apple jam

12lbs of apples from my MIL's tree turned to jam. Never made apple jam before and it was such a treat. My first lick of jam in so long. I *had* to taste it, I just had to. A whole jar used on apple-jam tarts. Another lb or left over apples made into crumbles.... I have about 4lbs of picked blackberries in the freezer waiting for me to pour them into the cauldron and turn them to syrup too. We pick them here and there, stretched out over days so until I have a massive pile they go in the freezer. Jam is the gift of the year this Christmas, that's my plan.

The fructose-sugar free thing is going well. Pretty well. Although the other day found me mashing half a banana with cocoa and relishing the vague chocolateness of it. I have had the odd withdrawal headache but not the angry madness of body and soul I feared would overtake me. I am sticking to the 15g of fructose a day, in fruit (the fibre of course is natures answer to fructose, being the slowing and bulking agent of lesser absorption and which is absent from products like agave). So am craftily using this fruit allowance to advantage and have managed to fashion a chocolate. When you are desperate I swear, you can do it from less than you ever imagined. I mash half a banana and let two tablespoons of ghee melt (I would have previously used virgin coconut oil of course but am giving it an allergy break as I overuse it and am trying ghee which seems to suit me quite well). Mix in some cocoa, as much as your taste buds require and also some buckwheaties (soaked, sprouted and dehydrated buckwheat), for that nice crunch. A mini pinch of stevia leaf powder and you are done. Mix and pour into container and freeze for a bit until hard. It tastes amazingly good to my sweet deprived taste buds and I still have half my fructose allowance leftover for some blueberries or something. It's only been a week, but at the start of which I felt rather inflamed and today and yesterday feel calmer and clearer and certainly definitely less so with a lot of energy.

I also just started this, Fermented Skate oil. Skate is a cartilage fish and interestingly although lives a life remarkably similar to cod, feeding on the same food stuff, it converts what it consumes to chondroitin (and thus cartliage) rather than bone as cod does. It's oil is high in chondroitin in a form I think may be incredibly useful to the human body trying to manufacture more. It is also high in the omegas 3, 7, 9 (unlike cod) and rich in A and D and K and the Quinones (CoQ10 etc) - a whole bunch there of supplements I take anyway all in one oil. Previously I might have shied away from a cartilage animal, fearing that to consume such proteins through a potentially leaky gut may make the body more likely to attack cartilage further. But I am rejecting this notion as one unsupported by my vegan diet lacking in animal proteins which was inflamed anyway. Also according to some, the higher a diet in supporting tissue forming ingredients the better likely to heal. I have inclination to try all theories, and shall certainly do so (watch this little space). I will find ways (and money to support said ways - I start a Saturday job soon in a wholefood deli - blissful staff discounts abound).

Lack of posting here is more about getting the last bits of British summer and garden time than anything else. No doubt when the weather clouds I'll be here more. For now there are autumn berries and nuts everywhere, my garden is overflowing and never mind Friday, I feel I can feed us the week long on foraged fare. If not, everywhere I go, little house-side/road side 'shops' provide even more goodies.