Monday 5 September 2011

Sticky confession

I am addicted to making jam. Unlike everything else I've written here, this is actually true.

Every summer I swear up and down to my loved ones that I will quit. But at some point every year they come home to find me covered in jam spatter and knee-deep in sterilised glass.

I only embarked on a jam habit in the first place to avoid wasting fruit in the backyard. As any sufficiently lapsed Lutheran will tell you: wasting food is nearly as repugnant as speaking earnestly.

I nearly made good on my promise this year. A move from the suburbs to a gardenless urban flat seemed like the cure.

But an innocent bystander foiled my plan to quit by  introducing me to a damson plum tree in a park around the corner.
Sugar coating. 

I kept an eye on the tree. The damsons were getting perilously ripe. I was beginning to speak earnestly. Something had to be done.

And so it happened again: August found me hovering contentedly over a molten vat of damson jam that smelled and looked like heaven.

When I confess my jamming habit to others they generally ask me if I am their great-grandmother or if I live in 1954. Jam just ain't cool.

But I reckon a jamming habit is actually a little transgressive - stop laughing and walk with me for a minute.

Jam begins with a load of wholesome fruit that you could take home to your mother. But then you drown the fruit in a quantity of sugar so vast it can be seen from space. Truly, it is an amount of sugar is so profound that the jamming pan instantly develops type 2 diabetes on contact.

Jam is the art of consuming unholy amounts of sugar. The fruit is merely a Trojan horse for the sugar. Watching sausages get made may not put you off eating sausage, but watching jam get made should put you off eating anything for the rest of your life.

One of the funnier things about becoming a mother is that everyone suddenly thinks you are some kind of dribbling moron with pencils stuck in your nostrils going 'wibble'. Or at least my research indicates this to be true, as evidenced by the bombardment of uninvited parenting advice I've received over the past five years.

Food is a popular genre for uninvited advice. I've had everyone from the midwife to the bus driver tell me how to eat and what to feed my children. So I fight back by sticking pencils in my nostrils, wibbling loudly, and eating what I want. Most of the time what I want is jam. So there. Wibble.

I do understand that most transgressive behaviour is more exciting than this. But I am very addicted to sugar and rather short on ideas.

That said, making jam is a total pain in the neck and a complete mess. Much as I love it, I really hate it too.

Maybe next year will be my lucky year. Maybe next year I'll quit for good. So if you happen to know of an excellent fruit tree going to waste, please do don't invoke my inner Lutheran by telling me about it.

21 comments:

  1. Jam is so cool! I gave up last year after wrecking the house with my paraphernalia and rotting fruit lying around and this year we have a serious glut of plums! I'm tempted to reach for the thermometer...

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  2. I wish we had more fruit. I never get enough to make jam the boys just eat it!

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  3. Ha, I've only made plum jam this year and with agave syrup at that as am trying to reduce my sugar intake (ha, ha, ha, ha, snort, sorry about that, I just crack myself up). Anyway, I fully understand and share your illness, mine extends to canning tomato sauce as well. Will be posting soon about both (and by soon I mean when I get over my aversion to photo editing). So, all I can say is happy jamming!
    p.s. also followed you on networked blogs for good measure.

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  4. Grape jam? I have so many grapes out in the garden, I have been thinking about taking up the hobby but now wondering of I can post the lot to you and share in the joy of eating?

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  5. Damson jam, that sounds delicious! You are welcome pop over on a jam making holiday if you have time, I have a ton of crab apples that I want to make jelly with but have no idea how!! Emma :)

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  6. You must have more energy than I. And how did I get things done when I had little ones? As for me, I prefer butter, but I don't intend on taking up the making of it!

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  7. You must have more energy than I. And how did I get things done when I had little ones–bandana dresses?!! As for me, I prefer butter, but have no intentions of taking up the making of it!

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  8. OMG you'd better never come and see me then. There is fruit dropping everywhere and then the neighbours come by and deliver what they can't handle. With a jam habit like yours, a visit here would send you screaming to rehab.

    My problem is marmalade. I come from a family of marmalade makers. I live in Spain. How can I not make marmalade?

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  9. Santa baca, I love marmalade! Send some this way!

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  10. Butter is my other major addiction. Those bandana dresses were SUPER cute. You were one energetic mama, I pale in comparison...and sewing skills :)

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  11. Crab apples! On my way! Just packing one metric girth-load of sugar into my suitcase...

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  12. Nooooo! Do not send me fruit, I will have a relapse!!! (but jam is gratefully accepted :)

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  13. Tomato sauce! Ingenious! I sense a new addiction coming on...

    Thanks for the follow by the way :)

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  14. Now there's a thought - if I can just train my girls to eat all the fruit, then I will be released from my horrible jam compulsion...

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  15. Do it! Sorry, I am such an enabler....

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  16. can you do anything with Apples...?? we have two trees dropping fruit all over the place... We just throw them away!!!

    Nothing beats homemade jam thou, especially plum!

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  17. Eek, apple butter is REALLY good. It's basically just cooked down apple sauce with extra sugar added.

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  18. I miss you jam.

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  19. I miss you too - but I do so miss your jam.

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  20. You know, that is precisely the thought that raises me from bed every morning: Jam, I miss you...must scavenge for toast.

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  21. Must catch up soon - miss you guys too. In the meantime, will send you some jam...

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