just don't make jam

If the apple jam was a spontaneous and lovely affair the bramble jelly making was it's utter horrendous opposite (that's what happens if you feel even vaguely smug). Why, firstly, did I choose a migraine type headache day to make it begs question, and I have to concede that the success and satisfaction of the first jam making episode lulled me into imagining a similar favourable outcome that would bolster up a sagging squanderous sort of day of which I felt failings in many areas (don't you just love those days).

Making jam at teatime before any food has been pulled together for hungry children also has nothing to recommend it. Another lesson, I presume, not learned at all by me in this adventure in rearing offspring.

That scents are amplified with headaches to a nausiating pitch of intensity means that today I cannot look at the lovely blackberry, elderberry and maybe even apple - without shuddering in revulsion at the remembered sickening-sweet hot cloying smell.



Pouring a giant vat of molten lava jam into tiny weeny-meeny-miny-mo magically shrunken topped jars and being splattered by it, was such fun. So much so that when Isaac quizzed me (as he is prone) on methods of torture employed by witch hunters (a keen matter of interest) I first and foremost pronounced boiling hot jam bathing as tip top entertainment.

Why after being capped tightly with crispy purple fingers (now immune to scalding hot jars) was my jam not set? What step in the agonising process of jam making had I neglected at this final possible redeeming stage and might I quickly remedy it? Dashing hither and tither and scanning my jam sugar and the fine point of it's lacking pectin was of course the liquid answer.



My vice clamped head, puce skin and the mess of my purple-blood splattered slattern style kitchen refused now to give up. I scrambled all hungry protesting children into car with firm tempts of treats and adventure (lies, all lies) and drove off as fast as possible (on single lanes besieged with tractors). Pectin bought (and pizza). My jam still refused to set and now, finally had the added charm of both strange creamy and crystal pectin lumps. They remind me sickeningly of the time a child was put off for life the idea of ever again consuming a milkshake when a non diligent parent may not have whisked quite thoroughly enough the glass of strawberry Nesquik. So much so that the said child gagged and never again could join it's chummy laughing siblings in their gulpings of pink milk (which may or may not have had the offending non dissolved crystal lumps at the bottom). True story. I hate milk shake. Now I also hate bramble jelly. It is still sloppy. Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall calls this mess 'fridge jam'. Yes indeed. Fuck wit. I have rather a lot of fridge jam. If you receive a jar, once opened, Adams Family style it will let out a blood curdling scream. I trapped ever so many. Well they have to go somewhere. There's no way I'd be mistaken for a witch thinks Isaac, no ma'am. But I could swear, with my sticky red hair flying and jam coated, scalded body, pain furrowed face and raging persona I might have passed for an escaped one. At the very least they will likely remember me next time I visit the Coop.

Just don't make Jam. That's my cheery new motto. I hope this time next year I remember. Ha. I hope it sticks (oh dear, really, just ignore that one).