Today I made plum jam. And my god does it feel good. (It tastes pretty decent too!) Home-made, sugar-free plum jam, complete with pretty lids and elastic bands. It may not sound like a big achievement, but I feel it is. As a 30 year old whose culinary prowess rarely stretches beyond a thirty-minute prep time, whose days are spent primarily in front of a screen and whose mother, by the time I was old enough to learn how to cook, was not a stay-at-home-mum. In fact, she worked long days and expected us to stir fry up some chicken and chuck in a ready-made sauce for her return. Fair enough.
But the point I’m trying to make is that, like many other women my age, making jam, along with cakes and pastry, is something we don’t do very often. If at all. We’re busy. If it’s not work it’s the kids. And, quite probably, even if we did want to do it, it would involve recipe books or a good rummage around google to get the k-now how. (All those years of ready-made sauces have left their scars.) Yes we have Nigella. But is she really a modern-day Mrs Beeton? A font of all things home-made and well-turned out? Enter the mother-in-law. As I was boiling up the plums this afternoon I remembered I’d need to sterilise the jars before plopping the jam in. And I knew exactly what to do.
A few years ago, just after my son was born, I spent some time living with my then mother-in-law. A super traditional, cake-baking, west-end show humming kind of lady. Quiche? Whip one up in a jiffy. Crumble – ha! – less than five minutes and it’s in the oven. Pies, pickles… and jam. In just under a year, in the time we spent brushing bottoms in her welsh kitchen (it was very tiny) I’d unwittingly been her apprentice. I learnt how to make pastry. Good pastry. How to make casseroles and shepherds pies. And we made jam. Wonderfully tasty, incredibly sugary blackberry jam.
So today, when faced with the sheer amount of plums about to rot on the tree, I knew what I had to do. Although, admittedly, I did have to call on my google oracle to find a sugar-free recipe. The mother-in-law just didn’t think the words ’sugar-free’ and ‘jam’ should exist in the same sentence. Google however, was au-fait with my dietary requirements, giving me more than ten versions on the theme to choose from. A kilo of plums and a pint of concentrated apple juice later and I was away.
Yes I really did make this! :) (Photo copyright cymaticplanet)
But it was my time spent with the mother-in-law that had given me the confidence to do it this time on my own. I remembered the great feeling came from seeing the pots of jam all lined up and labeled, whose fruits I’d only picked a few hours earlier from the garden and the lanes. I knew it could be done and that it was relatively simple. The same goes for me and pastry. Admittedly I don’t make it often, but that’s more down to me not eating much wheat than it being down to not knowing how.
There’s something wonderful about learning from our mothers and female relatives. Of course it’s not gender-exclusive, lots of guys like to cook, but there’s a certain kind of magic that happens when an older woman passes her knowledge down to the next generation. Perhaps it was the fact that she wasn’t my mother that I was so ready to learn from her and take her advice – I know I’m not alone in having gone through a rebellion against my own mother! But this kind of practical transmission is very much in decline. As is that kind of cooking. The super-traditional grandmas and mothers are dying out, as the next generation of tech-savvie, career mums are taking their places. No doubt many of them absolute whizzes at the art of nutritional but fast food. As our families live further apart from each other than ever before, our children are less likely to spend much time at grannies or with their aunties, as are we less likely to spend time with our mothers and grandmothers. But despite this, there still may come a time when we’re inspired to preserve or pickle or bake. And in that moment, you can bet that even if grannie’s long gone, google will be there to show you the ropes. Just don’t expect it to hum a tune that somehow radiates the sense of all being well in the world when you press enter. That I’m afraid, is only to be found in the realm of real-life role models.
I didn’t realise at the time just how valuable those months in the mother-in-law’s kitchen were to prove. And for them I’m most grateful. If you don’t happen to have a benevolent mother-in-law or a sweet-smelling granny to hand, do not despair. Get yourself an apron, a copy of Mrs Bee’s and learn a few west end songs… and you’re away.
Jammin.
