Saturday 13 August 2016

Lurking In The Freezer

Our chest freezer really needs defrosting so I've done an inventory of everyting in there in order to use things up. It would be easy to just get some boxes and pile everything in them and then put everything back, but it dosn't acheive much. So that's my mission. Last night for tea I used up a half jar of Tikka (from the feezer) and poured it over our pork chops (from the freezer) with rice.

In the bottom of the feezer was some fruit. 1st was some blood oranges from earlier
in the year. I love blood oranges so bought quite a few. Some to eat and some for (shredless) marmalade. I didn't have time to make the marmalade streight away so into the freezer they went until this week when I made three jars. I only have a small pan and we don't eat a lot.
Next I made some summer berries jelly jam  (another three and a bit jars) with bits of left over fruit like strawberries, blackberries from the field at the back of us, balckcurrents and red currents from the garden and yellow sticker raspberries from the super market. It takes forever to strain the fruit but it's worth it to get rid of the little seeds the will stick in our teeth.
I also made some lemon curd, not from the freezer this time.
You will see some of the jars have celephane tops and that is because I want to enter them into our annual Flower, Arts and Craft show next week.  I have a problem with them jars though. The celephane tops were sealing well until they were cold and now the tops are wrinkly. I don't know if the judges take this into concideration but I'm not happy. Is there a solution to it now or advice on how to prevent it happening next time? please.
The left over have been tried and tasted and are delicous. Fingers crossed.
Do you find that after making your own jam and you have to eat shop bought jam that is has so little flavour and is very sweet.

Carolx

8 comments:

  1. Good luck at the show next week.

    I've never (yet) made my own jam, but I cooked something last week using a ready made marinade for a change and it was, as you say, very sweet and not as tasty as you might expect.

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  2. Thank you. If you don't go to football maybe you can come along.
    Making jam is easy but making jelly is more time consuming. Give it a try. There are lots of blackberries about for free.
    Carolx

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  3. I'm still not confident in making jam but I feel I'm getting better. Best of luck with the show.
    xx

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    1. I suppose like most things the more practice you have the better you get, but you can only eat so much jam. Those jars will quite probably last us about 18 months unless I give some away.
      Thank you. If you're not busy next Saturday why not come along.
      Carolx

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    2. The wax discs go straight on the hot jam of course, but put the cellophane on when the jam is completely cold. Put it on with the elastic band, then dampen the surface - just with a wet finger - and pull the cellophane smooth. It will tighten as it dries and stay taut.

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    3. Thanks Wanda, I will do that.
      Carolx

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  4. I was just going to say what Wanda did X I need to use my preserving pan this year!

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    Replies
    1. Wanda's advice worked a treat. I don't have a preserving pan (I could have my mum's) because I have a ceramic hob at the moment and unless I use a non-stick pan everthing burns. Next hob will have to be gas.
      Carolx

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Farewell

I've taken some time to think this through and decided to stop blogging. I'm not getting out of it as much as I did when I first sta...