Happiness jarred!
10 year yes ten years of Jam!
It only feels like yesterday that I took up the wooden spoon and gathered the hedgerow bounty and made jam. For those who know me, you will have heard the story of my wonderful mums influence on me. She taught me so much she was a chef and food was her passion. She passed on all the knowledge and secrets of the kitchen and garden life, to me with the generosity of motherly love. You may also recall my Jam journey was born out of love for my sister, she had a desire to eat something a little sweet packed with flavour as her taste buds were been robed as she underwent intensive treatment for cancer.
I started small and cooked every pan in small batches with attention to detail, nothing has changed I still cook every pan with care and of course in small batches with attention to the details as before and my overwhelming passion has not wavered. Picking and choosing the very best in-season ingredients. I still believe every fruit has its best day.
Each and every fruit ripens to perfection at a very precise moment in time, this is its best day, so too is it mine. These days need to be saved just as your best day at the beach is remembered with a single photo. Mine is captured in a jar, by grabbing my wooden spoon and picking the ideal pan and capture that flavour. I do this with every fruit, I capture its perfect moment, by understanding each fruit and identifying the perfect ingredients that make every jar of jam. The devil is in the detail! be it identifying the flavour combinations that go into that jar and those that don’t, to the instant moment after the dew has been lifted by the sunshine to pick the Elderflower at its peak. I am not only preserving the fruit I am preserving every best moment of that day.
During my journey of preservation, I have got to know the people behind the fruit farms, the production, the growers, the pickers. It’s been rather remarkable and very, very special. I have met Tony and have taken up beekeeping, I’ve created my own dreams, helping them come true.
So when you pick up your jar of naked jam be assured that jar is filled to the brim with happiness, with wonderful tasting fruit carefully sowed, grown picked and delivered to my kitchen.
So how will I be celebrating 10 years of jam in lockdown? I will be traditionally making a cake filling it with jam and serving it with lashing of cream and of course a lovely cuppa.
If you have any memories of when you first meet me and my jam I would love to hear them. Please share your jam stories and recipes with me.