Mrs. Stuckert’s Holiday Jam

Makes 16 small jars of jam

2 quarts fresh strawberries, quartered

1 bag (12 ounces) fresh cranberries

1 large unpeeled, seeded and quartered orange

2 ounces water

3 cups sugar

1 pouch plus 1 tablespoon liquid pectin

2 tablespoons orange juice or orange liqueur

Directions:

1. Run cranberries and orange through a food processor.

2. Add strawberries, orange and cranberries to a saucepan with the 2 ounces of water and cook for 5 minutes, using a potato masher to aid in the breakdown.

3. Stir in 3 cups of sugar and bring to a full boil over high heat and boil for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

4. Remove from heat and add 1 pouch plus 1 tablespoon liquid pectin as well as 2 tablespoons orange juice or orange liqueur.

5. Ladle jam into hot 1/4-pint jars and then seal with lids and rings before immersing in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

I joined my parents in February 2023 for the funeral of our family friend Peg Daly, elementary school teacher of long tenure and also a pillar of prayer for our small town All Saints Catholic Church.

Margaret “Peg,” age 95, died Jan. 21, 2023, survived at that time by her younger sister Mary, a retired nun known to many as Sister Mary Margaret from the religious order of the Congregation of Holy Cross of South Bend.

On Dec. 9, Mary, at age 95, passed at her home in San Pierre. Following cremation, her funeral arrangements are still pending until after the holidays.

As mentioned in my previous columns and published cookbooks, at the turn of the century in the early 1900s, among our town’s most prominent residents and family names were the Dolezal family and the Daly family.

The Daly and Dolezal families owned both the first (and only) bank in our town, as well as the first boarding house/hotel where traveling salesmen and other lodgers would often stay while passing through on business.

In an obituary tribute to the Daly sisters’ grandfather, Owen Daly, published in Valparaiso’s Vidette-Messenger newspaper in April 1944 by society columnist John Dolezal Jr., he explains it was his father John Dolezal Sr. who was the first president of San Pierre Bank until his death in 1938, when Owen Daly assumed the lead bank position until his death at age 81 in 1944.

“Owen Daly was a pioneer of the San Pierre community,” columnist Dolezal wrote.

“Mr. Daly was a successful businessman having conducted a saloon in San Pierre for many years in the same buildings of the lofty family home property, which also served as a hotel with livery stables in the back and the Monon Railroad running adjacent and convenient for traveling salesman and visitors from the city. He is survived by his widow, two sons and three daughters: Thomas of San Pierre and his two daughters, Owen Jr., who lives in Gary, sisters Mrs. Nellie Dusek and Mrs. Leona Maloney, also residing in Gary, and Mrs. Harretta Sharritt, who has been making her home with her parents during her father’s illness.”

Peg and Mary’s father Tom Daly ran the one-room red brick bank building branded as our town’s San Pierre Bank and anchored on the corner of Eliza Street and U.S. 421 until his retirement in the late 1960s, when a new and more modern bank building was built across the street.

A large and imposing family home on a hill overlooking our church and the town park is where Peg lived her entire life in the family homestead, with Mary retiring to a smaller home behind, both dwellings still dwarfing the earlier three-story family structure which was torn down in the early 1970s to make way for a new fire station for our town.

Both Peg and Mary told me on multiple occasions how their kindly father (I recall from my youth in the 1970s attending mass with his daughters), and the family’s private bank, helped save many farms during the Great Depression.

Tom Daly died at age 90 in May 1981, which was two decades following his wife Opal’s passing in December 1962 at age 68. Opal was a registered nurse originally from Danville, Illinois.

The Daly sisters remained a comforting and welcoming presence in their same church pew every weekend for nearly a century and were always a faithful fixture from my own recollection seated beneath the large stained-glass window that was donated by the Daly family.

The sisters also had a noted aunt with Hoosier prominence.

Their dad’s sister Eleanor Daly, who had attended Fort Wayne Business College, was the executive private secretary to then-Lt. Gov. Henry F. Schricker until her sudden death at age 30 in June 1937.

Schricker, who was born in our neighboring small town of North Judson, of course, went on to become Indiana’s 36th and 38th governor, and for 11 years he owned and published our local weekly newspaper, The Starke County Democrat, before entering politics in 1932.

He was a one-term member of the Indiana State Senate and was sworn into the governor’s office on Jan. 13, 1941.

Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Schricker the 1944 vice presidential nomination but he declined. Schricker died on December 28, 1966, and is buried at the Crown Hill Cemetery in Knox.

Bringing offerings of food to a family with a recent death is always comforting and a long-standing tradition.

Homemade jams and jellies nestled in a basket of fresh muffins or buttermilk biscuits are ideal and welcoming in any social situation.

Reader Marilyn Stuckert of Crown Point brought a jar of her “Holiday Fruit Jam” for my parents and me to sample, with her fears expressed that “it might be too tart or bitter to your liking since it includes cranberries, so spread it in small doses.”

Our trio of farm tastebuds found her holiday mixed berry with a hint of orange jam to be delicious. We are a family who favors the flavors of rhubarb, gooseberries, crabapples and ripe green Granny Smith apples, all tart and sour selections to our liking!

Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at philip.m.potempa@powershealth.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.