cooking · family · gardening · grandchildren · grandson · memories

School Holiday Activities

Joanne

Besides growing flowering plants in my garden, I also have areas where I grow fruit trees, vegetables, and herbs. My poor veggie garden is looking rather neglected these days, however, due to the heat. A few days ago I brought in the last of my beetroot plants, which I have now pickled, leaving just a lone rhubarb plant to fend for itself. It is actually fending very nicely, but I am keeping a close watch on it. I picked a few stems about a week ago and stewed them with two large apples off my tree – yum!

My kids grew up watching me bring fruit indoors for jam-making and often climbed the trees to reach higher fruit for me. I once had an amazing kumquat tree and made the tastiest marmalade from the fruit. I also grew starfruit, lemonade fruit, grapefruits the size of which you would never find in the stores, mangoes, lemons, and mandarines. Some trees have gone to heaven and have since been replaced.

One fruit I have never had any success growing is strawberries. We have the climate for it, they grow, but the visiting birds and animals always get to the ripe strawberries before I do!

Not to be deterred, when my favourite seven-year-old asked if I could make strawberry jam with him during the school holidays, I found beautiful ripe strawberries at our local store. My son – his Dad – knew I would relish the task, given my past history of making jams and chutneys when he was growing up.

My grandson had an even better idea – could we make bread also, to put the jam on, he asked? I knew we would both enjoy our day in the kitchen making both. 🙂

Short, seven-year-olds need a chair to stand on to reach the stove, so he was able to climb higher, and was fascinated watching the strawberries turning somersaults as they bubbled away in the boiling pan. So was I! I explained everything I was doing, step by step, and found my student to be an extremely willing assistant.

As I had not made strawberry jam before, I decided to make a half quantity, just in case it was a complete flop. It produced three jars of the best strawberry jam I have ever tasted! Even his Mum, not usually a fan of jam, announced she now apparently did like it! 🙂

The bread recipe I used required two, two-hour sessions of rising! I chose a Paul Hollywood recipe for a white loaf as that is what my grandson prefers and we alternated between jam-making and preparing bread dough for the next rise. After sharing the jam and bread with his Mum and little brother when they came to collect him, the loaf was nearly all gone!

Later, when I spoke to his Mum, I told her that he was a willing student who could undoubtedly give her complete instructions on bread and jam making if she asked – she said he already had! Lol. 😀

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Published by Joanne

16 thoughts on “School Holiday Activities”

    1. Brax is seven now, so I think he will remember this day when he’s older too. Perhaps one day, like his father did with him, he will tell his children about making jam and bread with me. 🙂

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  3. Oh yummy! I love homemade strawberry jam. I’ve done it a few times, but not in a very long time. Enjoy! I can’t believe you used your oven to bake during your steamy summer days, but I’m sure it was worth it!

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    1. You should make some when your weather is warm enough for strawberry growing, Karma – I highly recommend it. 😉
      My kitchen was renovated about three years ago and as I had always wanted a range, I had one installed in the new kitchen. With having a large family I also knew that the range ovens wouldn’t always be enough! So I replaced my old wall oven with a new one. I’ve noticed when the wall is used it makes the room hot, yet the range ovens don’t. It’s only when I open the oven door that the heat momentarily hits, so I use this oven a bit during the summer. The bread only took half an hour to cook too, which was a small sacrifice to see Brax so happy. 🙂

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  4. There is much to enjoy about this post … your history and love for gardening, then transforming the products into culinary delights. Cheers to your grandson for wanting to participate. That will be a memory that sticks with me. PS: I sent you an email. Let me know if you get it.

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    1. Aww, I’m so pleased you enjoyed my post, Frank. It was such a happy day, so I wanted to record the events that led to the jam-making day, and how it ended up including bread-making as well. 🙂
      I have received the email, thank you. I read it quickly late last night, so will reply today. 🙂

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  6. What a great way to spend time with each other! I am lucky enough to be able to grow strawberries… with loads frozen for winter jam-making. But then I realized then that we rarely eat jam so I am using them up in crumbles and cakes etc instead. 😃 Having your own citrus fruits must be amazing. I have never seen lemonade fruit, but starfruit is sometimes sold, although I haven’t tried it as looks a bit sad – no doubt several weeks old by the time it reaches our supermarket shelves!

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    1. What is your secret to growing strawberries, Cathy? I am considering growing them in hanging baskets, but the birds can still reach them if I do. I love my citrus trees, but we ended up removing the star fruit tree many years ago. Not that we didn’t use the fruit, we did, and enjoyed it too. But the tree was huge and we had bucket-loads of fruit that we had no use for, which was a shame.

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