Welcome to the Jamarchy Jam, jelly, preserves and chutney made in Brooklyn using mostly local, handpicked, organic fruit and artisanal methods.
Anarchy is freedom from food tyranny.
Quotes from Anarchy Eaters "Tumultuously tasty."~ Edible Brooklyn
"Nom Nom."~Holly
"It's amore!" ~pseudo-Italian guy
"Totally rad."~jam loving hipster
"I've been dreaming about your jam."~taste-tester
"The first bite was so good, saliva literally sprayed out of my mouth."~Halle
"Still can't get over that blood orange marmalade!"~CB
Current Jam List Lime & Pandan Marmalade
Ménage à trois Marmalade
Ginger Pear Jam
Hot Fireman’s Pear Jam
Cranberry & Spice
Apple Sass
Strawberry Balsamic Jam
3's Company Triple Berry Jam
Easy Like Sunday Morning Blueberry Jam
Grandma's Blackberry Peach Jam
see menu and tasting notes for detailed descriptions and tasting notes.
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 liv manfredi, jam queen extraordinaire We at Anarchy would like to bid bon voyage to Liv Manfredi, who is taking a hiatus from jam making while she travels the world giving people wine.
Liv helped make Anarchy in a Jar what it is today, and she’ll be sorely missed. We hope to see her back with us someday, even if just as a special quest jamstar. We wish you the best of luck!
Never fear, Anarchy will still be jammin’ to the beat in Brooklyn, keeping our friends and neighbors satiated with revolutionary jam.
Jam on!
 aint yo mama's anarchy on the radio, photo by cathy erway  ruby red grapefruit about to be slaughtered Mama O’s Kimchee & Anarchy in a Jar are making sweet, food producer love. After our spar on the radio, we’ve decided to make nice and produce a jam + kimchee product: jamchee. We’re gonna sell it at the sexy Valentine’s Day Greenpoint Food Market and proceeds will go to our hungry peeps in Haiti.
What the heck is jamchee? We didn’t really know the answer, but it’s definitely sweet and spicy. I prepped ruby red grapefruits at the kitchen and they look sweet and sassy. We’ll be cooking them up tomorrow, and I think we’ll add chilies and ginger, with maybe a dash of fish sauce to bring on the crazy kimchee fireworks.
Get ready for a seriously sexy baby.
 the hot new winter BK flea We’ll be selling jam this Saturday, January 31, at the Brooklyn Flea in Downtown Brooklyn. From January through March, the winter Brooklyn Flea is taking place in the beautiful Williamsburg Savings Bank at One Hanson Place. The building is amazing, and I highly recommend visiting it while you can and before some soulless developer gets their mitts on it.
We’ll have lots of delicious flavors, such as:
Clementine Marmalade
Clementine oranges, lemon juice, sugar
Lime & Pandan Marmalade
Lime juice & zest, pandan leaf extract, sugar
Bitter Blue Blueberry Marmalade
Blueberries, maple syrup, sugar and whole lemon slices
Ginger Pear Jam
Bartlett pears, ginger, lemon juice, sugar
Hot Fireman’s Pear Jam
Bartlett pears, cinnamon, chipotle, lemon juice, sugar
Strawberry Balsamic Jam
Organic strawberries, balsamic vinegar, sugar and lemon juice
3’s Company Triple Berry Jam
Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, lemon juice, sugar, all natural pectin
Easy Like Sunday Morning Blueberry Jam
Blueberries, maple syrup, sugar and lemon juice
 - whoa, look at those green hotties!
We’re hoping the new iPhone 4G comes with a scent feature. This post would be much sweeter if you could share in the divine scent that wafts through the kitchen as the limes are cooked into marmalade. Jose, who works alongside us in the kitchen at Chestnut, couldn’t help letting out an “mmm” as he walked by the pot.
We slice Persian limes into quarter slivers and cook them with some water to soften the rind, then let them rest overnight in the fridge, then bring to a boil and add sugar, then back into the fridge to macerate overnight, then we boil them into marmalade, add some pandan leaf and jar them for your eating pleasure.
Dreaming of the exotic scent of limes is a perfect antidote to this rainy, balmy Monday in New York.
 truck farm, photo by ian cheney Sometimes I’m overcome with a profound sense of quilt. I listen to NPR describe the suffering of people aboard this small planet as I make jam, and I wonder why I decided to start this company in Brooklyn instead of working for the International Red Cross as I intended, or returning to my life of adventure, science and exploration.
But then I open my eyes.
The 20th century was all about exploration: space, the poles, the moon, mountain tops, globalization and corporate expansion. There was great invention and profound devastation, greed, waste and limitless consumption; a foolish Icarus fumble that civilizations can relentlessly expand, relentlessly consume without consequence.
But we, the inheritors of this debt, are changing direction. We have no choice. Here in America, at the cusp of the second decade of the 21st century, the state of existence can seem daunting as we face environmental crisis (pollution, species extinction, loss of wilderness, loss of farmland), energy crisis, economic collapse, and war. But not all is lost. Wendell Berry, that sage of our age, says in his essay “The Idea of a Local Economy“:
The “environmental crisis,” in fact, can be solved only if people, individually and in their communities, recover responsibility for their thoughtlessly given proxies. If people begin the effort to take back into their own power a significant portion of their economic responsibility, then their inevitable first discovery is that the “environmental crisis” is no such thing; it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an “environmental crisis” because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, theGod-given world.
The heroes and change-makers of the 21st century will be us. We will create solutions for renewable energy and fighting poverty, make tools that provide safe drinking water, create urban farms that make use of wasted space and teach us how to live better, smaller and healthier. We’ll take back the kitchen, the town square, the city. The heroes of the 21st century won’t need to leave home to be heroic, they’ll make home better for all of us by relocalizing.
By now, we know this (right?). We know the tag line that local is better, we even have the overused term “locavore” to describe cultist farmers’ market junkies (it was the word of the year for 2007 in the Oxford American Dictionary). “Sustainable” and “green” are so overhyped they’ve lost meaning, particularly when you can buy organic food at Walmart and “sustainable” products at Target. They’ve become meaningless through their dilution, being used to describe simply another form of obnoxious soap-box consumer. But the reason they’ve been adopted into the vernacular of the zeitgeist is that their original definition holds meaning.
But what does it mean to “live better”? What does it look like to you? Here in Brooklyn, food from the rooftop farm soaring above your neighborhood tastes better because it gets a lot of love, and because the farmer is your friend and you bought that beautiful bunch of kale from him directly, you feel the love when you eat it. And it gets even better when it’s all connected, when the web is such that everyone supplies something and the fate of vacuous employment and an aimless life dissolves. It dissolves through relocalizing your life. If you give everyone in the community a direct, long-term involvement and stake in the prosperity, health, and beauty of their home, they live better and honor this stewardship. Pete Seeger, the iconic folk singer, knew this years ago and proved it over the last thirty years with his incredibly successful efforts to clean up the Hudson River in New York.
This is not to say that the rich won’t keep getting richer and corporations bigger and greedier to dispense nature’s blood-money for our happiness. But the way I see it, we can change this through reorienting our lives so that we don’t lose what is most vital: the real experience, the practice of living fully and “eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves” by participating responsibly within our community rather than buying these pleasures as purely wasteful, wasted consumers.
Being a small-scale food producer in Brooklyn, I play a minor supporting role in the interconnected local economy. But everyday I learn new ways to deepen and enhance my involvement, whether it’s setting up barter systems and trading for goods with other local vendors, creating venues for collaborative cooking, sharing jam at a friend’s supper club or cooking at the soup kitchen. This is living better. Not just being a “locavore” consumer but being an active participant in your community. I encourage everyone to do it now–this moment, if not sooner. Don’t let another moment waste.
Jam on.
–Laena
 jammin to the beat at the brooklyn flea in DUMBO Rose Spaziani wrote a nice article about us in the inaugural edition of her new zine, Pivot.
The little glass pots with whimsical names draw marketgoers whose
murmurs taper in unanimous “mmm’s…”
Did I really say, “It’s a very populist jam”? Wow.
Thanks, Rose, it’s a great magazine!
 Laena's sexy eggs I (Laena) claimed on the radio last week that breakfast was the best and sexiest date meal. I rallied for it not only because it’s so easy to incorporate jam, but because I truly believe breakfast is a great place to be creative, cozy and fun in the kitchen. If it’s a meal you’re sharing with someone, then you probably really like them. No makeup, no fancy restaurant, just two people in their pj’s flirting and fortifying themselves for the day ahead. Very sexy.
A perfect meal to prepare is my sweet & punchy poached eggs. A poached egg with marmalade is easy to make, fancy, healthy and delicious. This recipe is simple: poach an egg, toast some tasty bread, smear good butter (local Ronnybrook butter is delish) and our Clementine or Ménage à trois Marmalade on it and eat. It will leave a little sweet jam on the lips for your post-breakfast kiss.
For those who do not know….
Kick Ass Poached Eggs Recipe
Go here and then watch this video:
Gordon Ramsey – Poached Egg
First bring water in a saucepan to almost boiling. Add one or two teaspoons of vinegar to the water–any kind, but balsamic makes them brownish. Rice vinegar tastes awesome too! The vinegar will help the egg whites to congeal more easily.
Working with the eggs one at a time, crack an egg into a small cup or ladle. Swirl the water with a whisk or spoon. Place the cup near the surface of the hot water and gently drop the egg into the water.
Turn off the heat. Cover. Let sit for 4 minutes or so until the egg whites are cooked.
Lift eggs out of pan with a slotted spoon and put in a bowl of cold water to stop cooking.
Eat them.
This will not be the only breakfast in the “How to Jam” saga. Soon we will titillate your morning with “the best scrambled eggs ever” and “jam omelets”.
Stay tuned and jam on.
 on the radio @ roberta's, photo by cathy erway
 Mama O's Kimchee, photo by Cathy Erway We had the great fortune to be on Cathy Erway’s show “Let’s Eat In” on Heritage Radio, along with the famous kimchee maker and DJ beat master Kheedim Oh of Mama O’s Kimchee. We debated the eternal food question: what’s sexier sweet or spicy? What’s the better aphrodisiac? It was a showdown. It was a The Rumble at Roberta’s. Listen to the podcast to hear Laena throw her trump card of “what would you rather lick off a naked body? Jam or kimchee?” It was intense. It was real. And sweet won. Jam on!
 Laena's wild looking linzer augen
Who could resist a cookie called “jam eyes”? Hazelnut linzer cookies sandwich red current jam in jammy cookie perfection. You don’t need the holidays as an excuse to make these Austrian/German/Czech cookies. They’re delicious and a great way to use some Anarchy in a Jar jam that you have in the fridge.
Linzer Augen Recipe
1 cup toasted & skinned hazelnuts
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4-1/2 cup red currant preserves or raspberry
confectioners’ sugar, for dusting
Finely grind the hazelnuts in a food processor. Add a little sugar to prevent it becoming too pasty.
In a large bowl, beat the butter on high speed with an electric mixer until fluffy and pale. Add the granulated sugar and continue beating until combined. Add the egg yolk, lemon zest, vanilla and almond extracts and beat until blended.
Sift together the flour, cinnamon and salt into another bowl. Add the ground hazelnuts and stir to blend.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat on low speed or stir with a spoon until blended. The dough should be soft.
Turn the dough out onto a clean work surface. Divide the dough into four equal portions and wrap each in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 350°F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Remove 1 portion of the dough at a time from the refrigerator. Place dough between 2 sheets of floured waxed or parchment paper and roll out 1/4 inch thick.
Using a cookie cutter or glass, cut out the cookies. Using a tiny cookie cutter, bottle cap or other tiny shape, cut a hole in the center of only half of the cookies.
Repeat with the remaining portions of dough. If the dough becomes sticky, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 10 to 20 minutes before rolling out.
Using a thin spatula, carefully transfer the cookies to the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies are firm to the touch, about 12 minutes.
Transfer the baking sheets to wire racks.
To assemble, spread the solid cookies with a thin layer (about 1 tsp.) of preserves. Top the solid cookies with the cutout cookies.
Dust the cookies generously with confectioners’ sugar and fill the hole with more jam. Then eat them and let the revolution begin in your mouth.
 - sellin jam & modeling our neighbor the hat guy’s hats
We sold a whole bunch of jam at the Brooklyn Lyceum Holiday Market in Park Slope this past weekend and met some great people and rad jam fans.
Thanks for the support, jamarchists, and happy holidays!
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Ask A Jam Queen Go to our FAQs page where the jam queens answer your most intimate jam questions and expel deceitful rumors.
Find out the answers to such zingers as:
Q: What’s the difference between jam, jelly, preserves, marmalade and conserves?
Q: What’s pectin?
Q: What’s an “heirloom”?
Q:Can jam kill you?
News & Reviews of Anarchy in a Jar
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