Birthday at the Beach

A summer late afternoon at the beach, one of those rare evenings when the weather is perfect, the lightest breeze, warm but not blistering sunshine, blue skies and Table Mountain keeping an eye on everything. It’s a late birthday celebration for one of our girls’ friends, who has the misfortune of a January birthday: too soon after Christmas to get in party mode, still the summer holidays so often away camping, yet she yearns for a proper birthday party with her friends. Her birthday pressies were given weeks ago, so this outing to the beach is by the way of a late birthday picnic – six girls plus a few random brothers.

We’ve been checking the weather forecast all week to catch the right day – for a place that is all about beaches and sunshine, Cape Town summer offers comparatively few perfect beach evenings – the wind blows too often and too hard, putting the sand into sandwiches, sometimes offering a free exfoliating treatment as the South-Easter whips the sand along the beach surface blasting your legs in painful abandon. This time windguru came up trumps – light breeze and perfect temperatures forecast  for Sunday, a small window amid the winds of the rest of the week.

Photo by Patrick Heathcock

From jumping in the waves to jumping down dunes, the girls were constantly in motion, stopping only occasionally to delve into the picnic.

Photo by Patrick Heathcock

With half of the day to prepare I’d decided to go beyond sandwiches and made some mini-quiches. I love the crisp pastry and creamy filling of quiches and mini ones get more crisp pastry to savour. I often don’t bother with them, because they are a bit fiddly, especially if you blind bake them. This time I googled for a bit and found plenty of people who don’t bother to blind bake – one recommended putting the rolled and cut pastry in the freezer for ten minutes before filling and baking. It worked perfectly, the pastry turning out light and crisp. My food photograph leaves a lot to be desired, being taken in situ on the beach, but it gives an idea! The quantities for one 23cm quiche recipe were just right for making 12 mini quiches in a muffin tin, with the pastry rolled out as thin as possible. These ones had onions, spinach, feta and a touch of nutmeg in.

The rest of our picnic was thrown together – the loaf of bread was still hot from the oven – too hot for sandwiches, so I just chucked the butter, jam and cheese into the cool box along with the bread board and bread knife. There were some leftover potatoes from last night’s braai which became potato salad and that was it. Perfect food for the beach.

Photo by Patrick Heathcock

And then there was the birthday cake.

The icing on the cake was a visit from two horses who happening to be taking their riders for an evening trek along the beach and stopped to greet the girls – they learned the names of the horses but not their riders....!

As the sun dipped close to setting, the air grew chill, the sand lost its heat and, to much protest, we packed up before the official moment of sunset – the only trouble with a Sunday evening outing is that grown-ups suddenly start remembering about school on Monday before it’s over!

Valentine's Day Memories

When I was at school, Valentine’s Day was when you yearned to get anonymous cards in the post from secret admirers. In reality, if you were lucky, you got an anonymous card with a fabricated postmark sent as a spoof by one of your friends. Unless you had the kind of mum who sent you a Valentine’s card just to make you look good in front of your friends... this was boarding school after all, with post given out by the form teacher before school started for the day.... the anticipation, the suspense, the let down if your name wasn't called, those tell-tale red envelopes the envy of the unlucky no-post-today girls.

At university Valentine’s Day continued to be a non-event. Forget about secret admirers – if you were lucky enough to have a boyfriend when the fatal day came round, you discovered he wasn’t the romantic sort, or else got it completely wrong with pink carnations from the petrol station, instead of the single red rose he gave to the other girl in the student house we shared – true...how dare he! That one didn’t last more than a few weeks more!

When I finally met my husband, it turned out he wasn’t much of a fan of conventional and artificial celebrations of romance either; but he made up for it in hugs and ‘I love you' s all year round, so Valentines’ day swiftly passed out of my range of vision as a major event. We invented a fun little tradition of drawing red hearts on each others hand for the day and left it at that.

Except now our girls are picking up on Valentines’ Day as a special day – Middle Daughter in particular who loves any kind of occasion. She spent yesterday making cards for all the family and her best friends, made heart biscuits with each person’s initial iced in pink. She made sure to wear red and white to school – seems to be the South African way of celebrating Valentine’s Day at school and at work. Both girls joined in with our red hearts on hands again, though our son declined the offer. They get to wear civvies at his school today, but I don’t think a 13 year old's credibility stretches to red hearts drawn on hands!

So I feel a bit of a humbug when it comes to my Red Velvet Heart collection of gorgeous hearts... I spend all year looking for my favourite heart products; Valentine’s Day is the big day for people to give heart gifts and here I am neither giving or receiving a heart myself except in DIY form... still I reckon that hearts are for all year round, not just for February 14th, so I'm not too distressed about it! Middle Daughter's heart biscuits were delicious by the way, as well as beautiful and made with love.

What about you? Are you a big fan of Valentine's or does the day go by unnoticed?

Tomatoes in the Kitchen

Last weekend I had a blog post brewing all about summer, heat, tomatoes, sweltering heat and cricket. Due to the aforementioned heat it never got written, as I languished in front of the fan completely absorbed in the The Hunger Games Trilogy. This weekend it is pretending to be autumn. Cool almost chilly winds almost persuade us into socks and warm tops. It rained in the night giving my carelessly forgotten laundry an extra rinse. But there are still the tomatoes.

Heaps of tomatoes arrive in my kitchen from the veggie garden every week, shrieking to be processed. Pasta sauce, pizza sauce, peeled and chopped and stashed in the freezer to save me buying tins of tomatoes for months. Last year with the help of my mother we got enough stashed away to last me till July.

This year I’ve made two huge batches of Jane- Anne's Tomato and Onion soup; one batch of pasta/pizza sauce that I wasn’t happy with but froze anyway. But I haven’t yet got any plain tomatoes processed. So that is today’s task. Blanching them in hot water to loosen the skins, peeling and chopping and parcelling away in bags to be frozen. Wrinkled fingers guaranteed.

I have worked through quite a few tomatoes during the week, inflicting this fresh tomato pasta sauce on our son far too often, but in last week’s heat the tomatoes aren’t lasting as long as they might. Every few days I have to check through the trays to discover the source of the penetrating smell that at first I blame on the dogs. Then there is the laborious business of tracking down the individual tomatoes responsible, removing them and their neighbours from the puddle of their demise, wiping and re-arranging the rest of the tray... the joys of fresh farm produce!

Even though this year we have quantities of tomatoes far in excess of our wants or needs, we haven’t managed to recapture the exquisite flavour of the self seeded tomatoes of two years ago, or even of last year’s crop. I guess there are good years and bad years for flavour, or perhaps our methods are rather too haphazard, leaving a lot to chance. Anyway it’s off to process tomatoes I go.

The pictures are from last weekend, when I made the soup and sauce. The big red cooler box on the table is also full of tomatoes.

A Celebration of Life

There is a thread of continuity running through our lives, that all of the major events in our lives are celebrated at home – two of our children were born at home, we were married in my parents-in-law’s home, we had a naming ceremony at home for our children, and now the final ceremony of life, a funeral service, took place in our home this weekend, which feels like it has brought our celebrations of life full circle.

My mother in law died peacefully in her home last Wednesday morning. It was her time and we were all relieved for her to be free, however sad for ourselves for losing her. While we all knew that her ashes would come home to be planted under a tree on our farm, we weren’t quite sure about what sort of service we’d be able to hold for her. She was a Catholic, but at 89 hadn’t been to a church for many years. She would have wanted a ceremony presided over by a Catholic priest, but we wanted more than just the official form of a traditional service. The priest who visited in her last days was wonderful and warm and we were prepared for a formal ceremony in his church even though none of us had ever attended it. However he came to our rescue and himself suggested a ceremony at home for her as more meaningful and appropriate in the circumstances.

After that it all fell into place. He would officiate and select appropriate prayers and blessings, we would be able to put in all our own contributions, memories and the rest. Our house, spacious as it is with its ever-stretching main room and used to festivals and enfolding gatherings of people, was the perfect venue. We cleaned and de-cluttered as never before, somehow feeling that it needed to be cleaner for this than even for our festivals.  Friday was spent baking rock buns, crunchies, banana bread, tea loaf and heart biscuits interspersed with more cleaning.

The service went beautifully on the day. There was a wonderful energy, more of celebration of her life than mourning her death. We had a table with pictures of her, candles, crystals and shells, her signature walking stick and so on.  Somehow seats were found for everyone. And the service itself went from formal prayers to informal remembering of her and tributes to her. Everyone had so much to say, from moving eulogy to funny stories and informal remembrances, that the priest had to leave before we were all done, so he did his final blessing before taking his leave.

Our children then played a couple of recorder pieces they’d chosen, which bridged the gap and restored the contemplative mood, before we carried on with the memories, so that everyone who wanted to had a chance to say or sing their bit. Our wonderful farm employees, who have been with us for years, sang Amazing Grace in harmony for her.

All in all it felt right, in keeping with her spirit and her life to have held this celebration for her here in a familiar place. There was joy as well as sadness and an energy filled with spirit, created by all the people who loved her, coming together. The overall message was of love, even the priest's sermon was on love and he chose a few prayers centered around the message of love, excusing himself for having to leaf madly around his book between the wedding section and funeral section to find all the right readings!.

We’ll have another more informal memorial service later in the year to plant her ashes and a tree for her, so that family from farther afield who weren’t able to attend can also have their chance to be part of a ceremony for her.

Death and Life

My mother-in-law on her 88th birthday two years ago

Death is just a part of the cycle of life. But it’s a part that we hide from, push away, avoid like an unfortunate, socially inept relative. In books the baddies die, but never the main characters, at least hardly ever. If they did there wouldn’t be a follow on, we wouldn’t buy the book in the first place. So it’s hard when death becomes part of everyday life for a while.

At the moment my mother-in-law is slowly dying. She’s 89, has been getting frailer for years, but we think this is the final stage. She’s at her home on our farm with a nurse and two of my sisters-in-law taking care of her. My husband and I take turns sitting with her when she’s calm, but can’t really help with the nursing. Our kids are just going on with their usual routine of school and play, even though there is an atmosphere of limbo and holding of breath in our lives.

We wish she could go quickly and have a release from the distress and discomfort that she’s experiencing, but dying happens in its own time; strength of spirit fights frailty of body and the letting go process is hard.

My kids asked questions about death when they were younger. They know our beliefs. But this is the first time it has been so close to them. When my father died it was a distant thing, cut and dried news from the other side of the world. They attended his memorial service but I flew over alone for the funeral. Now they are on the fringe of a gradual, drawn-out dying.

Co-incidentally the story book I’ve been reading to them over the last couple of months Roller Skates (Newbery Library, Puffin) is one of those old-fashioned children’s stories that isn’t afraid to confront death in one of the good characters. We reached one of the later chapters where a little 4 year old girl, befriended by the heroine loses a battle with pneumonia and the doctor she brings to her arrives too late to save her. I’d forgotten about this and it came right in the middle of this week of nursing their old grandmother. We started talking about the old days – this is set in New York in the late nineteenth century, before antibiotics and when poverty meant that young children often did die of diseases that can be cured easily today.

At one point Middle Daughter said she didn’t want to talk about death any more, so we stopped. It made me wonder if we should be talking to them more about what is happening around them, or let them insulate themselves with their regular lives and let it flow over their heads. It’s all part of life and growing up, so I don’t believe we should protect them too much by not telling them anything, but I don’t want to force them to confront more than they can deal with emotionally. I’m a great believer in answering questions when they come up, at whatever age and letting things unfold in their own time, so hopefully we’ll hit the right balance.

Anyway I’m glad it turned out that we were reading Roller Skates just at this time, and have lingered over it longer than usual what with the distraction  of holiday time, and forgetting the book when we went away to the river for our holiday. It turned out to be entirely the right thing to be reading, giving enough room for discussion and putting feelings into words and images.

Looking at the reviews on Amazon, most of the adults had fond memories of it being read to them as children and re-read it regularly, while the kids who reviewed it universally found it boring. So definitely better to read aloud to your kids – mine all enjoyed it.

I don't know how many more days my mother-in-law has left but I hope she finds the right time and slips away peacefully. I hope my children learn and grow from the experience of death happening within the family, rather than removed and sanitized by distance. It is all part of life after all.

25th Jan Edited to add: Juju died peacefully in the night with three of her six children around her. She was compos mentis and full of humour to the end. Go well Juju on your next adventure, with all our love.

Summer Holiday Ingredients

The essential ingredients of a summer holiday – water, water, water, sand, mud, water, sunshine, food ,family, friends and more water...

There’s something about being able to get up straight into a costume, paddle up the river in a canoe, drift back down with the tide and then swim in soft brown river water, all before breakfast, that makes you feel relaxed and healthy, living only for the day, letting the stresses of real life fade.

We had a lovely week away at the river swimming every day. Friends were staying just upriver from us for the first few days, so the kids were able to taste a new sense of independence – setting off together in the canoes to go and visit, unaccompanied by any adults.

This house was far enough upriver to have only a very gentle tidal flow, so it was safe enough for the kids to play about in the water for hours in their life jackets. The grass sloped into a sandy/muddy beach slightly sheltered by reeds. Much play with mud and messing about with boats can turn a teenager back into a child in moments.

Of course the horses came too and had a water jump built for them as part of a cross country course.

Only at the river do you set off for a sleepover by boat.

Heading off upriver to their friends' house, with the full moon peeking enviously over the cliffs.

And now it’s back to reality – school, 44C hot summer weather, my mother's visit ending as she heads to Australia to see her other two grandchildren, work to kickstart for the year... time to work on extending the positive, relaxed vibe of our river holiday to cover everyday life. Anyone know how that's done?!

The Colours of Christmas

Christmas colours in sunshine country! You no longer have to stick to the traditional red and green of mid-winter Christmases, but a new scheme of bright yellow, orange and red comes together all on its own. Sunflowers picked from the veggie garden, nasturtiums likewise, our everyday bright and cheerful plates seamlessly blending in.

Christmas Day was hot and sultry, so cold turkey, bacon wrapped sausages, gammon and salads were the order of the day. Followed by summer pudding, ice cream and a little tiny Christmas pudding just for tradition.

We still managed to be completely stuffed afterwards with barely any room for our traditional stripey jellies!

Now all the leftovers are finished, so I'm cooking a second gammon to eat cold for New Year's Day lunch - just to keep those Christmas flavours flowing.
And tonight we're celebrating with fillet on the braai. What about you?
Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Preparations

I haven’t been feeling very Christmassey so far. The press of work to be completed before Christmas, the usual self-employed person’s dread of the financial dead season casting a shadow over the delights of Christmas shopping, have rather left me lacking in the Christmas spirit.

But now our tree is is up – a beautiful one that my sister-in-law has had her eye on all year for it’s beautiful rounded and bushy shape. We cut it on Sunday, with a cluster of cousins visiting from the US to join in the fun.

It just fits into the house, talking up almost half the width of our sitting room, smelling of pine and twinkling with lights, two sets at least, the third one gave up after one day and we haven’t managed to find the guilty bulb!

Youngest helping bake the Christmas cakes

I’ve just made the marzipan for the Christmas cakes (baked a couple of weeks ago) – seemingly vast quantities of almonds, sugar and eggs, that underline how much of a festive celebratory excess Christmas cake really is.

I always use Delia’s recipe and just leave out the almond essence, adding extra lemon juice instead, and it makes a lovely mild marzipan, that all but the most ardent marzipan haters (my husband for one!) like.

Talking of marzipan I rather love the old English word for it – marchpane. It reminds me of a favourite children’s book by Alison Uttley, A Traveller in Time, where a little girl slips back to the 16th century in the time of Mary Queen of Scots. In between plots to rescue the sad queen from captivity, she fashions an elaborate model of the family farmhouse out of marchpane, an image that has stayed with me to this day. I could never work out how she made such intricate models and detailing from marzipan, which in my experience crumbles to pieces so easily... she must have had a different recipe!

Middle Daughter with papier mache goo hands

Middle Daughter has completed and wrapped an impressive stack of home-made presents, including papier mache masterpieces, our son has made his cards and has decided to make origami figures as presents this year, Youngest has written a story as one of her presents, that she was laboriously typing out on the computer, painful letter by painful letter. I stepped in and typed it for her, to her dictation, and just need to work out how to get it printed off to form a real book!

I on the other hand have purchased a total of two presents and am relying on last minute inspiration and the fact that the large family will anyway swamp our children with presents, so the tree will look suitably abundant on Christmas Eve!

How are your Christmas preparations going?

Kitchens of My Childhood

Corey at Tongue in Cheek wrote about her Mum’s kitchen, still the same kitchen of her childhood, full of baking and constant comings and goings of family. She sent me back to recollecting the kitchens of my childhood.

The front of the school where I grew up - not me in the picture!

I say kitchens, because there were two. The small galley kitchen in our flat and the big bustling school kitchen below. I grew up in a school, a small, English boys’ boarding school. The buildings were an old manor house in warm honey stone built for the local squire and his family in the late Victorian era. Spacious and roomy but not too imposing. Our flat was the upper floor in the servants’ wing forming an L to the main house. Our kitchen was small, the end of the wing partitioned off, high counters put in by the first headmaster and his wife, who were both tall, big windows just a bit too high, but light and airy looking over the stable yard.

There wasn’t much counter space for spreading out on, but my mother had a trolley that we used as an extra surface when baking biscuits or cakes and it is there that I remember waiting to scrape out the cake mixture, hovering, one foot in the green carpeted corridor, as she scraped as much into the cake tin as she could, us willing her to stop before it was all gone. It was there I learned to make drop scones, proudly serving up a plateful to a party of visitors one tea-time (was it the school governors?).

Every corner was used, cunning turntables on the corner shelf just inside the sliding door held all the little pots of baking powder and such like, another turntable on the wide window ledge held jams and honeys, bottles of orange squash and Ribena lined the counter, cereal boxes lived high on top of the wall cupboard, with the sliding glass door that one of us broke trying to climb and reach something. Tupperware lived in the cupboard underneath the trolley that needed just the right pressure to open. A blue padded top stool with a retractable step sat next to the trolley to reach the high shelves over the cooker. The four of us could just fit in to do the washing up if we stepped around each other carefully.

The big school kitchen immediately below my bedroom was another domain. Three big Agas in an imposing row kept it warm year round. A huge table stood in the middle, big built-in wooden dressers on two sides. In the days before stainless steel regulations took over, it was little changed from the old manor house kitchen, with painted wood cupboards and linoleum floor. In term time it was a hive of activity presided over by the cook and housekeeper.

I would sidle in with a  bowl on a mission from my mother to fetch flour, dried fruit or eggs from the store room. A big old fashioned scales with weights sat on the dresser. Three big metal dustbins held the flour (self-raising and plain) and the sugar. A metal dipper sat on top of each, to scoop out from the white powdery mountain inside, and I’d carefully weigh out however much I needed, adjusting the metal weights in pounds and ounces, for whatever recipe my mother or I was baking up in the flat, before scuttling back upstairs to our little kitchen.

The dried fruit required more exciting fetching. The first drawer in the dresser held a heavy bunch of housekeeper’s keys. Above the drawer hung a clipboard with the school menus for the week pencilled in. I would check it out regularly, my heart quailing if it showed fish for lunch on Friday, or relieved if a favourite pudding was planned. All the larders were kept locked, but I had the entree and could help myself to the keys and go and fetch whatever was needed.

The dim housekeeper’s larder held shelves stacked with dry goods and tins, and smelled of spice and raisins, in my memory at least. Whatever I was fetching I would be tempted to open the dry fruit cupboard and lift the lid of the tin containing mixed dried fruit (the cake mix with candied peel) and grab an illicit handful... There were three other interlinking larders with wire mesh screened windows and stone slab counters, dating back from the days before refrigeration and between them all the food for the school was stored. Apart from that there was the potato shed in the back yard, dark and slightly damp where the potatoes were stored in a heap still covered with earth. Milk was delivered daily, as the fridge for the whole school in those days was only the size of an average large family fridge today.

In term time I slipped in and out of that kitchen shyly and surreptitiously, politely greeting and then escaping back up to the quiet upstairs, occasionally lingering if it looked like there might be enticing tastes offered. But in the Christmas holidays the school kitchen became ours. My aunt’s family, and great uncle and great aunt, joined us and we would cook meals for the extended family downstairs, expanding into the school as if it were once again a family home and manor house. Then we would stand around the big table, my aunt, mother cousin and I, icing the Christmas cake, mixing up brandy butter with frequent tastes, peeling potatoes, preparing big meals.

The tall cupboard that contained food colouring and baking supplies was at our disposal for making peppermint creams with all the fancy cookie cutters. The Agas always kept the kitchen warm and toasty, unlike the chilly winter corridors of the school in holiday time, with central heating turned right down. By now I knew that the wooden sloping lidded box on the window salt contained salt not sugar – my toddler brother and I had discovered that, tricked by laughing kitchen staff, who were then less than thrilled when we spat our mouthfuls out over the clean kitchen sink!

We’d use the rattling metal school trolleys to wheel the food up the stone flagged passageway to the smaller dining room, or to take tea things, always a proper afternoon tea with bread and butter, cake and biscuits, through to the wood panelled main hall which we transformed into a sitting room, grouping all the sofas and chairs around the huge fireplace, the school Christmas tree adapted for our own use.

After Christmas with the new school term, we shrank back into our little upstairs kitchen again.

Those tastes of a big warm kitchen with a central table stayed with me. My dream kitchen was formed by the descriptions in Rosemunde Pilcher novels of a kitchen stretching the width of a London basement, welcoming friends and family to sit around and chat, sofa at one end, room to stretch out and bask in the warmth of baking and cooking. And that is what I now have here.

A kitchen that stretches into sitting room, a big table where everyone can sit around, scents of baking bread and biscuits. And I almost never cook fish on Fridays!

What do you remember about your childhood kitchen?

Cooking Without Gas

Running on empty
Photo credit © Ichtor | Dreamstime.com

 One of South Africa’s best kept secrets right now, isn’t a beautiful game reserve or a beach-side boutique hotel... it’s the fact that we’ve run out of gas. Bottled LPG gas for cooking that is. About 1200 restaurants have closed and yet no-one in the general public knows about it. We only found out because we ran out of gas the other day and our usually supplier has none. Nor do any of the other suppliers in our area. We tracked down some in a town 120km away on Wednesday, baulked at driving the distance and then today when we were desperate enough to drive that far, found that they had run out too.

Everyone I mention the shortage to is surprised and disbelieving. Large gas bottles can last a family for months and so for many people this isn’t an issue. Only for improvident souls like ourselves, who find that our spare bottle  was never re-filled and now that’s it. Until the gas manufacturers get their act together. Apparently several of the nation’s plants closed for servicing at the same time, or something like that. Well orchestrated to make us appreciate them more perhaps! Or maybe so that we don't complain about a price hike when they finally do have supplies again... so cynical!

So now after years of treating our microwave with utmost suspicion I am forced to consider it as a means of providing nutrition for my family. I secretly suspect it of stripping all nutrients from any given food-stuff (surely irradiating food is a bad thing?!!), turning wholesome ingredients into junk food and probably turning me into an alien at the same time.

Luckily our oven is electric, so it’s just the hob that I am without. So now I am Googling stuff that most students could probably tell me. How to cook rice in the microwave.... I tried it last night and to my amazement it worked perfectly! The amount needed for our family takes longer in the microwave than on the stove, but as a means of survival until the gas returns, it is a success. Next up is tomato sauce for pizzas, which shouldn’t be too tricky. Pasta is another matter when you’re cooking for five... so any ideas of meals that can be cooked without using the hob at all would be much appreciated.

And if you haven't yet voted in the Food category of the SA Blog Awards, please do click on the button below  and help Food and Family on its way! The promise of tea, scones and strawberry jam still stands!

Strawberry Jam Season - And The Recipe

Strawberries have been an intrinsic part of my October and November life since before my blog began. Some years we’ve grown enough to sell, jam and feast on, others only enough to gather surreptitiously and tell no-one else about, lest we be short of a few jars of jam before the next season rolls in. Two years running we had a strange bug that bothered our strawberries  (we grow organically so no sprays)  and I spent ages sorting and chopping out the bug bits, jamming the remainder.

Strawberry jam is one of my home-made Christmas gifts to friends. I beg jars from all and sundry, spend evenings washing, drying and chopping the gorgeous ripe fruit.

I pick twice a week and yet never get beyond popping that perfect sweetly ripe berry into my mouth instead of into the basket.

At least one morning a week a huge pot of ruby jewel-like syrup bubbles on the stove, filling the house with a warm rich jammy aroma. Often it bubbles right over, leaving a sticky mess to clear up later.

And then there is the satisfaction of a neat row of filled jars, sealed and cooling on the counter.

And yet never yet have I posted my recipe for strawberry jam. Not because it’s a big secret. It’s very simple with no tricks of the trade other than good strawberries to start with. So I’m sharing it now, just in case you are also lucky enough to have excess strawberries on your hands.

Recipe for Strawberry Jam
1 kg strawberries
750g white sugar
2-4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, or more
(you can easily double the quantities if you have a big enough pan and plenty of fruit)

Wash and dry the strawberries. They must be dry before you start or the water will dilute the natural pectin and it will take forever to set. I usually put a clean dishcloth on a tray and lay them out in one layer after washing with another over the top until most of the dampness has been absorbed.

Chop the berries, in half or quarters depending on the size.

When you have 1 kg of chopped berries, put them into a large stainless steel (or enamel) pan and pour over the sugar. Give the pan a shake to let the sugar get cosy with the berries. Leave the pan in a cool place, covered, overnight.

(The soaking in sugar overnight helps the soft fruit retain its shape in the finished jam instead of dissolving to a mush as it cooks)

Next morning the berries will have given out a beautiful red syrup, floating with sugar icebergs, and are ready to cook.

Bring the jam gently to simmering point over a low heat. Stir several times to make sure the sugar isn’t stuck on the bottom. Only when all the sugar has dissolved, raise the heat. Add the lemon juice (for its pectin – the amount to use depends  on the fruit – use too little and it won’t set  - the riper the berries the more lemon juice you need ).

Bring the jam to a brisk bubble. Watch it like a hawk – at this point it loves to bubble right up and over the edge of the pot, to flood the stove top with sticky red syrup. This is why you need a really big pan. Ideally the berries and sugar should come no more than half the way up the sides of the pan before you start cooking.

Let it cook for 20-30 minutes, then test it for set. Mine tends to be fairly runny, as that is how we like it. It keeps the fresh berry flavour better.

Pour the hot jam into sterilized jars and seal immediately.

Our season started late this year and so the strawberries are only now getting into top gear. I’ve only just made my second batch of jam, but the way they are fruiting this week I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll have enough for gifts, enough to see us through the year and even some over to sell at the market.

Now if it will stop raining I’ll just go and pick that last row which is groaning with ripe berries.

Oh and the youngberries have loads of flowers right now, so in a few weeks we’ll be picking them too. 2011 is a good year for berries!

Other recipes to do with strawberries: strawberry cake... or strawberry tarts

I've bravely entered the SA Blog Awards this year, so please vote for me - all you have to do is click on the Vote button in the sidebar on the right - then confirm your vote on the e-mail they send you. Only one vote per category per person - so I'm hoping the promise of strawberry jam will sway you! Tea and scones at my house anyone?!