"Nana crafts" for beginners

Well the greys might be gone (thank goodness for my snazzy new do, complete with lovely long foils of gold) but I'm still feeling like a bit of a Nana today :)

Between the sewing of dolls, crocheting of booties and general 'old-school' craftiness, all I need is start going to bed at 9pm and they'll be sending me my OAP card!

Today I made jam. I looked at some overripe strawberries languishing in my fridge and thought, "they deserve better". Well, actually I thought that after first wondering how people get away with putting fresh juicy strawberries over the top of browning, sunburnt ones in a punnet. Grr.

I'm amazed that I actually managed to complete my mission, I'd been expecting to merely make a mess, but I must be getting more domesticated because I now have a lovely fresh jar of jam in my fridge :)

Here's the recipe I used, if I don't write it down now I'm bound to forget it. And next week I'll likely be looking at another quarter kilo of manky fruit!

__________________________________________

Easy Strawberry Jam

* 5 cups of strawberries, cut into pieces
* 1 1/2 cup of caster sugar
* squirt lemon juice
* a clean jar

1. In a large saucepan, add sugar to strawberries.

2. Put clean jar into oven at 160 degrees for 10 - 15 mins (sterilises it)
3. Put small children to bed/watch a TV show/catch up on email for half an hour
4. Squirt in lemon juice and put saucepan over medium heat
5. Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir - for half an hour or more if you're game. It will froth and bubble, that is OK.
6. Test consistency - put spoon into saucepan, remove and allow to cool. If mixture seems thickish and stickyish, you're good to go :)

7. Remove jar from oven, don't burn your fingers, pour in jam
8. Add lid, refridgerate.

I looked at a lot of jam recipes, and they mostly say that you should eat jam like this within a few weeks. You might want to go for a fancier recipe if you're a pig like me if you don't think you'll be able to use the jam within this time frame.

I'll have something to talk to Grandma about next time she rings :) She does a huge amount of jams and preserves, I'm going to have to get her to show me when I next pay her a visit (she's 12 000 kms away so visits are few and far between).

Got any tips on 'jamming' other fruit? Let me know :)

See, I don't kill every plant I buy!

I don't kill EVERY plant I buy, but unfortunately the 'tree man' we got in to prune around the balcony (before we begin its long overdue overhaul) went a little overboard and took out a couple extra...

So... here are the pictures of the home-grown fruit I was about to harvest:

1. Gold finger bananas 2. Passionfruit on the vine (there were about 100 almost ready to pick, now they're probably all at the tip) 3. Passionfruit flower (the fruit grows from the centre of the bloom) 4. Ripe passionfruit and the two banana flowers which are also edible

Jase made the man come back and replant the one banana tree that wasn't totally wrecked (unfortunately the one with the largest hand of bananas) so not all is lost... with a bit of luck :)