Redcurrants into Jelly!

A very sweaty day indeed here – humid as you like, & thermometer is measuring 22C as I type. This made cycling to the Hill tonight an thoroughly unpleasant prospect, so I gave in to the luxury of the air conditioned car – I could go & sit in it right now, frankly.

Just pausing to train the leading shoots of the squash plants round the edges of the beds that they have now romped on to reach, I came home with a tub of BROAD BEANS (barry plot 19) & PEAS (newick & stephens) with the intention of freezing (although I ran out of time so they are in the fridge to do tomorrow) & a huge bunch of sweetpeas.

Following a conversation with my neighbour Patti yesterday – half of which I agreed with her on (about the cachet of home made preserves) & half of which I most certainly did not (about the undesirability of country wines) – I decided to turn some of the redcurrants picked yesterday into redcurrant jelly.

I know that preserve making has not been one of my more notable successes, but the jelly looks so easy! Step one was to gently heat 4lb of redcurrants in a large pan to release the juices -with a little help from the potato masher - then strain through a jelly bag.

There was an element on improvisation involved here which involved a pressing cloth (which in turn started life as a sling from when I broke my wrist at the age of 9. To be fair, there’s not a great demand for a pressing cloth in this house – but thankfully even less call for a sling), but the resulting juice looks very good, & it’s ready for the tricky add-sugar-&-boil-‘til-setting-point bit, which I will tackle tomorrow.