as well as from neighbors’ backyards and her own apple, apricot and orange treesin South Pasadena — and dreaming up tantalizing flavor combinations.

LaGuire is putting a modern twist on the time-honored tradition of arti-sanal jams — handmade concoctions in small, quaintly packaged jars morelikely to be found in gourmet food shops than on the highly competitive shelfspace of chain groceries like Ralphs or Vons.

It’s a niche shared by E. Waldo Ward & Son in Sierra Madre, which hasbeen crafting its own jams (and bottling other delicate treats like olives) formore than a century. Both businesses are responding to a continuing demandfor the often painstaking effort involved. “If somebody wants to buy a singleflavor, they can go to any supermarket and find a million brands of raspberryjam,” LaGuire notes. “I work with multiple types of fruits to create a differentcombination, and it’s a chance to play with flavors. This summer, I’ve done asour lemon jam with Coachella dates from the desert. The sweetness of datesand sourness of lemons come together in a taste explosion. I think of what’snot just seasonal but what might go together to lift or enlighten a classic.”

LaGuire decided to launch her business just before she left for Paris tostudy pastry making last July. There she discovered the artistry and experi-mental élan that French chefs bring to their jams.

Not long ago, LaGuire demonstrated how she creates new flavors at EastPasadena’s Mama’s Kitchen Incubator, the large culinary complex on SanGabriel Boulevard where she rents space for Ellelle. She took Tupperware con-tainers of apricots and raspberries out of refrigerators and poured the con-tents of each into a separate pot; she boiled the fruit for ten minutes beforecombining the juices and stirring them in a large copper pan she’d bought inParis. Then she poured a sample of the resulting sunset-colored liquid onto asmall plate she had just removed from a freezer, so she could see how itlooked and tasted upon cooling. Running her pinky through the result,LaGuire declared the experiment a success.

“I like the color of it,” she said. “I don’t use very much [sugar] syrup, so it’son the tart side. I didn’t use any commercial pectin [a component of citrus

IMAGINE RHUBARB JAM WITH CHAPARRAL SAGE HONEY ON A

SLICE OF MORNING TOAST. THINK ABOUT THE TASTE OF BLUE-

BERRIES, BLACKBERRIES AND VANILLA BEANS MELDED INTO

A SWEET DARK AMBROSIA ON A BAGEL. OR A SMOOTH BLEND

OF STRAWBERRIES, RASPBERRIES AND FRESH LAVENDER ON

A CROISSANT. All those taste sensations are offered by the inventive Lennie LaGuire, a for-

mer senior-level editor of the Los Angeles Times who started her own artisanalfood company a year ago, six months after leaving the newspaper business. Asthe sole proprietor of Ellelle Kitchen (inspired by her initials), she has filled herdays collecting fruits from farmers’ markets throughout the Los Angeles area —

JAMSESSIONS

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38 ~ JULY 2009 ~ ARROYO ARROYO ~ JULY 2009 ~ 39

SOUTH PASADENA’S ELLELLE KITCHEN AND E. WALDO WARD & SON OF SIERRA MADRE FIND THAT OLD-FASHIONED TECHNIQUES GIVE THEIR

ARTISANAL JAMS TIMELESS APPEAL. BY CARL KOZLOWSKI | PHOTOS BY TOMMY EWASKO

—CONTINUED ON PAGE 40

Ellelle Kitchen’s Lennie LaGuire likes to detonate taste explosions with her original jams.

Jeff Ward has brought E. Waldo Ward, the family’s century-old gourmet food

business, into the 21st century with tropical fruits and other exotic delicacies.

40 ~ JULY 2009 ~ ARROYO

used as a gelling agent], justfruit. I love the way it has asofter set. It will probablyharden a little in the fridge,but it’ll basically stay smoothand liquid. I was hoping formore of a tequila sunrisecolor, but I’ll take it.”

She arranged six eight-ounce jars, which had beensterilized at 325 degrees, on anearby aluminum tablebefore carefully pouring inthe mixture. Ordinarily,LaGuire creates a case of 24jars at a time; Ellelle jams sellfor $13 per jar for standardflavors and $14 for specialty.

“Her seasonal jam ideais fantastic,” says KristinEdwards, who carries Ellelle at the Little Flower Candy Co. in Pasadena. “Shetakes great pride in using local produce. Currently, we’re carrying some ofher strawberry-rhubarb jams, which are very popular. Her use of herbs reallysets her apart.”

LaGuire’s main local competitor is E. Waldo Ward, which has occupiedthe same three-acre farm since 1917 and been passed down through four gen-erations of Wards to its current president, Jeff Ward. Ward’s great-grandfatherand the company’s founder, Edwin Waldo, migrated to Sierra Madre fromNew Jersey in 1891 in the hope that the drier climate would cure his tubercu-losis. He got the idea for creating artisanal foods from his work as a travelingsalesman for the New Jersey-based gourmet food company James P. Smith Co.

Ward’s dream was to make marmalade that would rival Britain’s best (thecompany currently sells 13 varieties under its own label, including lime andginger). He started the company in an old redwood barn built in 1902 that isstill used for storage. These days, most of the work takes place in anotherfacility built in the 1920s, which houses kettles that have served the Wardfamily well since the 1950s, as well as “a lot of old equipment and a mar-malade splicing machine, really old-fashioned stuff,” Ward says.

The company grows its own fruits and devotes 80 percent of its businessto co-packing or packaging and labeling the specialty products of other foodcompanies. Ward estimates the company packs and labels nearly 250 differentproducts, which are distributed largely in the West at such retail outlets as thePasadena Museum of History Store, Gelson’s and Bristol Farms (the latter twosell Ward’s products under their own labels). A 10-ounce jar of jam runs from$4.80 for guava to $5.90 for wild blueberry.

“We have so many different flavors,” Ward says. “You can make a jamfrom almost any fruit. We work with all kinds of berries and even tropicalfruit. Our wildest creation is probably orange-papaya marmalade.”

In Ward’s view, artisanal foods continue to thrive despite the grim econo-my because foodies appreciate the results when a business takes the time to getthings right. “There really is a hands-on quality, and we’re not compromisingwith cheaper ingredients like corn syrup,” Ward said. “We use cane sugar likeyou would at home, boil fruit and use as much local ingredients as we can. Theallure of artisanals is the allure of making things the old-fashioned way.” AM

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