In a jam - again

Blackberries, this time, and with added bonus and no swimming.

Mulberry scrumping

We went to a very special birthday morning tea for an old friend at the beginning of December.

Held at Canberra's oldest and quite posh hotel, we raced in a little late and breathless.  I apologised for our tardiness, but explained we'd spotted a ripe mulberry tree on the way in.  We were forgiven - our host and hostess had also seen it and fully understood the call of free and unattended fruit and were anticipating a visit on the way out.

We popped back in the early evening and collected a kilo of the very small but tasty fruit.  It became a mulberry and (donated) loquat crumble that evening.  Tonight we eat the last of it from the freezer.

Since then, a colleague of TOF's invited us around to help clear up her mulberry tree.  From that we made about 20 jars of the most delicious jam.  It's our first time with mulberries, but it won't be the last.

Crumbs oh heck

OK, another exclusion - building supplies. I can't control them coming in and we're using them fairly quickly, so it's not a stockpile of the useless and/or unused items.


These arrived free from a neighbour today.  Don't know how many jars of jam they'll cost, but I suspect a few. 

TOF sent me the image with the message "Crumbs oh heck".  Can't disagree.  Guess we're paving this weekend.

Cherry on top

A family funeral in Harden this week was an unexpected bonus. 

"Hard-hearted wench", I hear you cry - but not so.  It was a sad occasion but it was also a chance for the family to catch up and that's not bad at all.

And, as Bob Hudson so memorably said in the Aussie classic, The Newcastle Song, "Don't you ever let a chance go by, O Lord, don't you ever let a chance go by".*

So we left early and overshot Harden by less than 10 minutes to make it to Petal Falls Orchard and load the car with cherries.  When I say load, I mean 30 kilos of first quality at $5 a kilo for family and friends, and 10k of second quality at $2 for us for jam and sauce.  And a cherry pie for Junior.

It is still early in the season, so the fruit isn't quite at íts best, but we weren't sure we'd have time for another cherry run this year.  We spent two evenings pitting the 10 kilos of seconds in preparation for jam and sauce and we Friday night and most of Saturday performing the alchemy of preservation.

4 kilos went to jam and 5 kilos went to sauce, the other kilo mysteriously disappeared (some spoilage, some noms).  We also processed another 4 kilos in preserving jars, poached some for breakfast and had some with icecream.

Any basic jam recipe is fine, such as this from Taste.com.au. I doubled the mix each time and added the juice of a lime and a teaspoon of powdered cinnamon.  I also forgot to double the Jam Setta, so it took a couple of hours to reach setting point, but that's ok.  For cherries, you really do need the added pectin.

The sauce recipe is one we trialled last year.  I call it Cherry Christmas Sauce.  Also from Taste.com.au, we substituted cherries for cranberries.  While the recipe is billed as a jam, this stuff won't set and we've found it great as a saucy ingredient in main meals.  I'll write up what we've done with pork belly, lamb mince and kangaroo fillets another time, but it's well worth the cherries.

And jewels for the store cupboard - 5 small jars of preserved cherries, 1 large jar of preserved cherries in port and another of preserved cherries in brandy.  We've got dessert for Chrismas sorted, anyway.

*if anyone has access to the album this appears on, it also has a song "Librarian Lady" - would love to hear it!

Popping cherries

I know it's Summer when the first stone fruits hit the stove in a preseve-making frenzy.

The Old Flame and I took Mum and Peggy off to Young on Saturday and bought up big in the cherry shed on Torry Hill.  30 kilos between us might sound like a lot, but much gets given away.

Sunday, TOF and I get busy with the cherry pitter. 

We sacrificed a bottle of vodka to make two jars of cherry vodka which will be ready in time for New Year's Eve and made a start on the port stockpile Dad left me and preseved a couple of big jars of cherries in spiced port for dessert on Christmas Day. 

There are three containers of cherries poached in cinnamon syrup in the freezer to be eaten sometime in autumn or winter when stone fruits are just a dream.  Five jars of cherry, ginger and port jam also made it off the stove.  I suspect we'll use this more as a sauce than a jam as it's very runny and very gingery. 

There's also a weeny bit of highly concentrated "Essence of Christmas" syrup.  We chucked all the cherry pips and left over syrups from the other recipes which included  port, cinnamon, orange peel, sugar, star anise and lemon skins into a small saucepan and let it simmer while we did the rest of the cooking.  I seem to recall a mango seed also got popped in for good measure late in the day as well.  We then strained and bottled it.  It will be the base of a sauce or two for leftovers after Christmas.

Another couple of kilos went into the dehydrator for winter enjoyment as well.

Then there were the ones that only made it as far as our mouths.  And there's plenty for snacks this week.