Black Beauty is the most common eggplant available. It is pretty thorny so be careful when picking. Some eggplants have a bitter taste to them if not salted and let set to draw out the bitterness. Black Beauty is that type. Nadia is not. Nadia has no bitterness to it. In my opinion, Nadia has a nicer texture than does Black Beauty. Nadia has fewer and finer thorns.
The cherry jam is out of this world good. I made the chokecherry jelly in two batches. I like the batch with added lemon better than the batch without. The yellow chokecherries seem to make a blander jelly than the black chokecherries. Eating them off of the tree, the yellow ones aren't as astringent as the black ones and when fully ripe they are also sweeter.
Unfortunately for me, making jelly or jam requires taste testing. I made the mistake of "licking" the pot clean from the cherry jam episode and ended up with way too high of blood sugar.
It's all good ... even when we overthink it!
