John Sayers
Special to Niagara Now/The Lake Report

Another day, another breakfast. Ho-hum. Boring.

If your days begin like that, it’s time to spark your mornings with exciting jams and marmalades from the Jolly June Jamboree at Grace United Church, in town and just around the corner from the Shaw Café, on Saturday, June 24.

Herewith our guarantee that we have enough varieties of jams to brighten every day. Say goodbye to ho-hum.

Why a guarantee? Well, some people have a cooking hobby. Others collect stamps or create beautiful gardens.

At Grace, we have congregation members with decades of experience producing new and wonderful jams, jellies and sauces. It’s as much a treat for them to create as it is for you to consume.

A brand-new addition, strikingly Canadian, is a limited quantity of Saskatoon berry jam. If your heart belongs on the Prairies, or you want to try a rare and unusual Canadian jam, you might want to get near the head of the queue at the appropriate table. Look for the bright red sign in the rows of jars.

The jam gourmet will want to savour a morning launched with Saskatoon berry jam if they want to imagine they woke up to a day on the rolling Prairies.

For the gourmand with fond memories of childhood breakfasts with old-fashioned red currant, quince or crabapple spreads, these will bring back your treasured memories of a toasty breakfast before trudging off reluctantly to school.

Of course, there are all the old favourites if your jam cupboard is running low. Strawberry, peach, raspberry, cherry, apricot and a host of other mouth-watering fruits await your needs, in both traditional and sugar-reduced versions.

Or maybe spicy peach, spicy apricot or spiced pear will be the right fuel for a tangy launch to your morning? Bet you’ve never tried those before.

And for the venturesome jam-lover seeking a new experience, you will want to grab jars of chocolate, fig, or golden Plum and other exotic jam treats. As they say, life is short so be daring.

If marmalade is your spread of choice, that’s there too, including a lemon gin version.

Sauces? We hope that we will have enough of the legendary colonial sauce because we were sold out of the 22 cases produced last year.

Some sauce aficionados buy an entire case of 12 rather than just one or two jars. They seem to realize that there is nothing better than having enough friendly, comforting sauce to brighten up a long, cold winter.

The availability of other exciting sauces depends upon the inspiration of our creators, just like what you plant in your garden can vary each year.

But a sneak preview reveals that there are more than a dozen different sauces including old favourites such as mango chutney, peach salsa, and hot red pepper which are waiting for your passionate embrace.

And if you like it hot, hot, hot then you need to try pineapple habanero, for a fiery dip you will remember and lust for.

And there’s home baking. When you come for jams and sauces, you’re going to find that you are enticed by an array of homemade baked goods produced with loving care by the women of the church.

With the advent of so many machine-produced pastries in the stores out there, it’s a real treat to the taste buds to enjoy treats like your mother used to bake in the oven, accompanied by the seductive aromas of her kitchen labours.

Needless to say, these memories of the golden days of baking sell out fast, so note the 9 a.m. start time on Saturday, June 24. See you then at Grace United Church.