From the time she was old enough to walk, Tiffany M. Jackson toddled along behind her paternal grandmother, Emma Lee Jackson, as she worked in her backyard garden in Jackson. She would marvel at the greenery all around her, from plum and fig trees and blackberry bushes to tomatoes, string beans and “any kind of flower you could find growing in Mississippi.”
On warm days she picked whatever flowers her grandmother would allow and fashion them into flower crowns and arrangements, and on days after heavy rain she sat in wet patches making mud pies. Her favorite activity, however, was what came after a day’s harvest.
Baskets of fruits and vegetables in hand, Jackson would follow her grandmother into the kitchen, which her grandfather, Reuben Jackson, built by hand along with the rest of the home in the 1920s. After picking out what fruits to use and what to make, Emma Lee Jackson took out glass jars and demonstrated to her granddaughter how to preserve their harvest through pickling and jelly-making.
For jellies, the elder Jackson taught her granddaughter about pectin, a fiber made from the skins of plants in powdered form that acts as a natural preservative and thickening agent. For pickling, Jackson’s grandmother instead used steel jars filled with vinegar and sealed to keep out bacteria.
As the daughter of two working parents, Jackson spent a great deal of her childhood before elementary school with her grandparents, learning the arts of food preservation all the while. She continued helping her grandmother in the kitchen even into adulthood, moreso as age made it increasingly difficult for her grandmother to work in her garden alone. After Emma Lee Jackson passed away in 2008, Jackson took up her craft for herself and started up her own backyard garden so she could pass on her grandmother’s craft to her own children.
“I wanted my two daughters, Taylor and Treasure White, and my son Jackson White to learn what my grandmother had taught me so they could always take care of themselves even if anything ever happened to our local grocery stores or in the event of mass power outages like we’ve been getting from recent storms,” Jackson says. “Food preserved and sealed properly can stay good for as long as two years even without power.”
After Jackson began making jellies and preserves in her own home, she took to giving out whatever her family didn’t use for themselves as gifts to her children’s teachers and friends in the area. Those who tried her creations soon began clamoring for more, leading Jackson to see an opportunity to turn her craft into a business and open Ms. T’s Sweets and Treats in 2010.
Lessons from Pocahontas, Miss.
Jackson operates Ms. T’s Sweets and Treats out of a commercial kitchen inside The Plant Venue in downtown Jackson, which previously housed the EcoShed. Jackson prides herself on being a throwback to the kinds of food her grandmother and others of her generation prepared while also inventing new creations with her own spin on her grandmother’s teachings, all made from scratch with fruits and vegetables she either grows herself or sources from local farmers markets.
In addition to more traditional jams and jellies like strawberry, peach and blackberry and an assortment of pickled vegetables and preserves, Jackson has created custom items such as habanero pineapple jam, cabernet sauvignon jam, pina-colada jelly made with pineapple and coconut rum, bourbon bacon jam, spicy pepper sauces, fruit-flavored honey butter and more.
The jellies and preserves she learned of from her paternal grandmother are not the only legacy Jackson inherited, however. Her maternal grandmother, Malina Garner, taught Jackson all she knew about baking and cooking, which the entrepreneur also puts to use at Ms. T’s.
While Emma Lee Jackson had a powerful effect on Tiffany’s formative years, the business owner made many childhood memories with her maternal grandmother’s side of the family. While her father was an only child and was the center of Emma Lee Jackson’s world, Malinda Garner’s home in Pocahontas, Miss., was where Jackson went to play on weekends with her many cousins.
“There were at least nine of us there nearly every visit back then, which means that side of the family was all about spending time with your family and enjoying fellowship,” Jackson says. “My maternal grandmother was a church lady and a pillar of the community who always brought the cakes, pie, plates and dishes for any kind of gathering you could think of.”
Malinda Garner, a Sunday-school teacher, choir member and usher at Baker’s Grove Missionary Baptist Church, insisted on preparing every dish she made from scratch with no premade mixes or even recipes. While Jackson spent her childhood playing at her grandmother’s home, it wasn’t until after she and her cousins had moved away and started families of their own that she began learning Garner’s culinary arts.
Much like with her paternal grandmother, Jackson began spending more time with Garner and helping her in the kitchen when she became less able to do so herself, especially for family dinners on holidays.
“Thanks to her I’ve been doing all the Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas meals for all our family get-togethers for the past 15 years,” Jackson says. “I would be in the kitchen with her, my kids by her knees, and we’d just let her boss us around and tell us what to do.”
“Since there weren’t any recipes, learning from her meant using trial and error without specific measurements,” she continues. “You just had to know what a particular dish should smell like and taste like and feel out your dough by hand to judge whether you wanted something crispy or soft.”
Thanks to Garner’s instruction, the menu at Ms. T’s includes items such as traditional Southern tea cakes, banana pudding with real custard, chicken and dumplings, vegetable soup and more. Jackson also made revisions to some of Garner’s recipes such as oatmeal raisin cookies and lemon pound cake to make rum cakes and the shop’s best-selling item, brown butter caramel chocolate chip cookies, which Jackson says sell out on a weekly basis.
While Jackson prepares her dishes out of the Plant Venue, she primarily sells through local farmers markets. On Tuesdays, Ms. T’s operates at the Fresh at Five Farmers Market (300 Jefferson St.) in Clinton. On Thursdays, the venue is Adcox’s Watermelons and Produce (352 E Woodrow Wilson Ave.) outside St. Dominic Hospital in downtown Jackson. Ms. T’s also visits the Magnolia Sunset Markets (451 N. Gallatin St., Jackson) one Saturday each month and sometimes opens at The JXN Flea (628 N. State St., Jackson).
“I feel like both of my grandmothers left me with an important legacy,” Jackson says. “It’s allowed me to feed my family all these years with real whole foods, which helps us all eat properly rather than eating canned or fast food. They left behind a blessing for me that I’m now passing down to my own children.”
For more information on Ms. T’s Sweets and Treats, call 601-937-6184, email mstsweetandtreats@gmail.com or visit mstssweetsandtreats.com.
