Why do I....

Make jam and chutneys and other preserves.  I primarily do this to feed my family. However I also get much more variety and choice of foodstuffs by making it myself.  I also like the process of taking time out to make something special for my pantry shelf.

I grew up in the days when we were given jam sandwiches or jam on toast as a snack something to eat anything to fill the gap. To this day I still really enjoy both.  Thick toast slathered with butter and home made Raspberry, Strawberry or Strawberry and Rhubarb jam or Bramble Jelly or Blackberry and Apple jam is superb and bread and jam if the bread is new and fresh is absolutely lovely.  

I grew up in a family who grew their food because they had to.  They were land rich, cash poor and the only way you survived in a tiny Lincolnshire village with no shops was to keep a good pantry especially during the colder months of the British Winter where villages such as the one my Nan lived in used to get cut off.  Therefore much time was given over to gardening from scratch growing their own plants and bringing them on to full harvest whereupon they were gathered and processed and turned into something useful and practical to feed the family during the winter months.  These extras on the shelves made all the difference during a cold winter and nothing was ever wasted.

However my main reason for preserving whatever comes my way, whether that be seasonal offerings or items on reduction from a supermarket  or my veg shop is that I get far more for my money.  On average these days a jar of jam costs £2 upwards often more. On average I get about 3 to 4 jars of jam (sometimes more sometimes less) per kg of fruit.  As an off-shoot of this if you have items in your pantry to turn into something else you will bake.  In fact this is something that we should all really do as it is more cost effective making your own cakes and at least you know what has gone into them.  Bought cakes look good but often do not live up to expectation and they cost far more than they should.  

Food is not really fattening it is what we do to it that can up the anti.  In saying that the other saying is that everything in moderation.  Both apply when it comes to the subject of food.  Making stuff yourself though means you are using pure ingredients with no hidden extras.

Most people look at a jar of jam and see just a jar of jam.  I see the opportunity to make jam tarts, cream horns, home made scones served with jam and fresh cream or fresh fruit and cream, coconut cheesecakes, a filling for a steamed pudding, a spoonful in semolina pudding or rice pudding and in the bottom of a trifle,  a filling for a sandwich cake.  I don't just see a jar of jam I see so many more possibilities.

There are so many recipes where you can utilise preserves in their own right.  Lemon curd can be used in Lemon curd pudding or cake, yet again as a sponge filling, a dollop in Meringues with some cream. Equally if you buy some pre-bought puff pastry you can cut oblongs of the pastry and cook until they are puffed up.  When cool you can turn them into miniature Mille Feuilles by adding buttercream and some fresh jam or Lemon curd to one side of the pastry and then put a top on.  Dust with icing sugar they are quick to make and taste superb.  There are lots of other quick cakes you can make from puff pastry too.

Marmalades can be turned into Marmalade cake, used on toast, used as a sauce for duck and for chicken, used as a glaze on gammon, Marmalade Muffins etc.

Look around at the newer recipes and the older recipes and really see what ingredients are used.  I accumulate recipes by making something new every so often and if it uses one of my home made preserves all the more reason to try it and see if you actually like it.

However there are a few golden rules.  You get as much out of your base ingredient as you can. You are making a financial investment in that product you therefore want the maximum return.  For instance, I have a recipe for dried Apricot wine where the dried fruits are rehydrated and soaked and then the soaking liquid used to make the wine.  The leftover Apricot pulp can be used to make an Apricot Chutney. I will shortly have a couple of batches of this to make as I have some Dried Apricots that need using up. The same can be done with a Peach wine.  Rhubarb wine can also be used in the same way or you can turn the pulp into a pie, or a crumble

If you make plum jelly, there will be pulp leftover in the straining net.  This can be turned into a plum cheese and served with a cheese board and it really is delicious.  Plum jam is lovely as well, but to make ingredients go further they often used to be mixed with apples, which also offered a slightly different taste option and made the fruit go further.  Jars of jam or other preserves also make a very nice and useful Christmas present as although people often appreciate lovely home made preserves they do not always want to go to the trouble of having a go themselves, which is a great shame.

If you do not have access to fresh fruit because of price you can always buy frozen fruit and make a little jam up from a couple of bags of frozen fruit.  For every 1kg of fruit you will need 1kg sugar, so you may need a couple of bags to do this but it is another way of doing something cheaply plus your fruit is pre-prepared.

A lot of the older books that I have are more directed towards getting what you can out of the base ingredients.  A lot of those recipes also produce a bulk product of a chutney or a jam, or a jelly.  They do not waste much.

The same goes for making your own nut milks - you expend a lot of money in buying the nuts you need to produce the milk but there is still a pulp leftover.  This can be dried and added to home made Muesli or Granola.

It is only through practice and learning about ingredients and different recipes that you slowly find what works for you as a family.

Initially in the early days one of the reasons for preserving was to offer a nice and different selection of foods at Christmas. Our family have always produced a lot of food for Christmas.  My Nan used to buy Ox-Tongue, cook and press it and that amongst with other meats such as Ham, Hacelet, Pork Pie and spiced beef used to feature regularly in the festivities and occasionally such as my 21st Birthday party at my Nan's home the Lincolnshire delicacy Stuffed Chine. My grandparents produced their own bacon, the Christmas Goose, and chickens who produced eggs but not as many i the winter months.

In the week up to Christmas it was non-stop action in the kitchen.  The ladies always produced the Christmas dinner and the food for celebrating.  The men always did the washing up afterwards, all before the Queen's speech when all of us would sit down for a cup of tea. 

After Christmas dinner was cooked it was a case of help yourself to cold meats, pickles, chutneys and any other goodies from the pantry shelf. It was time for the ladies to put their feet up and have a much earned rest.  We were well blessed, it was a lot of hard work and it is very much part of my heritage to carry on doing this.  I get a lot of pleasure from the doing and the making of stuff.  To cook for someone is to show them in another way just how much you care, but when they appreciate it that really makes it worth the effort.

My grandparents had a lot of Apples, pears and plum trees, fruit bushes, two extremely large vegetable plots one of which was always left fallow one year and grown on the next. A very large chicken run.  So nine times out of ten there were always a lot of ingredients to hand.  I was in my early 30s when my grandmother passed and that was the first time I had to buy in apples.  Up until then if we needed them we would just go to Nan to get topped up. It was then that the family home of over 60 years was sold on.

Had my grandmother had the canning equipment and the dehydrator I have, I suspect that such a lot more would have been stored and put away. Nan had started the village branch of the WI up in the war years, and embraced anything that would make her life easier when it came to storing food.  Nan was the first in the family to buy a freezer and actively stock it and also the first to own a slow cooker.  

Nan was also an ace when it came to wine making.  Her plum wine was fantastic as was her elderflower champagne. She took advantage of the wild larder both for jams and for her winemaking. I have her Elderflower Champagne recipe and her Cider recipe.  However I need to work out what she did with the plum wine to get it fizzy.  I have a rough idea of what she did.  Will have to check with my older cousin as he often used to help her out when making wine.

There is nothing nicer than Rumtopf which you have made yourself at Christmas served in little bowls with home made Cinnamon or other ice cream and then being able to enjoy a drink "liqueur" style either with it or later on.  Even if you do not have a Rumtopf pot as I do, you can still make this in Kilner style jars.

Making your own Cherry Brandy is also another good one to make.  Do not throw the cherries away after soaking though freeze them and then use them in the bottom of a trifle with a drizzle of the home produced Cherry Brandy for Christmas and some cherry jam spread on the sponge or serve it for an alternative celebration.

I also bottle cherries in a kirsch flavoured syrup for use in home made Black Forest Gateau or yet again a trifle.  I also do them in a plain syrup and serve them simply with cream or home made ice cream.

My Grandad, my Uncle and my Dad also at various times kept their own Bees.  Pop had to give his Bees up as he got badly stung and blew up like a balloon.  However my Uncle and my Dad both had bees.  I have trained at a local Heritage centre some years ago, but have never been in a position to have my own bees here - we are in rented accommodation and the neighbour does not cope well with insects of any description. So whilst I am here I am resigned not to having them, but one day who knows

At the end of the day when it comes to putting food down for your family you have to be a bit of an opportunist.  Not all of us are in the position where we have our own land to grow stuff.  

I did at one point have an allotment but OH did not support this and because I do not drive and there was no storage on the allotment I ended up having to give this up as I could not get there easily.  Something which I am still not happy about all these years later. 

When you do not have direct access to being able to grow your own crops in the quantity you need you have to find other methods of putting stuff into the pantry or the freezers.  It is lovely to grow your own stuff but in reality we are not all in a position to produce everything we actually need.  Which brings me back to sourcing ingredients.  Once you have the base ingredients you can with a little practice provide for yourself in so many areas such as making your own cheese, yogurt, nut milks and butters, breads etc.  Even if you batch bake and then freeze until you need it at least you know you will be saving money in the longer term and eating well in the process.

There is more to come.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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