Back to the Garden of Eden, the fig tree was important. When Adam and Eve found out they were “nekkid” they made clothes from the leaves. Now, my love of the delicious fruit is despite its stylish leaves. By the way, when’s the last time any of y’all saw anyone wearing fig leaves? Probably somewhere in Mexico during spring break… 

In February of 2013, a dear friend of mine wrote the following about a lunch we had while rabbit hunting:

“Oh, yes, I almost forgot that I brought some Mary B buttered biscuits stuffed with some real homemade preserved Georgia-grown figs about as big as a half-dollar that would make your tongue slap your eyeballs. Those figs made James pontificate on all the fig preserves he had enjoyed over his lifetime starting back when he was a child.”

 

Bill Prince was a fine southern gentleman and a fine friend. Bill passed away last year and every rabbit hunt since hasn’t been the same.

My love of fig preserves among my friends is well known. Now, when I say preserve, I mean whole figs preserved, not processed or minced. The glory of this simple fruit is lost on many today because they don’t know what a fig tree is, nor have they had the pleasure of biting into a fig preserve on a hot biscuit with a perfect cup of coffee while sitting on a tailgate, pontificating about the glory of preserves.

In the south, there is a distinct difference when we say jelly, jam or preserves. Now, in my opinion, that difference can vary from family to family and region to region. In my family, we had strawberry jam, grape jelly, and fig preserves. Different members of the family grew these items. Pop and Granny (my maternal grandparents) grew strawberries and figs. Every year Granny would put up jars upon jars of fig preserves. Now for us, that is the whole fig simmered ‘til a thick syrup developed, after these flowers of goodness sat in sugar overnight, then canned in a water bath. You are left with delicious little “jelly balls” as I used to call them when I was little. 

I can think of so many occasions where Pop and Granny would have us for dinner and we would have skillet fried chicken, homemade canned green beans, creamed corn from their garden, and biscuits with “jelly balls.” There have been so many camping and fishing trips in the mountains where Pop would cook biscuits for breakfast in an old oven and serve fig preserves to me and my great uncle “Little Willy” Bill Quintrell. In fact, anyone in the Jacks’ River area who happened to stop by wound up with a biscuit. The few times Pop would camp at our deer lease over in Taliaferro County he would always make biscuits and have fig preserves for breakfast. 

After Granny and Pop got too advanced in years to can or garden much, this style of processing these delicacies went away. Only occasionally will I see whole fig preserves anymore, and rarely do canned green beans from anywhere or anyone taste as good as Granny’s. My wife and I started gardening in earnest a couple of years ago and while we have had good success with peas, corn, squash, zucchini and okra, we have yet to figure out a good variety of beans and how to grow them so they taste like Granny’s. 

 

This is probably just my memory combining the love, the care, and the family with my memories of food. Scientists say our sense of smell is most closely connected to our memories. If you are a foodie, you cannot deny the truth of that. I can smell gun oil and remember learning how to clean guns with my grandfather. I can smell fried pies and think of dates in Atlanta with my wife and us sharing Varsity peach and apple pies. The smell of coffee from a thermos reminds me of my grandmother and the many cold mornings deer or turkey hunting where my grandfather would share his coffee with me, and the peanut butter and graham crackers grandmother would pack us. But the taste of a good fig preserve will send my mind reeling. It’s more powerful than the smell.

So yes, the fig preserve to me is one of life’s greatest treasures, and when I encounter one with the perfect biscuit and the perfect company, I tend to enjoy it and remember all those fig preserves from years past. 

—Outdoors columnist James Pressley can be reached at pressleyoutdoors@gmail.com.