Jam: Favroutie jam is bramble jelly. My grandmother made it a - nice metallic tang, stimulates the salival glands. But attempts to recreat it turn wholesome fruit into either a thin sauce or a rubber gym mat. The blackberrying is fun, though.
Home made wine: No wine experience, but ginger beer is terribly easy - combine ingredients, including fresh ginger, lemon slices, sugar, hot water and yeast. Leave in the corner for a couple of weeks. Syphon into bottles. It produces a fizzy, boozy, kicky little vintage. Refreshing in hot weather. Open over the sink.
Attempts to produce the traditional Dorset 'marrow wine' failed. One should hollow a marrow at Harvest Festival, fill with demerara, seal the top back on with wax and suspend in a stocking over the bannisters, then drill a hole in the bottom at Christmas and drink the 'rum'. Around a month in we found it had turned into a giant green toxic slug and left it in the garden where it shrivelled, and smelt of booze, like an old, drunk man.
Will I be thrown out of the Institute for abusing viable foodstuffs for tippling? I also make a fine fruit crumble. |
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