Garden surplus grew into Forever Fresh Preserves
What started as a way to savor the last of the garden season without waste has become part of Melissa Blue Muhammad’s every day.
She began with pickles, and now she has 16 varieties of pickles, jams, jellies and preserves available in her line of Forever Fresh Preserves. That includes everything from dill pickles and dilled green beans to pineapple preserves, pear butter, apple jelly and chile mango jam.
As the director of program services for the nonprofit Pearls for Teen Girls, she’s balancing work and a budding business. Initially, she was preserving produce for her family, which includes her husband and their seven children, with No. 8 due in January. In October, she took the leap and started selling at Outpost Makers Market and a few other locales.
Gardening as a gateway
About four years ago, my husband and I had a home that had a garden bed donated to us by Victory Gardens, so four years ago I started gardening.
The following year, there was an opportunity to apply for a grant to get six additional garden beds in an empty lot next to our home. We had cucumbers, cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, anything you could think of.
As much as we tried to engage our neighbors in healthy eating, it went over well with the children, but not so much the adults. We ended up with a huge surplus that was going to go bad if we didn’t do anything with it. We donated some to neighbors, our mosque, friends. Then I said I need to learn to can.
Path to preserving
Milwaukee Urban Gardens had a series of classes, and there was a canning class right down the street from my house. I watched the demonstration, helped a bit, and realized this is really simple.
I started looking up recipes, bought all these mason jars and started doing tomatoes and anything I could do with water bath canning. Then I started visiting farmers markets.
First foray
Pickles. The first thing I canned was bread and butter pickles, and I got a Mrs. Wage’s packet (of pickle mix). Nothing from scratch.
Recipe roots
I’m a member of the Nation of Islam, and the women are trained to can as well, and a lot of the recipes I’ve gotten from the (members at the) mosque. Some of the scratch recipes I have come from them. I put my own little tweaks on them and made them my own.
Preserving progression
I went from pickles to pineapple preserves. I came across some very inexpensive good pineapples at Seven Mile Fair, so I came home with eight pineapples. We ate a couple, but I didn’t want them to go bad.
When I started canning, I don’t even remember the lady’s name, but she made it seem and look so easy. So I never thought of canning as something super hard or time consuming or difficult. I know about botulism and things that can happen if you don’t can properly, but I never thought it was difficult.
Peace, presence and preserves
Canning is sort of a meditation for me. I feel really at peace, really present and really focused and unbothered. It has really strangely become self-care for me. I am completely honored and blessed that other people like what comes out of that.
Starting to sell
I had an event in mid-October, and it was my first time coming out with my preserves, jams and jellies. I was really nervous. I knew I had friends who were interested, but I didn’t know what the market would be for jams and jellies.
The first jam I sold was an organic apple jelly. A mother and daughter came by, and I had samples out so they could taste things. I had a gingered apple crisp jelly, and they bought that too. Then they came back and bought mango, strawberry and something else. I was blown away.
Canning connection
To hear so many stories about how people’s grandmothers or mothers, who may have been deceased, would always preserve different peaches and jams, to hear all these stories that connected people to the product I was selling was really soothing.
I don’t come from a canning background. My mother tells me my grandmother was big on canning, but it wasn’t something I saw and could connect to.
I can quite frequently, at least three nights out of the week I’ll do a batch of something. Then on Saturday and Sunday I do a couple batches.
Empowered eating
It is really empowering to be able to grow your own food and take that fresh food and can it and possibly make it last forever, or at least a very long time. That’s where the name Forever Fresh comes from.
Her favorite thing to make
Blueberry jam. There is something soothing about crushing blueberries.
Who's who of spreads
It is the texture. Jellies are just made from the juice of a fruit, either if you buy the juice store-bought or squeeze the juice through a strainer or cheesecloth. You get a translucent gel. Jams are crushed or blended fruit, you get juice and pulp. Preserves just have the chunks of fruit in there.
Fork. Spoon. Life. explores the everyday relationship that local notables (within the food community and without) have with food. To suggest future personalities to profile, email nstohs@journalsentinel.com.