Each and every Saturday morning we toddle off to the Country Market just down the road. Lots of lovely women (and a couple of gents) selling home made jam, chutney, pies, scrummy cakes, scones, biscuits, birthday cards, knitted baby clothes, as well as plants and home grown produce. They have a little cafe, and we always stop for tea and cake (of course) before ambling off round the charity shops.
This Saturday was altogether peculiar – we arrived to lots of people, large cameras, and tinsel. Tinsel! In August! Turns out one of the women is being featured in the Christmas edition of a magazine.
We sat in the corner with our tea, and tried to hide our sunglasses and look cold, just in case we got caught in the background.
Anyway, outside someone was selling windfall apples, tiny little things, with only a smidgeon of bruising. I couldn’t resist, especially not when I knew what I’d got planned for the afternoon…
You see, Saturday afternoon was blackberry picking. A tiny little event, run by our local transition towns group, ambling round the fields behind the park picking blackberries. As it happened, only two of us turned up, and a large horse took rather too much of an interest in my basket of fruit, but it was a lovely sunny afternoon, and we gathered plenty of berries.
Back home, and I’ve got a large bowl of blackberries, and a basket full of apples. Only one thing for it, of course – jam!
No recipes, I don’t do recipes, I just threw it all in the pan and hoped for the best.
You see, the thing with me and jam is, well, I just can’t keep hold of it for very long. I like jam. I LOVE jam, actually. In fact, if there wasn’t another adult in the house, I’d probably eat just bread and jam all day long.
(There’s been days when I have actually done just that – shhhhhh….)
Good job I remembered to pick the last of the rhubarb, and rescue the previous rhubarb from the freezer – rhubarb jam too – mmmmmm.
So, after a slightly flustered scramble round the house looking for empty jars, we’ve now got 3 jars of rhubarb jam, and 5 jars (plus a mug – my jar hunt wasn’t entirely successful) of bramble and apple. Sunshine in pots.
Should last us a week or two at least.
Just need to make some bread to go with it now! Bere bannocks anyone?
a cheerful living adventure 