Jammin'

Well, chutneying to be more precise this evening but it doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Tonight was an evening spent happily chopping chewy jewels of dried fruit; dicing so many onions that even my contact lensed eyes began to water and trying to disguise the waft of vinegary fumes from the kitchen by lighting scented candles in every room in the house. A window opened earlier to release the sting of the vinegar as it boils has left the kitchen cold as you first enter, but the heat from the pans bubbling away instantly warms as you stand over them. Stir gently – there is no “set” to be tested for in making chutney – this is even more alchemy than making jams and jellies. Chutneys have to be felt through the spoon: how much vinegar is left? Enough to allow a pleasant dollop after it has spent its’ month in seclusion? Too much and the vinegar will not meld into the fruit and sugar and no amount of time in a dark and lonely cupboard will make this jar welcome…too little and the sticky, dark fruit will have to prised from the jar: unwilling to spread, unlikely to charm even the most plain cheese piece. Chutneys, for all their ease of preparation demand more care from the cook – careful balancing of flavours, a watchful eye as the bubble away and faith that the time is right to seal them in their jars. A month. A month before you know if that evening was truly worthwhile.

There is a certain nostalgia in making preserves that has seen it rise in popularity recently. Making jams, jellies, chutneys and pickles was once the mainstay of women who had retired – women who had the time to set aside for such domestic indulgence. And there is an indulgence in giving an afternoon or evening over to your kitchen, to yourself. For the last few years I have gradually grown in confidence in my kitchen. I have always loved “pottering”, but much as I can sweep aside writing for weeks with the notion that there simply isn’t enough time, I never manage to push aside that love of being at home, in my kitchen – making and creating, stirring and chopping. There is, for me, a serenity to be found in standing at the stove with pans bubbling away: the house filled with smells that I hope my children will always associate with home, my cupboards filled with the labour of my love: neatly stacked labelled jars: SEVILLE ORANGE MARMALADE, STRAWBERRY JAM, RASPBERRY JAM, BRAMBLE JAM(BLE), REDCURRANT JELLY, SLOE GIN, RASPBERRY VODKA. The makings of a batch of scones always at the ready, pancakes for the kids when no packet of crisps will satisfy their snack time urges.

My love of preserving stems not from a love of preserves. In fact, of all the preserves I make, I only eat marmalade and chutneys. It all began with a pan, a simple jam pan. A jam pan that had spent the best part of two decades wrapped in newspaper in a shed in my Gran’s garden. The arrival of this pan in my life, my Great Grandmother’s “jeely” pan was the turning point. This pan is my link to the past – to my past, a woman that I never knew but whose presence continues to influence the way in which I make a home for my children.

I was fortunate to spend the earliest years of my life living in a house that backed on to the back garden of my grandparent’s home. Theirs was a house that was always filled with those smells that I try now to recreate for my children: a comfort that meant there was always someone home. Did I always associate the warmth of the kitchen and the smells of my Gran’s cooking with love? Not when she tried to force feed me boiled egg mashed in a china teacup with a spoonful of butter – a taste that has forever tainted my relationship with the humble ouef. But yes, her homemade fruit pies, her homemade soups, her home made of love that emanated from the tiny kitchen of a humble house in a small Ayrshire village. A home that despite the death of my grandfather and the continuing loss of my Gran’s memories, still makes me smile just to think of it. My grandparents, like most others of their generation, kept a simply kitchen garden stocked with the essentials of fruit and vegetables to keep their oven busy and our bellies full. Whilst I haven’t quite managed to recreate their Good Life, I know that in pottering in my kitchen I’m doing more than simply stocking up the cupboards. In our family, Christmas gifts from my Gran were more about the generosity of her kitchen than her purse. Bottles of ginger wine, jars of pickled onions, homemade marmalade…these were the things that marked Christmas had arrived.

So I spent my evening chopping and measuring, stirring and sterilising, writing labels and tying string around the tops of hot jars of newly sealed Christmas and Cranberry chutneys. In a month it will be Christmas, my Gran is coming to spend Christmas with my parents. She has only fleeting glimpses of who we are – mistaking me for my mum, my daughter for me. And I will parcel up a jar of Chutney, a jar of Strawberry jam and a bottle of Sloe Gin. Creating new traditions for my family from the ones that hold strongest for me.

What's not to love?

I’ve been on Facebook heaps this last wee while, mostly because I’ve been trying to convince my very best friend that she needs to join and because I’ve been leading the case for the defence of Facebook, I felt it necessary to show her just how vital it was to have social networking in your life.

Friends, I have failed.

So far she has conceded to checking her Facebook account once a week. This is because she knows that if she doesn’t check it once a week then I will log on as her and “frape” her account with some ludicrous message about how she really wants Gregg Wallace off Masterchef (she really hates Gregg – no, I don’t know why either…), or how she’s never really liked _______________(Insert name of someone she works with/family member) – you catch my drift. Now, some would take offence at such a thing but as she was forced to join Facebook to avoid my joining on her behalf and using ancient and unflattering photographs for her profile pics, you’d think she’d be well used to my ways by now…But no, she mocks me by occasionally posting wee messages to me or mentioning, in the passing – all casual-like, comments about my status updates. I can sense her mocking me and there is nothing I can do about it. I have created a Social Networking Monster. She is no more a member of Facebook than I am of the local Bridge Club. Pah to her and her lack of love for the power of social network sites. Pah to her and her mockery of me. Pah, indeed.

I think that Facebook is ace. I love the hourly updates that folk give about all the shite they are up to. We have, like most people, family all over the world, and there is something very pleasing about knowing what they have been up to just that morning. Yes, it does mean that we are less likely to pick up the phone (we’ve never been that great for phoning folk anyway so probably no great loss there), but it also means that when the aforementioned family come back to Scotland for a wee visit there is no time wasted in trying to catch up with the last two years of news – we know what everyone has been doing, well at least all the crappy day-to-day stuff. And knowing all the day-to-day just makes everything else seem very familiar…

There is, of course, the issue of being overly familiar with people that you really don’t know all that well…In the hours when I’m not on Facebook, I’m forced, like many others I believe, to go to a place called “work” (it’s dreadful, you wouldn’t like it but I have to go as I have an addiction to buying “stuff” – not “stuff” in a bad sense, just a pile of shite that I probably don’t *really* need. Anyhoo, “work” pays for “stuff” ergo I must work.) So at work there are lots of people who are considerably younger than me and some of them are very cool and interesting and share a very similar outlook on life (minus having three kids and a mortgage). I’m not allowed to be their “friend” at work (no no no, heaven forfend) and I can only be their Facebook friend when they have moved on to pastures new. Superb. This year’s crop of new Facebook friends have been delightful in keeping in touch with all their news, views and spews. I say spews because most of them have just started first year at various universities up and down the country so every post for the last fortnight has been full of tales of Fresher’s Week parties, soirees and gatherings. However, I am aware that as a former role model and moral guardian (ahem) I cannot “like” or really comment very much on their antics – however much I may wish to – and I very much do…I want to tell them that I was young once and crazy, too. Of course, the problem lies in reading too much information about what they young ‘uns have been up to? I know that I do find myself a wee bit shocked about the candid nature of some of the posts and status updates on Facebook, and then I remember that they’re probably not all that conscious that their old teacher might be reading it? God, I hope so.

So bless ya’ Facebook for reuniting families and friends around the globe; for providing us with instant access to all the mindless minutiae of our pals’ lives; for those people who farm vicariously through the crappy games you provide and, of course, for allowing us to poke each other publically without fear of reprimand or reprisal.