Almost exactly a year ago I described my
adventures into chutney making. Well, it's that time of year again, only this time I thought I'd be more prepared. No cop outs this year with strange gourds that look like engorged genitalia.
The apple tree is shedding another mammoth harvest of cooking apples.
I'm in the market for marrows.
The jam kettle is locked and loaded.
I have consulted the recipe. I have clocked the correct amount of
tickling pickling spice, ginger, ground carpet tacks and vinegar.
Mötörhead (my chutney-making accompaniment of choice) is cued up on the iPod.
The
sauces tzores sources of shallots are squared. The middle class is quite prepared. But - oh woe! - when I looked in the shed for my secret stash of jars - they had gone, like the collapsing stack of genitive constructions that is Old Mother Hubbard's Dog's Bone.
D'Oh.
That's when I put in my order with
Lakeland, the only choice for the organized
homemaker housewife (my mother wasn't the local WI President for nothing, and yes, I picked up more than how to accompany a lot of old ladies by playing Jerusalem on the village-hall piano, and no, since you ask, they all had their clothes on, as far as I remember).
I ordered a dozen one-pound
bombs jars, with all the trimmings.
Chutney Apocalypse will have to happen next week, after the
Canaries have
slaughtered played Hull City at Carrow Road. It's no accident that marrows are yellow and green. On The Ball, Chutney!
I've been hunting up all available re-cycled jars at Casa Aust for a second round of bramble jelly making.
ReplyDeleteMrs Aust usually does the concocting, mainly since it takes her approx a fifth of the time it takes me, but I feel this year I should don my jam-making goggles in earnest and show her I really can do a whole major batch solo.
Actually, we have so much bramble jelly already from the first big boil-up - some two dozen jars - that I think a bramble and apple chutney might be the way to go, if I can find a crab apple tree in some local park or garden to provide the other main ingredient.
Go for it! And you may need your 'jam-making goggles'. When that stuff gets going it's like molten lava and spits red-hot glop all over the kitchen. I got quite a few light burns on my hands and arms last time. I learned a lot of cookery from a book I had as a kid that warned - hot sugar is very, very hot. Never a truer word.
ReplyDeleteCanning is where my Luddite principles fail, and I'm limited to microwave pickles and freezer jam. I just can't get past the trauma of further heating an already hot kitchen. Which is too bad, because pickled okra and dilled green beans are fantastic.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I will happily barter homemade basil pesto for chutneys and jams.
Basil pesto yum yum yum
ReplyDeleteI'm really pleased with how the pesto turned out this year - it's a mixture of three mild, yet flavorful, basil varieties. The honeybees get very angry when I harvest the basil, as they love the flowers (might plant some next year away from the garden, just for the bees). The problem is that I typically freeze the pesto in ice cube trays, and in order to ship it anywhere, I'd have to ... can it.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you can -smuggle- bring some over in person. We' all love to see you again. Cox Minima is mad about ponies and wants to come over to Texas. This pony-madness is getting quite insufferable. I expect it'll pass and be replaced by boyfriend-madness, when I'll beg for the return of the pony obsession.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of jars, apart from "recycled" ones (ones that came with bought stuff of various kinds in them, or donations from friends & family), we also have a rotating supply of a couple of dozen of these. These screw-tops numbers come from our jam-making efforts on holiday in France several years ago - in rural France you can usually buy them (considerably cheaper than in the UK!) in multi-packs from supermarkets, even fairly small local stores. We tend to hold on to these jars, and give away / trade jam in the supermarket ones. Quite a few of these screw-top ones have now been through multiple cycles of "jamming".
ReplyDeleteCool! It's quite difficult now to find jam-making accessorama in all but specialist outlets. I'm kicking myself for having thrown out my collection of jars in the proverbial baby+bathwater nexus when a few weeks ago we had a skip that was dying to be filled, and a shed and garden to clear out.
ReplyDeleteOur other favourite jars for jam, and ones which you can get from scrounging other peoples' old supermarket jam ones, are the Bonne Maman type - esp good because the wide neck makes them easy to fill quickly without spills, and quite robust. And also available in French rural supermarkets in cheap multipacks.
ReplyDeleteAgreed about the faff of finding the paraphernalia here - we couldn't believe how hard it was to find a jelly net a couple of years ago. 'Er Indoors (who comes from rural stock) says the jars and other stuff are in all the supermarkets in rural Europe because so many people there still make preserves and pickles. Certainly if you go to her family's farm (which is a modern mechanised dairy operation) there is a huge larder full of jars of assorted pickled and preserved this and that.
My dad has a few fruit trees at his French holiday retreat, and we have made jam with the plums in the past. However, he uses all the apples for making rough Brittany-style cider...!
I hate to tell you this, cromercrox, but the pony-madness and the boyfriend-madness can, in some circumstances, be perfectly compatible. AFAIC, that is the purpose of the fine equestrian sport of polo. Eventing also serves this purpose - just ask some of your royals. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAlso, my friends have a very nice Welsh pony, Napoleon, who can be ridden by any child and even by small adults. All the Croxii are welcome to visit and stay at my home, Andustar, any time. Just sayin'.