That Thing Our Grannies Did? Oh Right, Preserves (With a Recipe)

I never thought I would see the day when I would take to the bottle.  Now wait a minute, I'm not becoming an alcoholic, oh no.  I'm referring to preserves.  In my earlier youth (as I'm really not past my youth, at least not for the next 60 years), I never thought I would get into preserves.  I always saw it as a time consuming process and it's so much easier to buy those items.

My first bout of "preserving" was when our Bishop's Hat Chilli plant gave a fair amount of chillies last year.  I came across a Chilli Jam recipe, that I wanted to try for an evening of entertainment we had planned for the same day.  What better accompaniment for a cheese platter than chilli jam, and as it is a Nigella recipe I didn't think it could be difficult.  Oh my word, what an epic royal mess.  Right there I decided to hell with preserving.  What threw me was the use of pectin, which was a, rather expensive, and b, caused me to lose 2/3rds of my jam mixture due to the pectin messing around and causing horrible gooey lumps in the jam.

I Can't Believe I'm On One

I know it's been a long time since my last blog, but bear with me.  There's a valid reason for that.  Husband and I have been on... well, let me spell it, as I shudder to say it.  D.  I.  E.  T.  I have been overweight since forever, and with Husband having found out his cholesterol is WAAAAAY to high, I decided to... THAT word, with him.  Unfortunately, by this afternoon I was having withdrawal symptoms from my kitchen.  Yes, I can get creative with food, and keeping Husband happy with dinner is difficult with the boring foods given on this... plan, however, I think I did quite well the last two weeks.