Decompression

Having submerged myself deep in my preserving pan all weekend, I am just now coming up for air. I have learned a great deal and produced eleven pints of quite excellent jams and conserves, if I say so myself. I had no real disasters and several notable successes.

And it was fun, too!

The final tally:

• Banana jam with vanilla and three citruses: 2.75 pints
• Banana, date, and ginger chutney: 2.50 pints
• Clove-scented pear jam with pineapple: 1.50 pints
• Pineapple and pear preserves with Cointreau: 1.50 pints
• Very bitter lime and Meyer lemon marmalade:  2.75

I used four different varieties of jar and am now able to hold forth enthusiastically on the advantages and deficits of each: Ball quilted 8 oz; Ball quilted 4 oz; Leifheit 0.25 litres (which is really 8 oz, I now know); and Bormioli Rocco e Filio Quattro Stagione Vaso 70 mm diam (which also holds 8 oz or 0.25 litres or, in fact, 250 mLs). A pint's a pound the world around!

More details to come  - but first, I must readjust to life at sea level.

The fruits of my labors

There's Moleskine, again!

Sadly, he's in a bit of a dudgeon

and not speaking to me at the moment,

having this weekend been temporily forsaken

for a new black-covered Volant large-ruled 'jam' book.

I didn't want to risk getting Moleskine's

precious pages sticky, did I?