Guava Freezer Jam Beats the Costco Blues

One Jam Ring to Rule Them All

I was seduced this week by the scent of the tropics in the Costco produce section. What kind of promotion was this?

Like a warm breeze wafting through an open marketplace, I could smell guavas all the way across the aisle.

© Willow Pennell

Produce at Costco is perfunctory: a big box of spinach to throw in smoothies, or a pound of berries with no flavor, no scent, no sex.

But these white guavas had character. I kept lifting the plastic clamshell box to my face to breathe it in.

I drove home entertaining fantasies about how fast the fruit would disappear as our family smashed the juicy globes into our mouths. As soon as I got home, I cut into one.

I’d misjudged.

Hard, seedy and mealy, these were not a fruit to celebrate. I gave them over a week in the sun on the counter— and they softened, but never truly ripened.

I hate throwing good ingredients after bad. But I wasn’t ready to give up. When fruit is flat, or about to go bad— I cover it in sugar and make delicious jam.

When I overbuy strawb…