Robert Lambert

Dear Robert,

Spring greetings from Northern California! I'm gratified to be busy filling orders right through what is usually my slowest period of the year for sales. Citrus season is over, I've finished the and syrups for the year, and now have a few weeks to assess what I've done, plan my major productions for the rest of the year, and think about new things I want to try. The Gene Lester Collection contains a rare tree that is a cross between a cherry and a plum, tempting me to go beyond to jam.

Spoon Sweets

A distinguished elderly Greek man once came by my market stall, took in my offerings and said, "Aaaah, you make spoon sweets!" A few weeks ago I heard this again, this time from Greek expatriate Daphne Zepos, renown cheesemonger and blogger for Atlantic Magazine, when we got together to pair her cheeses with my products as she interviewed me for an up-coming piece. "This is something a fashionable upper-class matron of Athens in the '60's would bring out to delight her guests," she said. Spoon sweets are small intensely flavored preserved fruits, nuts or vegetables in sweet syrups that are best served in small portions on a spoon.

Greeks began to offer guests fruits and nuts sweetened with or molasses in ancient times as one of the earliest expressions of the art of hospitality. But it was the governors of the Ottoman occupation, who brought their love of spoon sweets, that made these foods a part of Greek culinary heritage. Green and sour cherry. Quince flavored with . Pomodoro tomatoes with and whole almonds. Tiny young with clove, cinnamon and repeatedly cooked and cooled over many days. and lemon geranium. And of course, much citrus. Candied bergamot with lemon blossom. Young Seville oranges. On the island of a sticky sap-like substance called is flavored with blossom, lemon and and served on a spoon submerged in cold water for a special treat.

Though every island and region had its specialties, I suspect there was as much variation from family to family as secrets were passed from one generation to the next. As the last 50 years took women out of the kitchen and slashed the hours once showered on these labor-intensive acts of love and pride, much of this tradition has been lost. Fortunately, some local agricultural cooperatives, small commercial producers and even monasteries are working to keep these traditions alive by making these foods available for sale to the general public.

In any case, this explains how as my Midwestern preserving background met the Mediterranean ingredients of California when I first worked in catering, I unwittingly began to produce spoon sweets. While my fruits in wine syrup, my syrups made from candied citrus peels, even the chocolate sauces, are versatile and combine well with many foods from meat to cheese to or other desserts, they are wonderful on their own as an expression of pure flavor pleasure. I have many customers who find a single spoon of my chocolate sauce more satisfying than a whole candy bar, and a market customer right now who enjoys a single perfect Dark Cherry in Merlot every night before he goes to bed.

Of Misspent Youth and Leftovers

At this time of year I inevitably begin to anticipate my annual vacation, 3 weeks at the family farm in Northern Wisconsin. My brother lives there but everyone visits in tandem, Mom does all the cooking and baking, Dad mans the grill and I get to be 13 again for a time. I'm going in July rather than August this year so there's a chance I might catch the last of the peonies and perhaps asparagus, if I can get my brother to fudge the traditional harvest cutoff date of the 4th of July by a couple of days. The land's been ours since 1900, 160 acres, half fields, half forest and a tiny jewel of a lake in the woods where my brother and I swim daily with loons and otters. Fruit and vegetables come from the same garden my grandmother tended, and at least some of our meat from the farmer down the road.

My 88 year old mother has the smallest containers for leftovers that I have ever seen. I sometimes wonder if, instead of 3 peas or a teaspoon of mashed potatoes, they might be meant to store food on a sub-atomic level. Of course she also has very large ones, and everything in between. The success of every meal depends on being able to move what remains to smaller quarters until it disappears. That anyone should eat more than they find satisfying, or that any amount of food should ever be thrown away, are concepts so alien as to be unthinkable. When the green beans, superb haricot vert that my brother grows, are ready for harvest, she will pick every last one if it means bent over a cane in a haze of mosquitoes.

Last Saturday morning as I left early for the market I saw a neighbor's hulking Hummer embalmed in bubble wrap, as it had once been wrapped in toilet paper. Since there are teenage girls in the house, one would be likely to see the boyish prank as a silly wasteful product of misspent youth. It was perhaps a genetic inclination, but what I saw was a goldmine-from what I could tell, about $100 worth of clean fresh packing material. That evening after dark I gathered the discarded heap around me and walked it home.

Cost and Value

This brings me to the issue of cost. I truly wish my products didn't need to be so expensive, that they could be used as easily as we once went down to the cellar at the farm for a jar of this or that. Although the things my grandmother preserved were made with thrift in mind, the light of commercial enterprise exposes the vast amounts time and labor, the unpaid "women's work" that must suddenly be compensated. When added to the fixed costs of running a small business, the permits, insurance, kitchen, promotion, prices quickly mount.

Scale of production makes commercial foods cheap. I have always been more attracted to the peculiar mix of poverty and luxury that was evident at our family farm, however, like the wild berries that took forever to pick but made something truly memorable. Most people who start a food business have a business plan, do cost analysis and marketing projections before they even begin. It is counterintuitive, but I am only adept at cramming more money in a jar. No one else uses whole milk and bar chocolate in their chocolate sauces. Using extra juices rather than water in my marmalades, I manage to squeeze up to 3 times as much fruit in a jar, and all by hand. I refrigerate the cakes for months just to age them. I use the finest liquors I can find.

In an effort to cut costs I do everything but cut the fruit for marmalade. I no longer buy market fruit if I can find a source and pick it myself. On that model of thrift, everything is used, the syrups go into my chocolate sauce or fruits in wine, the peels candied to make the syrup go into the fruitcakes. The citrus seeds so painstakingly picked out during fruit cutting are used for their pectin. But with the costs involved in my handmade products, the finest ingredients and the huge reserves of time and care, I can by my best efforts only hope to keep a slightly larger portion of the take.

If you subscribe to this newsletter, you likely already understand. Though I win national awards and sell to the finest stores in the country, the limited amount of product I am able to produce will never make more than a marginal living. But like the ancient , or the Athenian matron of 50 years ago, my mother or grandmother, I judge my success by what happens when my food meets your senses. Just yesterday I discovered this review of my most expensive item, my fruitcakes, on a blog that deals with nothing else; go to: mondofruitcake.com. In part: "It's a beautiful fruitcake, but the price-the price. $50 for a 16 oz cake. That's about $3 per ounce-- roughly 3 times the price of most other fruitcakes I've reviewed. Is it worth it? Yes--once in your lifetime, it's worth it. This fruitcake rocked my world."

So perhaps, for most people, Robert Lambert can never be for every day. It was when I began making things to sell that I realized I can't often afford them myself! But for that first perfect summer dinner with your best friends. Or perhaps a day where nothing else went right. I have customers who take my foods to friends in hospice care. Even if it's only once in a lifetime, it is my professional aspiration to bring that kind of pleasure. Unless you're like that guy who savors one of my Cherries in Merlot every night, and such pleasure becomes necessary.

My Best to you all---

Sincerely,

Robert Lambert San Rafael, California June 2009 Forward email

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Robert Lambert | 1104 Via Horqueta Avenue | San Rafael | CA | 94903