Unreasonable Jam

The freezer is full of blackberries and raspberries, picked from the garden and the hedges by Mr M and Isaac during the autumn. At the time I had no ideas about what to do with them all, so we put them in bags and boxes and froze them.

It's been getting steadily more annoying, not having much space to fill with oven chips, Mr Brains Faggots and all the other detritus of a family fuelled by rubbish food most of the time. So out they came yesterday, at least just under a kilo of them, and were made into jam. I initially referred to it as "unseasonal jam" but an internet weirdy friend of mine (I'll charitably assume she's sleep deprived with a new baby) misread it as unreasonable jam. So unreasonable jam it is.

Unreasonably time consuming to do on a whim, really. Taking up the oven to sterilize jars and the hob with me hovering anxiously over the madly boiling fruit and sugar, peering at the sugar thermometer and wiping up splashes on the worktop before Mr M went mad with anxiety about the dark red gloop staining the new wood.

In the end I chickened out, when the required time had been and gone and the thermometer still read a few degrees below the "jam" setting. But the frozen plate test showed jam cooling and wrinkling when pushed, as instructed. And it worked. I'm delighted, it feels like the sort of thing I should be doing (in between oven chips and faggots) along with collecting the eggs and dillying about the place in a floral apron.

It is unreasonably gorgeous. Proper thick, intensely fruity home made jam. Next stop the WI and the village fete.