Just Jammin’

The best laid plans and all that. Yesterday afternoon Bob announced that the bottom of the church car park was covered little cherry plums – the trees were dropping their fruit in profusion. I could not bear the thought of all those cars driving in tomorrow and squishing them – so we went down and in less than half an hour had three full containers. There are loads more ripe for picking from the tree, and picking up from the ground – but there is only so much space in the freezer, and it would be greedy to take all the crop for ourselves.

But I was unbelievably tired in the evening – so I made Saturday’s to-do list, had a bath and went to bed at 9pm. I thought this was a sensible move! Bob went on working on Holiday Club stuff. At 10.30pm I remembered I need to thaw some chicken stock – so I went downstairs and removed it from the freezer.

This morning I intended to make a batch of carrot soup, make more Eqyptian plaques and do some other craft prep. This is where it all went slightly wrong. I had some stock in the fridge to use up, some thawed stock from  the freezer, and lots of carrots.

WRONG! the defrosted stock turned out to be stewed apples! I had broken my own rule about ‘always label food when it goes into the freezer’

Rethink the plans – make slightly less soup, and use some of the plums with the apples to make a batch of mixed fruit jam. Prepared the carrots and got that pan simmering away. Sorted out the fruit and put that in another pan.

Notice the Sugar Thermometer bought at Trago Mills last year finally getting some use! I use my pressure cooker pan for jam making – one day perhaps I’ll get a proper jam pan!

Off to the garage to get some jars. Then I remembered that I gave away all my ‘regular’ sized jamjars in April, to a teaching colleague. She and I worked with her class to make pretty tealight holders for her wedding reception. I did find an assortment of random sized jars. I washed and sterilised them, and the jam bubbled away.

It was an amazing pink colour. I got all my kitchen jobs done, made more plaques [whilst answering the phone and taking still more bookings for next week]

Then we had lunch [the soup was lovely, if I say so myself] and I potted up my jam. 

I shall work through last night’s to-do list later – when we get back from this afternoon’s Garden Party.

Lots of jars of jam for the winter months, and two lots of soup.

And now the sun is shining, and once I have finished listening to Baldi on the Radio solving a murder mystery, I shall get changed into a pretty frock and go to the Party.

I shall need my sunhat!