With the gift-giving season in full swing, small companies are filling the niche for food gifts with a homey touch. They're not homemade, but perhaps they're the next best thing.
We've chosen to highlight a few of these products and the stories behind them.
Land of Joseph Maple Syrup, of Sharon, Vt., boasts U.S. Grade A pure New England maple syrup with a bit of a Utah connection. John Lefgren, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, bought 10 acres of land for a family retreat near the birthplace and memorial for the church's first president, Joseph Smith. Over the years, the retreat became a bed and breakfast and then a gift shop. He buys the syrup from local farmers who have been producing it for generations.
The Utah connection? "The simple fact is there are a lot of Mormons in Utah, and there's a very clear story that connects maple syrup to the Smith family." He points out that in her history, Lucy Mack Smith wrote about making maple sugar "of which we averaged one thousand pounds per year."
To give an idea of the labor involved, Lefgren calculates that the Smith family would have to tap 500 trees, collect 60,000 pounds of sap and burn 10,000 pounds of wood to boil down the liquid.
Lefgren has tried to take the connection a step further by using maple sugaring history and weather records to calculate the exact date of the "First Vision," when Joseph Smith records that he was visited by heavenly messengers in a grove of trees in Palmyra. N.Y. In September, he presented his theory to the Church History and Doctrine Department at Brigham Young University.
While here, he was able to get his syrup in Utah's Associated Food Stores, such as Macey's, Reams, Bowman's, Kent's, Dan's Foods, Immigration Market and Dick's Market. An 8-ounce bottle retails for around $4.80. That's a lot more than the artificially flavored corn syrups on the market, but Lefgren says, "Maple syrup will always be special, because it can't be made on a mass scale. The sap has to be collected from trees and boiled down. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. It's just a lot of work."
When Utahns think of honey they think of Huntsville. Since the Bible talks of a land flowing with milk and honey, it's appropriate that a group of Catholic monks use honey to raise funds for their monastery. The Abbey of the Holy Trinity Trappist Monastery, nestled in the Ogden Valley, was founded in 1947 and dedicated to an austere and simple life of prayer and manual labor.
On the surrounding farmland, the monks grow alfalfa and raise approximately 300 Hereford beef cattle. The group used to tend a colony of bees that produced honey, but that has changed, said Abbot Casimir Bernas, head of the monastery.
"We used to keep bees, but we gave our hives to a gentleman in Cache Valley," he said. "He now furnishes us with the honey, so we can still say it's Utah honey."
The honey arrives in a tanker truck and is put in 100-gallon drums, then it's processed, packaged and sold at the monastery's gift shop and through mail and Web-site orders. Part of the honey is sold in liquid form, and the rest is creamed and flavored with various fruits, nuts and spices. The creamed honey is $2.50 for a cup, or $11 for a four-cup gift box, and comes in more than a dozen flavors: apricot, blueberry, lemon, orange, raspberry, strawberry, date pecan, toasted almond, banana nut, brandy, cinnamon, maple and rum. A 12-ounce bottle of liquid honey is $3.25; a one-pound jar is $4.25. There are various gift-box combinations.
In addition to honey, the group also makes a two-grain cereal and natural peanut butter, with an ingredient list of "peanuts and nothing else." The peanut butter is $3.90 per 8-ounce tub. While at the gift shop, you can also browse through various religious books, posters and videos. The gift shop is open from 8 a.m. to noon, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday. To get there from Ogden, take the 12th Street exit off I-15 and travel east on 12th Street through Ogden Canyon (U-39) to Huntsville. Follow SR-39 to the American Legion Hall. Turn right and follow the signs for a couple miles. You can also get order forms from www.xmission.com/~hta/ or by writing Trappist Creamed Honey, Abbey of The Holy Trinity, 1250 S. 9500 East, Huntsville, UT 84317.
Lehman's Jams stand out on grocery-store and gift-shop shelves, but few know the story behind the product. The company was founded six years ago by Phillip Lehman, who belonged to a Mennonite community in Garland, Box Elder County. Last year Lehman sold the business to the Utah Blind Enterprises Inc. and moved back to his home in Pennsylvania, where he is still involved in selling the products there.
"I think the jam recipes were old Mennonite family recipes," said Lee Brown, who moved the business to 2212 S. West Temple. "Garland is a little out of the way, and we are getting bigger and need more facilities," Brown said. "But we still make good jam."
The company is run by the Utah Council of the Blind, a nonprofit organization for blind people. Brown, who owned several businesses in Florida, is on the board of directors.
"This is a for-profit business — we get no tax benefit from it — with the goal of creating jobs for blind people, and using the profit to help blind people secure jobs," said Brown. "Nationwide, about 70 percent of blind people are unemployed. It was 80 percent 25 years ago."
Currently the company employs seven people off and on. Brown and another employee are blind, and several others are being used in part-time spots. Some jobs, such as checking the labels to make sure they're straight, aren't conducive for a blind person, he said.
The label was changed from Lehman's Kitchens to Lehman's Homemade Jam. Brown says the company also makes jam for Great Harvest bread and a couple other private labels. The firm makes 24 different flavors of jam, plus three no-sugar-added spreads that are flavored with grape-juice concentrate.
"I'm a diabetic, so it's lucky for me that we have them," Brown said.
Chokecherry jam is the company's biggest product, Brown said. The chokecherries come from Montana. The peach jam uses Utah peaches that are cut and pureed in the factory — it takes about 50 bushels to do 6,000-7,000 jars of jam, which is what the company sold last year. Most of the berries (boysenberries, blueberries, blackberries, elderberries, huckleberries) come from the Northwest. The jam is cooked in a 100-gallon kettle, with beet sugar instead of cane sugar, Brown said, because "We think beet sugar is a better chemical blend."
The jams are sold in Associated Food stores, some Albertsons supermarkets and gift shops around Utah.
"Pucker Smack" is the creation of a West Jordan entrepreneur who wants Utahns to pucker up to his grandma's pickle recipe. "Pucker Smack" is a mustard pickle relish similar to the old-fashioned concoctions made in Utah's earlier days, when everyone had a back-yard garden and autumn meant canning season instead of football season.
Greg Paxton's product combines veggies like cucumber, cauliflower, onions, red and green pepper with mustard and pickling spices for a sweet, tangy sauce. Paxton says the origins of this pioneer family recipe began in western Europe as "piccalili" and traveled west with the Mormon pioneers, who called it "mustard pickles."
"Preserving vegetables in this method allowed the early settlers to enjoy vegetables throughout the long, cold winters," he said.
As a child, Paxton remembered his Grandmother Della serving her mustard pickles with virtually every meal. When she was no longer around to make it, he began preparing it for his own family and friends using her recipe. Soon, she saw the sales potential.
Paxton decided not to use the "mustard pickle" in his product's title, after being advised that many consumers weren't familiar with the term and would expect it to contain the traditional sweet or dill pickles.
"So we were trying to come up with a new name, and people said it kind of makes you pucker and smack your lips, and that's how it came out."
At $4.99 per 1-pound jar, Pucker Smack is available at The Store in Holladay, the Quilted Bear in Midvale and Duane's in Fillmore, or it can be ordered at the company headquarters, 566-4045.
E-MAIL: vphillips@desnews.com