I was mesmerized by the photographs of the different ways readers had used the empty Bonne Maman jars for storage. Here are some of the clipping photographs.
I was wishing I was in England or France so I could enjoy some Bonne Maman preserves and start my own collection of cute jars. We went out for dinner the next day and browsed through the nearby supermarket on our way home. Quelle surprise! There was a display of Bonne Maman jams right before my eyes!
The Fig Jam jumped into my cart and came home with me. Tres delicieux! Now I need to go back and buy more flavours to get my collection going.
I was wishing I was in England or France so I could enjoy some Bonne Maman preserves and start my own collection of cute jars. We went out for dinner the next day and browsed through the nearby supermarket on our way home. Quelle surprise! There was a display of Bonne Maman jams right before my eyes!The Fig Jam jumped into my cart and came home with me. Tres delicieux! Now I need to go back and buy more flavours to get my collection going.
4 comments:
J'adore Bonne Maman jams and I LOVE to use them for sauces, dressings and salsa I make... the labels come off sooooo easy too... I see you are a FAN too! I just bought some blueberry this afternoon!
Fifi - So happy to hear that the label comes off easily on the Bonne Maman jars. I have some other jars that I was going to repurpose from another brand but no matter how many times I soaked and scraped and used Goo Gone, the label stayed firmly glued on. What on earth did they glue it on with, I wonder? By the way, thank you for visiting and for taking the time to comment!
I've found isopropyl alcohol works very well to remove stubborn labels. I usually buy stronger than the very easily found 70%, but I think the 70% would work fine, too.
The way I do it is soak a paper towel fairly well in the alcohol (so it's actually wet, not just damp), fold it up so covers the label with a couple layers of alcohol soaked towel, then wrap the whole thing tightly in some plastic wrap, secured with a couple rubber bands, to keep all the vapors contained. Then, I let it sit overnight while the alcohol vapors do all the work.
Many labels come off with only an hour or two of soaking, but with several hours of soaking, I haven't met a label that I can't remove fairly easily. BTW, the Bonne Maman jar labels are some of the easiest to remove. Some other labels you may still have to scrape (easily) off, but the Bonne Maman labels come off cleanly and almost always intact. Not that you'd actually have a use for an old, intact Bonne Maman label...I just use it as an example to show how well the alcohol works.
My favorite jars for reuse were Chambord jam jars from France (the same company that makes Chambord liqueur). They were fairly squat, about 3" tall, and had a very wide mouth, almost exactly the same size as the jar diameter. So, they were very stable and access was as good as you can get. They were a nice looking jar, too, with 12 flat facets, similar to the Bonne Mamon jars, just a little wider and shorter. The contents were great, too!
Unfortunately, Chambord changed the jars in the last couple years to a much taller and slimmer design.
Ron H
Hi Ron,
thank you - those sound like great suggestions! I'm going to try to find some older Chambord bottles.
Post a Comment