On Jam-making

Short version (which is hardly worthy of a blog) 

On Monday, I made some strawberry jam, although I had not been planning to do so. 

Long and rambling version

Some of today's children, I'm told, have no idea that cakes or pastries can be made at home 'from scratch' (a phrase we learned when we lived in the United States for a couple of years). Some folk, and not just children apparently, think that tomato sauce for pasta, or various kinds of curry sauces come only from jars. 

Not that there's anything wrong with buying cakes from the bakery, or a jalfrezi sauce from the supermarket. Some modern processed products are excellent and inexpensive, and they can certainly save time. However, when we moved to Cyprus 25 years ago there weren't nearly so many processed or imported products available as there are now, so I had to make everything myself. This despite having a fairly full day home educating and a kitchen that became far too hot for comfort at least three months of the year.

But I digress. I was going to say that, while some of the modern generation thinks most food products are factory-made, I am of a former generation who assumed that almost everything was made at home. As a young child I recall my mother buying provisions at a small grocery shop. She would leave a basket with a list for products such as eggs, flour or sugar, to be packed by the grocer, and then we would go to the greengrocer for fruit and vegetables, and the butcher for meat. 

She did buy sliced (brown or wholemeal) bread, at a bakery, but cakes were always home made, as was pastry for pies (meat or fruit, or perhaps a quiche), and any sauces that went with meat. 

She also made all our jam. I had no idea it could be bought ready-made from a shop. Of course, I was aware that not everybody made their own jam. Our church ran a huge 'autumn market' every year, and my mother would make pan after pan of jam and marmalade to sell to elderly folk who no longer made jam. I wasn't sure quite how old they would have to be, since my mother's mother still made all her jam and she seemed quite old to me. (It's a bit of a shock to realise that, when I was five or six, my grandmother would have been several years younger than I am now...)

I have fond memories of my grandmother making bilberry jam after we'd all been out picking bilberries - or 'blaeberries' as they were known in Scotland - on the nearby hills. I have never had any other jam as delicious as that. She also made strawberry and raspberry jam with fruit from her garden, and that was good too. She would use and re-use random sized jars, topped with wax which she saved when she opened a new pot, and then re-melted to seal fresh jam. 

My mother also made jam with fruit from our garden when I was growing up. She made plum jam as well as strawberry and raspberry jam. When I was a teenager with three younger siblings this was in large quantities. She also made crab-apple jelly and bramble jelly, and probably other kinds of jam too. She wasn't particularly fond of cooking, so I did ask her once why she made so much - far more than we could eat. She replied she didn't like wasting fruit, and she did actually quite enjoy jam-making. 

When I was about 17 or 18 I learned that jam could be bought ready-made at the supermarket. When I was newly married, at 20, I might even have bought some. We didn't have a large garden or any fruit trees, and I had very little free time. But it wasn't as good as home-made, so my mother gave us some of her surplus. 

At some point - I don't recall when - I started making my own jam. Perhaps it started when we had an allotment for a couple of years, where we had huge, rambling and prolific blackberry bushes. Or perhaps my parents gave me some fruit from their garden, and I turned that into jam. It's not as if it's difficult. We had a jam pan as a wedding present - it came to Cyprus with us - and I still have it, though I rarely use it now. 

A couple of decades ago, when we lived at our first (rental) house, with two teenage sons, I made at least 24 pots of jam each year. A lot of it was from fruit trees in our huge back garden. But I would also sometimes buy inexpensive fruit in season and use that. 

Ten years later, both boys had left home and we had bought our own house, with no back garden and no fruit trees. But there's an excellent fruit stall with crates of seasonal fruit that I can buy inexpensively, and I carried on making jam - mainly strawberry and apricot jam, sometimes plum - at the same kind of rate. It somehow felt like a thing I did every summer, and Richard appreciated it even though I was eating very little jam myself. 

But he started cutting down, and one year I realised we had over half the previous year's jam still sitting in the cupboard. So instead of making jam, I lightly stewed and froze fruit, just in case we ran out. We didn't run out, and I determined to cut down to making no more than twelve jars a year. And then eight... sometimes we're given jam, and Richard has been given some excellent honey which he'll eat in preference to jam if he feels like something sweet on bread. 

Last year we had almost run out, so I made four pots of apricot jam and four pots of strawberry. I checked the cupboard a week or so back, there were still two pots of apricot remaining, plus one of strawberry, and some little luxury pots given to use by one of our visitors. There was a jar of raspberry jam bought at Lidl too, for cooking, and half a jar - in the fridge - of mespila jam, bought by one of my sons while out here last month. Raspberries aren't available in Cyprus but the Lidl brand jam is inexpensive, fairly tasty, and doesn't contain nasty additives. I decided we didn't need any more jam this year, and was beginning to wonder whether my jam-making days were over. The thought was quite appealing. 

Then on Monday, when I went to the fruitaria first thing, I saw strawberries at 99 cents for 500g. Three boxes somehow made their way into my basket, and I knew I would make jam out of two of them. I'm not sure quite how I knew this - was it divine guidance? Or just the feeling, perhaps inherited from my mother, that it would be a waste of good strawberries not to turn them into jam? 

I knew I had an extra kilogram of sugar at home so didn't buy any more. And it's a good thing I bought three boxes of strawberries; I had forgotten that my recipe needs 1.15kg strawberries. There were still plenty for us to eat. They were quite small, so I was very thankful for having inherited the kitchen gadget that I always thought of as my grandmother's strawberry-huller (though it was originally intended as tongs for sugar cubes). 

Removing the stalks and leaves was probably the most time-consuming part of the jam-making. I rinsed the strawberries and chopped them roughly, then left them simmering. I did ensure I stayed in the same room, doing other things in the kitchen, as I knew from experience how easy it is to sit down at the computer 'for a few minutes' and completely forget about something simmering on the stove, until the smoke alarm goes off....

I recently read a blog post by someone in the US saying that making things from scratch is only worth it if the savings made, by not buying the product ready-made, are worth the time taken. The example given was tortillas, which this blogger had stopped making because it would take nearly half an hour of her time to produce eight of them, and she could buy a pack of eight for a dollar. She didn't feel that the savings of 50 cents or so was worth half an hour of her time, although she acknowledged that many people love baking and producing things themselves, or prefer the taste of home-made products. So the financial consideration wasn't the only relevant one. 

I thought it an interesting point. It's undoubtedly worthwhile making oat or nut milks; five minute of my time saves at least 1.50 euros per litre. The same is true for bread, since our bread machine makes it very easily, with minimal effort on my part. On the other hand, I make tomato ketchup not because it saves much, but because I find the taste so much nicer than anything we can buy. Similarly with cakes, pastry, Christmas puddings and more. 

But shop-bought jam that's just fruit and sugar is perfectly acceptable, and the Lidl brand costs about 1.70 euros (if I remember correctly). I knew I would be making about four jars of strawberry jam, at a total cost of around 3.70 euros as far as ingredients go, plus the gas. So, less than one euro per jar, and it takes about half an hour of my time, in all. I suspect the blogger mentioned above wouldn't feel it worthwhile, as the savings would be no more than three euros. 

So I don't save a huge amount by making jam, the taste is only marginally better than shop-bought jam, and I don't particularly like jam-making. I suppose the motivation is partly keeping up the tradition of jam-making in the family, and partly a gut feeling that it was the right thing to do, even if I hadn't intended to... 

And there is the bonus of my favourite part of the process: that of testing the jam for setting. Years ago we had a jam thermometer but it wasn't very good, and was tricky to clean. So I rely on the old-fashioned method of dripping jam onto a cold plate, waiting, and then pushing a little to see if it feels set and starts to wrinkle slightly. My mother never quite trusted her thermometer so she used that method too. 

Naturally there have to be several 'tests' done, and the first few will be quite runny. But nothing should be wasted...for some reason these little dabs of not-quite-set jam are extremely tasty. 

Eventually the jam feels more set (though it never seems to wrinkle properly) and it's time to cool, and pot. Here I diverge from tradition. I don't bother to heat up the oven to sterilise my jars and make them warm enough that they won't crack when the jam is poured in. Nor do I use wax on top.  Instead, I put about 2cm water in the bottom of each jar, and heat them in the microwave until the water boils. Then I swill it around, pour some of it into the lids to sterilise those, and shake out as much as I can. 

I then use a wonderful and simple gadget which I bought years ago at Lakeland: a jam funnel. Lakeland is often said to be full of gadgets which we didn't know we needed. Some aren't as useful as one might hope, but this wide jam funnel is one of the most best value things I've ever bought. I sterlise it with some of the boiling water from the microwave, and it makes pouring jam (or chutney) into jars very easy, even from a pan without a spout. 

So, a couple of hours after I started hulling, with no more than half an hour of actual work, I had my four pots of jam ready to be labelled and put away.