Jamming

Some radio station today had a feature on the word "jam". Which was quite apt as I'd spent the weekend jamming away, after our annual pick your own trip to East Yonderton Farm in Paisley. As I bought the jamming sugar, the woman at the checkout asked if it was easy to make jam, as she'd always wanted to give it a try but then though it may be too tricky.

Well, what can I say, I'm not a domestic goddess, I'm no great cook, but making jam? The easiest thing in the world.

Go on, give it a try, it's really simple and while not cheaper than the cheapest jam jar at your exploiting supermarket, it tastes 100 times better and you know where the fruit came from (if you did pick it yourself, which isn't actually a requirement).

My favourite is rapsberry jam but I've made jam from throwing all odd fruits I had together, from my rhubarb glut when I had an allotment rather than clay soil in my front garden which the rhubarb clearly doesn't like, strawberries, brambles and the Rhineland speciality of plum spread (which is a different recipe and involves a lot more time and patience).

Preparation:
large saucepan, wooden spoon
6 sterilised jars and lids (you can sterilise by putting them into the oven at 150 degrees for 10 mins.) I reuse jars with nice wide opening.
optionally: a funnel, wax discs 

Ingredients
1kg of fruit
1kg of sugar (jamming sugar for raspberries and strawberries, some fruit will require preserving sugar, alternatively you can use normal sugar and add pectin. Preserving and jamming sugar are only stocked at large supermarkets, the packets also tell you which fruit to use it for)
a knob of butter
a splash of lemon juice (both optional)

What to do:
Add fruit and sugar (and optionally lemon juice) to a large saucepan, at least twice the depth of the mixture, slowly heat until sugar is dissolved, stirring with a wooden spoon. Then get the heat on and add the butter. When the mixture is boiling vigorously, start your timer and boil vigorously for 4 minutes.

(this is not a full rolling boil yet. I love my jamming saucepan by the way, it's ancient 

I'm sure but perfect for making jam)

You then may want to test if the setting point has been reached. To be honest, I'm not fussed about this step, Only once did my jam not set and it was still lovely, just a bit runny. But if you have to, this is how to do it: put a small plate in fridge or freezer and after 4mins of boiling, put a bit of jam on the plate, wait 10 seconds and then touch with a finger. If it wrinkles, the jam is done. If not, boil a tad longer, try again.

Fill jam into jars. A funnel is handy for this. If you have wax discs, put them on top of jam, seal with lid. Done. You may want to label or decorate with nice fabric, I'm lazy, esp if I do 4 batches in one night and finish at 1am, so mine look like this.

Finally: Eat. Yum

22 jars of jam, should get us through the year until the next summer.

Outdoor Monday: Urban Foraging and Making Jam

I love foraging. Ever since I've moved to Glasgow, the annual brambling season has been marked in my calendar. Usually, the brambles are made into a jam or some crumble cake, sometimes mixed with other fruit, sometimes as bramble jelly.

Bramble season is only about to start in Scotland so there's another week or two to wait but thanks to a kind friend I heard about damson trees in the middle of the Gorbals (which is almost right in the centre of Glasgow). Not having much time to lose, Cubling and I went foraging in the urban park. We found damson trees heavy with fruit, from top to bottom, so that there was enough to be picked on Cubling's height. As much as picking, she enjoyed just being in this slightly wild spot of land, sitting down, playing with her favourite teddy, my camera and generally directing where and what we should pick.

The park is small and situated between council and private housing, close to high rise buildings. It's not very big, but still manages to have a sense of reclusion. The fruit trees and the overgrown area around them meant we were in a small but separate world of our own, away from the dog walkers and lunch break smokers, closer to the birds and the thistles. The sun came out and we spent some time just sitting, chatting and being there.

Our pick was about 2.3kg of damsons, and 300 gr of redcurrants, which translates to two jam making sessions. So in the afternoon, I tried my hand at damson/redcurrant jam:

Damson jam:
1.5 kg of damsons (I had 1.3 kg of damson plus 300 gr of currants)
500 ml water
a knob of butter
1.5 kg of preserving sugar (plain sugar works too as damsons are high in pectin and don't need additional pectin)

method: Remove stalks from the fruit, place in large saucepan (I tend to use my largest one for jam making). Slow boil the damsons with water until the fruit falls apart. (This takes a while, enough time to wash and sterilise your jars - I usually sterilise by sticking them into the oven at 150 degrees for about 30 mins, but having a microwave steriliser for baby equipment, I used this: 3 mins with a bit of water sprinkled into the jars.)

Now, the stones should start making an appearance at the top of the broth. If not, try a potato mashing tool to help the fruit along. You'll find that the longer you cook the fruit, the easier it is to spot the stones and take them out (however, you don't want to overcook either), it's still fiddly and not the easiest jam to make together with your toddler. You can continue picking out stones while you cook and jam the fruit, even when pouring it into the jars. You will get better at spotting the stones as you go along, honest.

Once the fruit has disintegrated, take off the hob, add the sugar and butter and allow some time for the sugar to dissolve. Once dissolved, boil for 10 mins, test for setting point (I never do that and it still works) and once setting point is reached, take off the hob and fill into your sterilised jam jars. I use a funnel for this, and also top the jam with wax discs, but this is optional.

The recipe makes about 6-7 medium sized jars of jam.

Outdoor Monday: Pick your own

It's taken us all summer and a night filled with dreams of anxiety to finally embark on our very own picking your own adventure.

Let me explain: Firstly, my excuse is that I'm pregnant. For everything. So yes, I had a night full of anxiety dreams that if we didn't go fruit picking TOMORROW we would never ever go fruit picking. That is a serious, dramatic, and panic inducing thought. If you're pregnant. Because, as I now know, it doesn't matter WHAT you are anxious about, even if it's a stupid, ridiculous thing like fruit picking, what matters is THAT you are anxious, the actual feeling. I mean, when I woke for the 10th time that night, I knew I was being stupid to experience such anxiety, but it was still real. Very much so in fact. Previously, our plans to pick our own were abandoned due to atrocious weather (I'm talking serious downpours, not a bit of drizzle) and my SPD (as I say, you can blame anything on pregnancy) which rendered me almost immobile for the best part of 8 weeks.

So I decided to make a fool of myself to Mr Cartside (and now the whole world by blogging about it) and tell him about it. How I would love to go fruit picking because Cubling would love it and it was almost the end of the season, and then there's going to be a baby and if the baby was anything like Cubling, we wouldn't be able to do it next year (screaming baby syndrome) or the year after (runaway toddler syndrome). Plus considering our weekend plans for the next weeks, there was NO TIME LEFT. It was NOW OR NEVER.

Am I shouting? I tried not to, but yes, I guess I was.

And we went fruit picking. Straws were "scarce", fair enough, I'd just bought 4 packs at a supermarket (Scottish grown though) when a shower came down and "fruit picking" in a supermarket suddenly became appealing again. I hadn't bought raspberries and they were still going strong, and all was well.

Need I say that Cubling loved it? Just look at the pictures - we spent twice as long as we'd intended, picked twice as much as we'd planned, and spent a lot more than we had estimated. Cubling actually liked the pea picking as much as the raspberry picking.

The following days were spent: jam making, preserving, eating. My intention to cajole Cubling into eating fruit has backfired though: now that she knows that real fruit makes it into jam, she no longer eats jam. I give up. At least she loves picking and jam making, that's a start, isn't it? And she's fine with peas, straight from the pod or cooked. We now have 14 jars of jam to carry the summer goodness into the winter, a very knackered but happy mummy because there's little cooking I enjoy more than making jam.

There were lots of families there, with children younger than Cubling. So it may not be totally unimaginable to pick our own next year. I'm reassured all around. We went to East Yonderton Farm, the only Pick Your Own farm near Glasgow (Renfrewshire to be precise). It's located right next to Glasgow airport, so the kids can watch planes take off and land as well. The farm has all kinds of soft fruit and some vegetables - you can pick your own at weekends and buy produce from their shop weekdays. For a list of all Pick Your Own farms in Scotland, you can find the details here. On this site you can also find farms in England and Wales.

This post is part of Outdoor Challenge Monday, hosted by 5 Orange Potatoes.