Handmade Monday

Blackberry and Apple Jam

1. Take your two daughters blackberry picking.  The older one will help, the younger one will come too.

2. Try not to strangle younger daughter after she runs away up the towpath, very close to the edge of the canal.

3. Take children to Waitrose to buy cooking apples, as they are not yet appearing as windfalls in either Hanwell or West Ealing, which are the only places you are prepared to look.

4. Put all ingredients in the fridge and get on with other things such as mopping up accidents, trying not to shout, light crying and serious gin drinking.

5. After children are in bed, get all ingredients out of fridge, sterilise jam jars in a half hearted manner, find recipe, put younger daughter back to bed, drink gin.

6. Weigh ingredients.  Discover that the ratios mean that you now need to peel, core and chop 7 apples.  Cry quietly.  Peel, core and chop 7 apples.  Cut hand with peeler.  Drink gin.

7. Make jam in standard manner; bung everything in a pan, boil until setting point is reached - forget to place saucer in freezer prior to starting jam making, so test for setting point on bottle of vodka.  Contemplate drinking vodka.  Finish gin, search vainly for bottle.

8. Pour boiling hot jam into boiling hot jars.  Get jam on hands, tea towel, feet and work surfaces.  Curse gin.

9. Put lids on jam jars and photograph.  Bask in all round domestic goddessness and pour a small celebratory vodka.  Top up with gin.

Apple and blackberry with vanilla is my new jam

And very nice it is too, if a bit sweet.

Crumbs, what a weekend.  Lucy is going to be 4 on Wednesday, so we had a party for her and about 20 3 and 4 year olds on Saturday; fortunately as we've been having our summer in September, it was baking hot, so we were able to colonise the local park.  They had a brilliant time - no one was sick, no one wet themselves and no one cried too much.

I consider that to be a terrific success, and as it was all outside, there was minimal clearing up to do afterwards. We went to the pub as a family, which was really nice - the girls tore off round the garden and on the climbing frame and swings, and we sat and drank.  Not as heavily as we might have done, but still with concentration and great sense of purpose.

Sunday was spent at Whipsnade - the birthday girl decided that that was the ONLY place.  Hattie loved it there - there were "moos" (antelope), "yak yuk" (yaks), "bah bah"(bears), "bou, oink oink"(boars), "maos"(lynx), "raaaaa"(tiger, lions) and "ack ack"(ducks), not to mention all the "bur"(birds) that one almost two year old could spot. We had a great time.

At church on Sunday, we sat next to our MP, and obviously got chatting to him about the coalition and all who are hell bent on destruction and "iconoclasm", which is in quotes because it is one.  Being some what of an awkward cuss, our MP, who shall remain nameless, was rather non-politic about his colleagues on the opposite bench, describing one as a malevolent, vicious little meerkat.  No prizes.  I do like our MP.

Sparkleberry jam and other things

I am a magpie, attracted to anything shiny and delicious, so when Nigella Lawson re-tweeted this link, I knew I just had to have a go at making my own.  I do not have the patience to pick my own; well, I do and Lucy does, but after yesterday's blackberry and damson picking carnage which resulted in Harriet running out across the road, I don't think it's quite for us yet.  So I bought two punnets of just on the turn strawberries from one of the greengrocers on our bit of the Uxbridge Road, and made sparkly strawberry jam.

The recipe in "How to be a Domestic Goddess" for strawberry jam is excellent, I've made it before and got good results, so I just substituted pomegranate molasses for balsamic vinegar and shoved the whole lot in the pan and boiled it up.  Another slight modification; I added 2 pots of edible red glitter - possibly too much, but it is really, really sparkly, something that I'm not sure shows up in the photo.

We now have three and a half jars of Sparkleberry Jam.  Wonderful.

For all I don't want to be at work, I do love September.  I love going to pick blackberries and damsons, rose hips and crab apples, rowan berries and elderberries, and then turning them into jams, jellies, vodkas and syrups.  Mind you, the first time I made elderberry jam it carbonised, so I'm hoping for a better result this time.  Lucy, eccentric child, won't eat baked beans, but wolfs down crab apple jelly, so I'm going to have to make three or four jars so she doesn't run out.  We all like crab apple jelly, it's sweet and savoury at the same time.

I've found a damson tree half strangled by brambles on a locked up building site a couple of doors up, and there's another on the way to church, so I'm going to have lots and lots for jam and jellies.  I might have to give some away, I think I've still got a load from last year.  This year I want to make rose hip syrup, and I will not let my husband near it - he burned it last year, the idiot.

Right, I have to cook something more suitable for supper than sparkly strawberry jam.  Salmon, beans and noodles I think, and I need to wash my hands several times after handling the chillis, especially before I take my lenses out.