A nice way to get in a jam!

There is nothing I liked more as a child than bread and jam. Indeed, I loved eating jam with a spoon when I got home after school and there was always plenty of the homemade kind in every season. 

Here are a few ideas for summer but the combinations are endless:

Storing for winter

1. Strawberry and fresh mint
2. Raspberry and vanilla
3. Cherry and redcurrant
4. Gooseberry and elderflower

   

   

   
   

   

   

   
   

Bejewelled Cherry Jam with Redcurrant Pearls

Ingredients list for the cherry jam:

• Black cherries 1 kg
• Granulated sugar 500g
• Frozen redcurrants, 1/2 punnet
• Juice of one lemon

Put the stoned cherries and the sugar in a large pan.

Bring to a rolling boil (105°on the jam thermometer) and and keep it there for 5 minutes. Turn off.

Add the redcurrants and bring back to a boil for another 5 minutes.

Check the setting by running a wooden spoon up along the side of the pan.

Use a ladle to put into clean, sterilised jars and put aside. Jam is best eaten a few weeks after it’s been made.

J’ai trempé mon doigt dans la confiture

Turelure.

Ca sentait les abeilles

Ca sentait les groseilles

Ca sentait le soleil:

J’ai trempé mon doigt dans la confiture

Puis je l’ai suçé

Suçé

Mais tellement suçé

Que je l’ai avalé!

René de Obaldia – a favourite poet of mine…