apples for jam & falling cloudberries....x

a close friend of mine is recovering from an operation at the moment, and before her op made lots of noises about using her recuperation time to learn to make jam......I bought her this wonderful cookbook for Christmas, "Apples for Jam", which includes a few jam making recipes. Tessa Kiros has wrote a number of cook books, all beautifully presented & with lovely personal anecdotes throughout which make them a great read as well as having the most delicious recipes. I've included a link to an interview with Tessa Kiros, that was in the Guardian last year.......

jam making holds lots of great memories for me, as my mum always made her own jam each year. We're lucky enough to live near(ish!) to lots of "pick your own" fruit farms & orchards, and we'd go through the summer, first picking strawberries, raspberries, logan berries, then later on for gooseberries, rhubarb, and then late summer for apples, plums & damsons. there would then follow whole days of jam making, with jars sterilising in the cooker, wanting to be allowed to stick the labels onto the jars and place the cellophane tops on, then putting all the dozens and dozens of jars away to last through the Autumn, Winter & Spring till next Summer............I wonder how much of this still goes on?


the photo above shows some gorgeous, original 1920s jam jars, from France, sold through Decorative Country Living. As well as their website, they also have a shop which is housed in a converted 19th century chapel in Caythorpe, Lincolnshire.......the shop looks amazing and I really need to find time to take a visit....x