There's a shelf at my mother's house that is devoted to storing, apparently for eternity, the fruit preserves that people give her as gifts. This summer I decided to help her clean off the shelf. We threw out the jars that looked obviously toxic, but (I'm still not sure why) I decided to salvage the unopened jars and try them out.

So, for the past month or so, I've been testing these aged fruit preserves. I've thrown out some, but a few have been ok. I ate one jar of a brownish fruit that could have been either figs or some unknown berries, and another jar that was either apricots or peaches. Now I'm eating a jar that's simply labeled, "Crabapples '92."

Apart from an admonition about botulism, AM's comment was, "why would anyone want to preserve crabapples?"