In a bit of a pickle....

My strawberry jam, complete with recycled jar

Or a chutney or jam for that matter. I dont really know where the impulse is coming from but im feeling the need to do some preserving. Maybe its just that "pioneer stock" need to be laying things down after harvest. Not that i have enough of a harvest to preserve, but then again we never did when i was younger and yet we always had preserves. Thing is that at the height of the season things get a lot cheaper so it makes sense to preserve them if you like jams and chutneys etc, as home made are much nicer and a LOT cheaper, so when we were kids wed go and get bucket loads of fruit to be made into jams, pickles and chutneys as well as bottled fruit.
Im nowhere on that scale and as i was pretty young, i wasnt intimately involved with the preserving. That was more my sister and mum, using the recipes in the little brown leather folder that held any number of clippings from magazines and newspapers and hand written recipes scribbled on the back of envelopes. It didnt seem curious to me then, though it does make me wonder now, why my grandmother, and then my mother, both kept that little folder (or the recipes inside it at least) when neither of them was that good a cook and neither of them enjoyed it that much. I say that my grandmother didnt enjoy cooking, but tbh i cant recall if she did or not......given that when she was young there wasnt much choice i dont think enjoyment came into it really, it was just "what you did". Preserving though wasnt an optional extra back then. It was how you got through the year, and everyone had to do it. I can remember as a kid that whole cupboards at home were full of empty jars waiting for the annual preserving gluts.
Anyway, as i said i didnt really have a lot to do with the preserving other than picking the fruit and helping to prepare it, and washing jars, so the impulse to make jam and chutney came as a bit of a surprise. Jam though, is dead easy, so a couple of months ago (at really the wrong time of year as fruit was still pretty steep in price) i decided to bite the bullet and make some jam. Why precisely i decided to make strawberry i dont know, cos i dont like strawberry jam much myself, but the OH does and i figured i could find a use for the extra.
The lovely thing about jam is that its easy and you can make small quantities. With a chutney or relish, you have to work with larger amounts because theyre cooked down a lot and if you start with a small amount youll,
A: have trouble boiling it without burning, and,
B: finish your preserving with a magnifying glass to see the tiny amount you have left after the long cooking!
Funnily enough, i had some jars in the cupboard to fill. Old habits die hard and i find it next to impossible to throw away a jar even though i wasnt preserving up till recently lol, so i threw them through a dishwasher cycle and then into a 110c oven to sterilise. Thats all there is to sterilisation btw, you just need to watch that you dont touch the inside of the jars before theyre filled and that you fill them straight from the oven whilst the preserve and the jar is hot.
I must admit though, i did cheat a little and used jam setting sugar. Now this was unknown when even my mum was preserving, but all it is, is sugar with pectin added. Pectin is what causes the fruit and sugar mixture to jell into jam, and some fruits are notoriously low in it, strawberries being one, hence adding it. Some fruits have lots of pectin though, like plums, and the trick with plum jam isnt to get it to set, but to get it to set without turning to rubber! Another fruit with lots of pectin is apple, and also lemon and youll often find one or both in old jam recipes to ensure the all important "set"

The other large jar, now half eaten.

Testing for this was for many years to many people, an arcane art full of mystery, but really, its pretty straightforward. You put a few saucers or shallow containers (pottery holds the cold best which is why saucers are best) into the freezer, and then as your jam comes up to setting point, (you can tell this by, often a colour change to a deeper colour, the bubbles will be less frantic and will form and burst more slowly, and it will start to smell cooked) , you pull your pot off the heat and you take a small spoonful and you put it on your cold plate. To test it, give it a moment to cool, then push it with your finger. If you get a clear track through your little puddle of jam, and it wrinkles into a skin when you push it, its done! If not, put it back on the heat, boil for another 5 mins or so, then test again till it does. Once your jam is at setting point, stir in a knob of butter to disperse the scum. Now, youll read all kinds of directions for "skimming" but i wouldnt bother unless you have kids around. The skimmings were treats when we were kids, and i think would still go down well....hey its sweet and lurid in colour, its all good! If you dont have kids about then just leave it, and as i say, the butter will disperse it back into the jam. Pour your jam into your HOT jars, using a ladle....and if youre as messy as me a preserving funnel might be a good investment, and leaving about a cm headspace, put on the sterilised lids(put em in a bowl of boiling water). Again theres a lot of advice about 'do tighten your lids immediately, dont tighten em immediately, dont cover at all till coll, cover while hot etc.....I cover while hot and tighten the lids straight away. If you have the lids that have the little pop button on top, they should pop as the jam cools. If one doesnt, dont worry about it, just store in the fridge and use first. i got 3 small jars and two larger ones from my recipe, and even though i dont like strawberry jam much, i have to admit to a glow of pride a couple of weeks later when we had homemade scones, cream and homemade jam. It was yummy too ;) I also gave a jar to the neighbors, which went down well.
Given that jam making turned out to be such a trauma-less experience, ive decided to give chutney making a go, so ive put an extra 1.5 kilos of apricots in the fruit and veg order this week. We shall see how it goes, and hopefully some time soon ill be able to use my own fruit to preserve!