'Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.'
Well it was obvious really wasn't it, how could I not?
Oblivious to the global meltdown that was going on in Los Angeles on Thursday evening I was having a meltdown of my own in the kitchen and for about an hour I really thought I might not care if I never laid eyes on a strawberry ever again. That morning we'd been down to the Lifton Strawberry Fields and I have never seen such luscious strawberries and in such quantities, so within half an hour we'd easily picked 14lbs.
No jam sugar or Certo in Tesco's so I thought I'd be able to wing it au naturel with ordinary sugar and lemons because my trusted WI jam book said so.
I left the concocting until the evening because it was scorchio here, so in the vain hope that the Aga would be less volcanic and more approachable.
On the subject of that we've been through the usual annual Aga dispute.
Bookhound turns it off with a flourish and tells me how much money we will save.
I go round wearing four layers, little shiver now and then, look reproachfully at this cold corner in the kitchen.
Very important at this point not to say a word because this has to done by stealth.
It rains, there's a cold wind and the tumble dryer seems to be going day and night costing a fortune. Putting in those dryer balls so 'everyone' can hear it thumping around all the way to Plymouth helps, then they know how much you're using it.
The electric kettle's going nineteen to the dozen....'gosh I bet this adds up' you're heard to murmur.
I make a point of 'doing the ironing', because I now have to iron things which left on an Aga overnight iron themselves. Sigh occasionally.
I leave Bookhound's ironing to its own devices and everything feels a bit chill and damp because you can't air it properly.
The Aga goes back on again and we immediately have a heatwave and swelter.
But job done and the upshot is I can now make Aga jam, it's one of the reasons you have the thing.
This now involves donning an apron and sauntering womanfully up to something that is radiating the earth's core temperature, then smiling sweetly I have to say 'mmm, lovely and warm'.
Early observations on Thursday evening as follows
- 9lbs of strawberries allocated for jam do fit in a traditional-sized preserving pan.
- Simmered and reduced by a third there seems to be loads of room in there.
- Once the sugar is added there isn't.
If you can recall Thursday evening we had thunderstorms forecast which never happened but needed to, instead of which the kitchen got hotter and hotter and hotter, even with every window wide open, and if there's one thing strawberry jam dislikes doing at the best of times it's setting.
Under such conditions it rebels big time.
I rolling boiled with jam precariously lapping over the sides of my two batches (in separate rooms because the Aga is in a different place to the hob) and by 10pm, bedraggled and fast dehydrating and now with a fixed grin, I had reluctantly declared a State of Emergency and called in reinforcements.
By 10.30 pm that pucker in the blob on the saucer still looked like a distant hope as Bookhound cajoled one lot and I nursed the other.
'Have you got a pucker in yours yet?'
'Runny as hell out here.'
'Don't stir it, you're letting all the heat out.'
'What's this scum?'...didn't have any glycerine either.
'Have some more lemon juice'
By 11.00pm things were desperate, we'd probably boiled way beyond anything remotely like the 'goodness and flavour' point and it's all looking ominously dark and over-cooked, so I'm ashamed to say we cheated very big time and I can barely bring myself to tell you how until I get your sage advice.
But anyway, we cheated, bottled fourteen jars which set like a dream and half a jar went at breakfast on Friday as we watched the other meltdown in progress on the news (RIP Jacko), so at least all was not lost. It's edible.
Rather poignantly in the light of events that night, we'd followed the scarecrow trail down to the strawberry fields that very morning ; local schoolchildren do these every year, and we had passed Michael Jackson and Elvis, shoulder pad to shoulder pad.
I promise I'll own up to the big cheat but I'm hoping upon hope that one of you out there might once have cheated like this too and I'll feel better.
So tell me, what do you do when you have a pectin panic and the strawberry jam won't set and it's nearly midnight, your feet are sticking to the kitchen floor, the whole place looks like a battlefield, you've lost a stone and it's far too late to add gooseberries or anything else?
Top tips very welcome and, when I finally confess, any illusion you may have had of me as a woman of the countryside will be dashed forever and I'll just have to live with the shame of it all.
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