a recipe, snap a picture and tag us on social media using the podcast or blog name. We love to see your jars and plates—your photos bring the community to life. Share on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter and join our Facebook group where readers and students discuss seasonal cooking, preserving tips, and recipe variations.