My Jam Man

Blaine got a second job as a sales rep/inventory manager for a local jam company called Cornaby's. Random, I know. But it's been pretty good. The only down side is that I'm alone on Saturdays. But thank goodness that I have the Stevenson's around to "babysit" (as Blaine calls it). They hang out with me and take me places! :) Well,  Blaine is in charge of making sure that 8 stores in Utah County are stocked with Cornaby's products. It's pretty flexible. He also does 2 demos each Saturday. If you see him in a store doing one, taste his stuff...or else!  I'm not a huge fruit, and therefore, jam person but all of our friends are surprised at how good and fresh the jam is! I trust their opinions... Also, I thought Blaine would be sick and tired of jam by now but he isn't! He has it on his waffles, ice cream, toast, and everything else you can put jam on.

Two Saturday's ago, Blaine conducted a demo at the Reams in Springville. They were having a sale on their  Dole strawberries - $0.62 a pound. He said that people were just lining up waiting for the strawberries to come in. They were gone in an hour. That day he was demoing Jam in a Jiffy. It's this sugar and modified food starch mix that makes jam in a jiffy! Ha. Literally, it takes 5 minutes. You chop up 2 lbs of fruit, mash it a little with a potato masher, mix in this sugar mix, let it sit for a minute and you have fresh jam. It's healthier than most jams just because it's made with real cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. The cool thing is that you can combine different fruits and make whatever flavor of jam you wish! When Blaine saw all these people buying an unreasonable amount of strawberries, he saw the perfect opportunity to get people hooked on Jam in a Jiffy. He was so convincing that he sold about 110 pouches in 45 minutes. That's recordbreaking!

Anyway, Blaine decided to take advantage of this crazy good strawberry sale and bought a whole flat. Yes. We had 8 lbs of strawberries in our fridge at one point in our lives. Ridiculous. So we gave some to the Stevenson's (as payment for their babysitting services) and still had a ton left over! I made chocolate covered strawberries, strawberry lemonade (twice), and we finally made some of our own Jam in a Jiffy. We now have strawberry jam in our freezer for a whole year. I don't know what we're going to do with it. If you ever crave or absolutely need strawberry jam, please come over. Please. ( I need my freezer back.)

Blaine knows his stuff. It's hilarious. He can talk to those intense, canning grandmas all day long about pectins and whatnot (those are his prime customers). At first I thought this was a little bit weird but he is learning a lot about sales, pushing a product, and how a business runs. It's a lot more challenging than it sounds and I love seeing him grow and progress. I'm really proud of my Jam Man!