My mom loves (or should I say loved) roses. Since I was little I remember our dining room table adorned with bouquets of roses from May to September. Not those store bought perfect and somewhat tame ones. She always put together big, juicy and wild bunches of colorful and sweet smelling roses that she cut from friends' gardens and later on from her garden in her house in Eidomeni. One of the first plants we put in that garden 30 years ago were rose bushes.
And since my mom loved to cook, every summer, while others made appricot, strawberry or sour cherry marmelade my mom made rose jelly, a recipe she learned from her mom who was from Istanbul.
Once, many years ago when we went with Max, K and G to Thassos and visited Litsa and Jean Marie they treated us with rose jam that my mom had made for them. Every year up to 4 years ago she made her delightful jam. I have the last jar in the very back of my refrigerator that I am sure it is no longer edible but I can not through away.
Last summer when I visited Elsa Exarhu in Romania she had her own home made rose jam and exquisitely scented scarlet rose sirop that had made from the roses of her garden. That small detail was enough for me to include her in my cyrcle of beloved friends.
Last Wednesday morning I was having breakfast with K and Luis in their garden in Cologne and one of the jams was a rose jam made in Turkey.
Then on Thursday morning in Thessaloniki, I opened a kitchen cabinet looking for marmalade and found a jar of rose jam from Kastoria, Max had bought last summer.
And the best of all my mom is still alive and lucide enaugh to give me her recipe.
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