A short history of well-travelled marmalade

It began innocently enough. My friend Jo in London, who is also obsessed with marmalade, was trawling the Internet one day and found a company that imports a coffee marmalade she wanted to try. The importer is in the U.S., but the coffee marmalade is made in Sicily. My friend first asked if the coffee marmalade could be shipped directly to her in London (England being closer to Italy than the U.S.). Apparently, it couldn’t. So she asked me if I could order it, then send it to her in London, so she could taste it and review it on her blog. She kindly offered to pay me for the shipping with dollars she has stashed away somewhere in her rambling house in north London. But I told her she could just send me a Fortnum & Mason chocolate rabbit for my daughter’s Easter basket instead. So far; so good.

I called the importer, a company called Gustiamo in New Jersey (www.gustiamo.com). A lovely lady (Martina) took my order, and as we were chatting, I mentioned to her that the coffee marmalade was for my friend in London who wants to review it on her blog. I placed my order, got off the phone, and went to make myself a well-deserved cup of tea. A little while later, the phone rang, and it’s another lovely lady from Gustiamo—this time the boss, Beatrice—who said she heard about the marmalade blog, and she would be happy to send the coffee marmalade at no charge to us. I said, "thank you so much" (thinking to myself in a Paddington Bear-like way that this could be the start of something truly wonderful—getting jars of marmalade in the mail for free!)

A week later, my little package came with not one, but two jars of Sicilian coffee marmalade. So the little box of marmalade, which had already crossed the Atlantic once (from Italy to New Jersey), is now wending its way back across the Atlantic again, from Boston to London. 

If you are curious (as I am) to find out what it tastes like, check out my friend Jo’s blog at http://www.projectmarmalade.com/ in a few weeks’ time. She needs to give the marmalade time to get over its jet lag.