TARRAGON & THYME

I love Strawberry jam and it is one of my annual makes.  This year though I have tried a different recipe, slightly amending it to to ensure minimum cooking and fresh flavour.  Needless to say have used my jam maker. Ingredients: 2.2lb/1kg hulled fresh strawberries 1 sachet of pectin or 45ml/3 tablespoons of lemon juice 2.2lb/1kg sugar a knob of butter Method Place the hulled strawberries into  a bowl and mash them down with a potato masher until well broken down. Place this mixture into your chosen pan or in my case the jam maker.  Add the pectin and the sugar (or lemon juice) and cook together for approximately 20 minutes ( may take a little longer in a maslin/preserving pan).  Strawberry jam foams a lot, but if you add a good knob of butter, this will help reduce this and more or less eliminates it.  It gives a better looking preserve if the foam is reduced.  Test periodically for a set but if you watch the sides of your pan the jam will ...

Yesterday morning I went to the greengrocers for my usual Saturday morning top up of fruit and veg.  I always check in the bargain basket as they often have tomatoes, peppers, apples and grapefruit as well as other bits at a reduced price of 50 pence a bag; I find this very helpful as at this sort of price I can managed to put goodies up for The Pantry and the Winter months for next to nothing.  I always have a chat, as you do with the ladies who own the shop we always have a bit of a banter and Tyson my ginger tom camps out there during the day.  They were saying that  because it has been extremely warm strawberries have not been keeping well because of the heat and I was asked if I wanted a couple of punnets.  I said yes - they thought they would be useful for Jam but I thought syrup - something different that I haven't really had a go at before.  I was therefore given a bag of strawberries that they couldn't sell not because...