The Full Color Treatment

My yearning for banana jam has become so strong that, unless some appears in my kitchen soon, my life - and, I regret to say, the lives of those around me - will not be worth living. You know how it is: when something like that gets in your head, there's no shaking it until the hunger has been assuaged. And pity the poor soul who gets caught in the erstwhile maelstrom of discontent and high dudgeon.

For all our sakes, I am taking drastic action.

I related previously how, unlike my effortless research for carrot jam, I had a wee bit of bother finding authoritative internet guidance on preserving bananas. A search through my cookbooks had previously yielded nothing. Fortunately, I had one further means of data-trawling at my disposal - Amazon's wonderful 'Look Inside' feature, one of my favorite electronic conveniences of all time. In the time it takes to say Gigabyte! I was able to locate two promising-looking preserving books by sensible-sounding women who no doubt have the editors, test kitchens, and other paraphernalia required for Recipes that Work. Each of these books claimed to have at least one prescription for banana preserves.

Pay dirt!

It was the work of a nanosecond to have the works delivered wirelessly to my iPad, my preferred medium for electronic culinary references. My Kindle, although totally awesome in just about every conceivable way (I plan to be buried with it), doesn't do photographs or diagrams all that well. For example, Harold McGee is disastrously difficult to follow in his Kindled form, a state of affairs that just won't do when one requires the the scientific names of edible seaweeds, chemically-accurate representations of starch molecules, or the family tree of classic French sauces tout de suite. Cooking for Geeks, with its myriad text boxes and inserts, is similarly incomprehensible in the Amazon reader's configuration.

Resultingly, I felt that my new jamming books, including as they do photographs of setups and vital equipment - not to mention risque and libidinous depictions of luscious, quivering compotes and confitures - would be better suited to the whole glorious technicolor shebang, especially for a canning novice such as myself.

Now, although I have been berated for my slavish Kindle devotion by some of my nearest and dearest (not Sir, thankfully, who shares my passion as a loyal spouse should), more enlightened pals think it is just about forgivable to read eBooks, especially when travelling. On the other hand, nobody - but nobody! - can understand how I am able to abide my iPad in the kitchen. But really, it makes total sense. I don't have to worry about propping it open (and thus ruining the spine); if I splash goo all over the screen it's a simple matter to wipe it off (my dead tree copy of Delia Smith is positively crusty with residue, and while this might be seen by some as a suitable memento of cooking adventures past, I think it's gross); and the ability to download a chapter or two helps avoid the later-regretted purchase of a less-than-perfect cookbook.

And that is how, in less time than it took me to boil the kettle, I came to have in my possession trustworthy recipes for banana jam (with rum and raisins, no less - another use for my treasured Hunza beauties) and banana and date chutney. Not to mention gingered pear jam, red pepper orange jelly, sweet cherries in almond syrup, cantaloupe preserves with cinnamon, chestnut cream, and five-fruit ketchup - all courtesy of Mary Anne Dragan (the title of her book, Well Preserved, would have been too good to pass up under any circumstances) and Linda Zeidrich, putter-upper and preserver par excellence.

Thanks to this praiseworthy pair of pickling personages, Amazon, and my iPad, I should have banana jam in the pantry by Monday. And for that, the rest of the family can be truly thankful.