Gin and Jam

Giving up drinking alcohol has results in three particularly unusual fall-outs. I now have an insatiably sweet-tooth (presumably as I’m no longer imbibing glass-fulls of sugar), I need far less sleep (and now hold a Thatcher-like ambition of surviving on less and less so I can have time to do more and more), and I don’t have any friends. Not exactly true, but ‘going out for coffee’ on a Friday night doesn’t appeal to friends in the same way as going out for a bottle of red wine drunken purposefully on an empty stomach so to impart maximum impact on my withering fuzz-hungry brain. To say that I don’t even drink coffee puts another boot in.

So the newly-acquired sweet tongue (it’s never the teeth is it?) demanded some dessert, though as I’m also trying a health-kick on for size I’ve decided to live vicariously through my Christmas presents.

Sloe gin and jam-making are the order of the day. Though I normally pick my own sloes (almost always too early) whilst on a trip to my granddad’s house, he died (aged 100 years and about 3 weeks) between cropping seasons, and as it would mean a 200 mile round trip, I decided to get them posted mail order instead. As we all know, packaging is everything, so Lakeland once again came to my aid with their slow gin bottles and jam-making wares, as did Sainsbury’s white label basics gin that charmingly states on the label to be ‘nothing fancy’.

Taking recently to listening to iPlayer radio programmes whilst cooking (with the laptop at a safe distance from any splashes or drips after a horrific mug of tea incident.) I embarked on my sloe-pricking activities to the sounds of David XXX’s the unbelievable truth. Using a new so very sharp paring knife (I’ve never really been good at knife-sharpening), I stabbed each of the slippery sloes, and my grasping fingers, then realised the error of my bottle-buying ways when it became clear that the bottle’s neck wasn’t wide enough to fit anything other than the smallest of sloes.

Nevertheless, mirth from the audial entertainment encouraged me to continue, choicely selecting the smallest (therefore possibly bitterest of sloes) to stab and post into the bottle. A good slug of caster sugar later, (I’m quite sure caster-sugar can be slugged too, at least now I’ve developed my schoolgirl style sweets-crush it’s become clear that I was previously slugging a head-achingly tasty version of caster-sugar every evening.) and the gin is ready to douse the wanton berries.

I won’t go into quantities, but needless to say I was limited anyway by the number of tiny sloes I had on hand, and the quantity of caster sugar left in the cupboard, as yet un-attacked by our new mice tenants. Never one to prepare properly, I unevenly shared the sugar between the three bottles and topped up all three neatly with the cheap gin. Having just enough to make a double g&t left over I considered sneakily downing it over the kitchen sink, straight from the bottle in one slug and subsequently practising my best ‘who me?’ face, but my conscience (and dignity, damn dignity ruining everything again) took the better and I duly chugged it down the plughole.

Having spent three years collecting, washing, label-removing and storing jam jars, compete with matching lids, I have now found myself in the frustrating position of not having any jam jars in which to store my newly-made jam. Moving house and forgetting to check all cupboards has its drawbacks. Anyway, lakeland again came to the rescue.

Blackberries picked a few weeks ago in a godforsaken place near the seaside were washed, frozen, checked for radiation (this particular coastal hotspot had more ‘danger, nuclear waste’ signs than ice cream vans), and defrosted again overnight so now I must just go through them and check for stalks. Upon thinking that this is the most tragic of stain-based inaugural outings for my brand new massive le creuset (planning for the future clan-size) I bit the beautiful teal bullet (oh, should it have been classic volcanic orange, or maybe chic black… damn the indecision) and heated up my blackberry hoard with a unmeasured amount of jam sugar and after sufficient melting – some finely-sliced mint from the local park (washed of course). Yes they have Mint in the park. And Sage. And Rosemary, Thyme, Parsley, Lemon Thyme, indistinguishable other things and lots of weird guilt everytime I snaffle some. The last thing is to add just enough whisky to the cooled mix. Don’t add it when it’s hot unless you have particularly badly blocked sinuses and don’t want to keep the alcoholic fuzz inside the jam (it’d evaporate). Lucky recipients, I made less than intended in the end, so feel bloody lucky you were one of the chosen… erm… two. (well, we have to keep some for ourselves right?)