With My Own Eyes

Now I'm afraid the project will not be able to reach its full conclusion. I hope this does not come as too much of a shock to anyone. I personally have come to terms with it so I'm hoping I will manage to receive your forgiveness.

The reason is that there are some things that I just haven’t been able to get hold of, and I have tried. A lot. Honest. Thinks like Toheroa for example – I am trying to avoid any legal battles over endangered shellfish poaching. The chapter that has suffered the most from my procurement issues has been the jams and jellies – there have been some fruits that I have just found it impossible to locate. Pie melons and cape gooseberries come to mind almost immediately. So it is with a note of sadness that I finish off what I am able to finish off in the jams section with the last recipe – dried apricot jam.

Now I probably wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. The instructions said to take 1lb of dried apricots, cover in water and leave overnight. I put the lid on and forgot about it. I suppose if I had thought it through I might not have been so shocked. When I looked in the pot all the little dried apricots had rehydrated themselves back to slightly paler versions of themselves. I’m afraid I even occupied that old female fallback position of calling them cute.

Not cute enough to stop me from turning them into jam of course. And not bad jam it was either. Now that I’m nearing the end of the project I’m wondering what the future holds. I’m wondering whether I’ll ever find myself making jam again. Truth is that I have enough jam to last me through a fairly significant natural disaster so it’ll probably be a while before I have to start sterilizing jars again.