In a jam

I have lovely memories as a child of my mum jam making. She'd have the big jam kettle on the Aga with vats of fruit in it - fruit from the garden or the hedgerows mostly. At the bottom of our stairs there was a hook on which would hang the jelly bag and then a pot would sit on the upturned kitchen stool ready to catch the clear bramble and redcurrant jellies. And then the pantry shelves would be lined with jars of jam carefully labelled and dated. And each year some of the jars would get pushed to the back and so we'd end up every now and then with very vintage offerings.

Fast forward a few years to a friend giving us a jar of homemade apricot and lavender jam. As I've said before I have a bit of a thing for eating lavender and this jam was just perfect. I've dreamt about that jam on and off since and if I close my eyes and think hard I can conjure up I can still taste the memory of it.

So the obvious first jam for me to make was an apricot and lavender one.

It was a bit on a whim and I didn't have useful things like preserving sugar or lids for jars but what a lovely bit of alchemy it is to put sugar on fruit and come back to it in the morning to see a glossy pan of dark apricots.

The finished result is a little on the runny side (I will use preserving sugar next time) but the tastes is amazing. I made a fresh loaf of bread to spread it on we managed to eat the whole loaf in one day.