Introduction | Wombat News | Books for Kids
Recent Awards | Book News and A Day to Remember
Schedule for the next 10 months
The March Garden | A Year of Good Scents
Jam making… and some recipes for jams you won’t find on the supermarket shelves

                  We’ve been living in the clouds for a week; mist so thick that you can just see the trees twenty metres away, raindrop lace shining from every leaf on the rare moments the sun shone through. The creek was milk and froth, the wombats not amused.
                                    No real flood. Just rain, and more rain. It did flood in Canberra the day of the launch of A Day To Remember, but there was a small damp band who actually made it to the War Memorial with traffic at a standstill outside, and Grandma’s Anzac Biscuits were still a hit 96 years after Great Grandma wrote the recipe down for her in what was to become the cook book that Grandma pasted recipes in all her life, some in her own hand, most from letters that women sent to women in those days before mobile phones and email, usually with a recipe at the end, especially during the rationing in World War Two, like the ‘prune pudding’ that used the sweetness and moisture of prunes to replace rationed sugar and butter.
                                    This is a month of solid writing, hopefully – have finally found my way into the next book and hope to stay there until Draft 1 is finished. It’s set at the end of World War One, as the men return home, and there’s a flood at the end of it and a strange dislocated love story and mist. Somehow most of my books seem to echo what is happening in the valley as I write, even if they are planned years ago, like this one, when the valley was still brown with drought, the bush thin topped.
                                    This month’s there’s also the Harvest Festival down at Moruya – will stock up on potatoes for winter and spiced teas, and probably stunning bread like last year, in between giving two talks.
                  There are two other talks too, in Canberra – see schedule – and if I can lose 2 kg will use the day in Canberra to buy my annual pair of jeans.
                  Or maybe not. Has anyone else noticed that once jeans were good tough gear that lasted for years? Now you’re lucky to get a year’s wear from them before they look tatty. Or maybe it’s just my shape, and if I were two metres tall and slim and elegant my jeans would look elegant too, instead of bagging around knees and buttocks.
                  It would be lovely to be two metres tall. Able to reach the top bookshelf and haul down the jam in the larder. Plus have larger lunches, as two metres would use up so many more calories. On the other hand, I actually fit into economy seats on planes.

Wombat news
                                    A wombat’s reaction to rain is to sleep until they are hungry. Usually this is on the third night of rain, but the wombats are so fat on lush grass this year that Mothball slept for five nights. She emerged last night looking thinner, damp and, possibly for the first time ever, almost grateful for a bowl of wombat nuts, higher energy food to keep her going through a night of munching damp grass. Unlike a dog she only ever eats as much as she wants, and either leaves the rest or bashes up the door to say she needs more, and it’s only ever a snack before she goes to eat grass, so I don’t worry about the softer food casing problems with her teeth. Besides which, she is now about 17 years old, an elderly wombat who is just as stubborn now as she was when she first arrived, round and brown and determined to have her carrots.
                                    And that is about it for wombat news. I’ve seen one wombat dropping – pale green on a rock – in my walks in the past seven days, instead of about forty or fifty each day. I suppose if wombats had a newspaper the headlines would read: ‘World suspended till it stops raining. Go away.’

Books for Floods
                                    Floods wash away so much that is loved. If you know a school, or a child, who has lost books in the recent floods, and think that a few books might help, please let me know at jackiefrench72@gmail.com and I’ll do what I can. Gifts can’t replace what’s lost, but can sometimes help by letting people know that our thoughts and hearts are with them.

Recent Awards
    Hazel Edwards and I are among the 184 candidates from 60 countries nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Award, which will be announced this month. The Award is given for an author’s body of work and contribution to children’s literature generally, not for one specific book. It is an honour and privilege to be among the nominees.

Book News
    A Day to Remember is in the shops now, created with Mark Wilson, the history of Anzac Day decade by decade, which in a way is the history of Australia too.
    Mark’s work is always extraordinary. This time it was so powerful that when I received his first thoughts I was unable to work on the book for three days, till my eye and heart was used to them. The faces of the children as they look at the Memorial, of the old man and his grandson, the despair and memory on the face of the woman in 1930, so that you know she has lost lover, brother, father perhaps, the image of the man in body armour cradling the body of a child.
                  My father-in-law landed at Anzac Cove, too. He never spoke of it. Every year he marched, increasingly bitter, with friends unemployed because of the Depression or with lungs or eyes rotted from mustard gas. The marches were mostly men-only affairs back then, as were the dawn services, in case crying women disturbed the silence.
    My childhood saw the battered and weary of World War Two, men scarred in body and mind from Japanese prison camps or the Burma railway, the mothers of my friends and my violin teacher, who had survived concentration camps.
Boys of my own generation marched away as conscripts to Vietnam, while I walked in anti-war demonstrations. As an historian I came up against determinedly uncooperative bureaucracy as I tried to check a list of places where Australian troops have been sent since the 1970s. While newspapers talk of Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, few Australians know our defense forces serve as peacekeepers in places like Tonga, Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda and Haiti. Peace is not easily won, or kept. But many do the best they can.
I’ve seen Anzac Day change from the grim-faced marchers of my childhood, to the years when it seemed as if Anzac Day might vanish except for a dedicated few, or when the Anzac Day marchers faced anti-conscription demonstrations and women with placards who demanded the right to march too. In the past two decades our reawakening sense of history has recreated Anzac Day yet again and each year the marches are larger, the commemorations broader. Anzac Day itself has been a catalyst for many people to discover Australian’s history, too.
    Last Anzac Day I stood with friends in Braidwood’s main street. Children marched wearing their grandparents’ medals. A poodle sat next to us, a sprig of rosemary in its collar. A kid called out, ‘Daddy’ as her father passed.  Most of us, I think, wept a little as the Last Post played.
    And we remembered.
For some it was a celebration of military tradition. Others in the crowd were pacifists or felt that Australians shouldn’t be in Afghanistan. It didn’t matter. There are many different memories that make up Anzac Day now. We remembered fathers, husbands, aunts, sons, daughters and grandfathers; those who our country sent to war and then forgot, when they returned home damaged; the starving and tortured who struggle towards refugee camps; all who suffer in war, or give their lives to try to make things better.
I wrote A Day to Remember because by honouring the suffering and sacrifice of others we find the gift of empathy ourselves. On this one day of the year, it is good to stand together, and remember not just the past, but why we need to remember, too.
Ps The first edition of A Day to Remember sold out before it was released. If it’s not in the shop when you look it should be there in a few days, as it has been reprinted.
Other books

     Have just finished the final pages of Pennies for Hitler, the companion volume, rather than the sequel, to Hitler’s Daughter, and Dingo, the story of a bony boy, a rubbish dog and Australia’s first dingo from whom possibly all other dingos are descended.  Pennies will come out in June, Dingo in August.
Christmas Wombat seemed to vanish from the shops the week after it hit the bestseller list, which I hope means that they have all sold. I’m not sure how soon it’ll be reprinted, but I’m sure it’ll be well in time for next Christmas.
The last novel to hit the book shelves was Nanberry: Black Brother White – the story of four extraordinary people in the early NSW colony: Surgeon White, who hated Australia, loved a convict girl, a loyal father not just to his white son but to the black one he adopted; Rachel, who escaped the gallows to become the richest, most loved woman in NSW; Andrew, their son, who became a hero of the Battle of Waterloo, finally coming back to Australia; and Nanberry, orphaned by the smallpox, who would stride between the white world and the black, as a sailor in the Merchant Navy and a Cadigal warrior and leader of his people.
It’s as accurate as I can make it, two hundred years after it all happened. But it did. They were heroes, incredible and they need to be remembered.
Other books: A Waltz for Matilda (perhaps my favourite book) came out about eighteen months ago, as did A Year in the Valley, a book (for adults) about life here with the wombats and the trees and garden and friends. Queen Victoria’s Underpants is the (almost) true story of how Her Majesty’s underpants led to freedom for women.
    The revised Chook Book is in the shops too now – twice as big as the original edition and much changed and updated. It’s all you ever wanted to know (and probably a bit more) about how to keep chooks in your backyard or at school.

Schedule for the Year to Come
This is what the calendar has so far, but there are already another half dozen trips pencilled in, as well as many other commitments. There are always last minute things I have to do too. It’s unlikely I can add in more school, library or community talks in 2012, unless they are near to somewhere I’ll be already. I’ll also be ACT Library Ambassador for the 2012 Year of Reading.
                 
March, Saturday 17: Talk and opening of the Harvest Festival, Moruya, NSW. It should be a wonderful day of celebrations of all good things among the markets by the river.
March, Sunday 25: Talk at Old Parliament House, ACT.
March, Sunday 25: Launch of the new edition of Shy the Platypus by Leslie Rees at the National Library of Australia, at 3.00 pm. Contact the National Library for bookings.
March 28: Lunch and a talk at the Queanbeyan Kangaroos Rugby League Football Club, NSW. It starts at 12 noon, two courses with ‘tasting plates’. Discounts for tables of friends. Contact 0438 718 190 or email: catriona@nibblez.com.au for bookings and more information.
April 1: Open day at the new Monkey Baa Children’s Theatre at Darling Harbour, Sydney. Susanne Gervais and I are patrons and I will be there with bells on from about 1-4 pm!
April 21: Possible launch of A Day to Remember in Brisbane.
April 28: Dinner and talk at Moruya to celebrate the new mine conditions. More details next month.
May 5: Opening of Monkey Baa’s new theatre at Darling Harbour, Sydney, with the first night of the play version of Tim Winton’s The Buggerlugs Bum Thief. Susanne Gervais and I will be there dressed in our glad rags.
May 7, 8, 9, 10: Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen Bain at Speaker’s Ink for bookings. Helen Bain helen@speakers-ink.com.au
Friday May 11: Brisbane, 9.30 National Hairy Nose Day and launch of the new Hairy Nosed Wombat educational web site, at Bunyaville Environmental Education Centre, Queensland. I’ll talk for forty minutes to an hour about endangered species; why helping one species can help others; what ‘help’ can mean, from fundraising to science to politics; and all about wombats.
The talk will be suitable for students aged eight years and upwards, including high school students. All Queensland students are asked to become Hairy-Nosed Heroes in three simple steps:

• Put on a Hairy Nose and take a photo.
• Write a Wish for Wildlife.
• Send the photo and wish to The Wombat Foundation (using the email address: enquiries@wombatfoundation.com.au).

Photos and wildlife wishes will be placed on The Wombat Foundation’s website to commemorate the first Hairy-Nosed Day. The Wombat Foundation is the not-for-profit organisation dedicated to saving the Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat, Queensland’s most endangered mammal. The Foundation’s website is: www.wombatfoundation.com.au.
May 17: Workshop at Marymead, ACT.
June 5: Talks at the Australian Jewish Museum, Sydney.
June 13 and 14: Adelaide Writer’s Festival, S.A. and possibly other talks at schools in the next couple of days.
Monday 9 July: Keynote lecture at the Australian Literacy Educators Association Conference, Sydney.
July 21-25: Curtis Coast Literary Carnivale, Gladstone, Queensland.
August 12: In Perth/Fremantle for the West Australian Association of Teacher Assistants Conference and possibly doing a few other talks once I’ve gone that far.
August 20-23 (Book Week): Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen Bain at Speaker’s Ink for bookings.
August 27-30: Melbourne Literary Festival.
September 3, 4, 5: Three days’ talks in Melbourne. For details or bookings contact Simon O'Carrigan at Booked Out simon@bookedout.com.au.
October 2-4: Possibly a conference in Perth – still to be confirmed.
October 24: Children’s Day, ACT.
October 25-27: Fremantle, WA for the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre’s Celebrate Reading Conference.
November 10 and 11: Four Open Garden workshops here. Bookings and details are from the Open Garden Scheme though, not us.
November: A couple of days in Lithgow, NSW – details still being worked out.

The March Garden
    It’s time to plant, and keep on planting, masses of caulies and broccoli and red cabbage and all the other brassicas you want to munch in winter, when they are sweet and crisp from cold nights instead of summer soft and sulphurous; small French round carrots that mature fast, broad beans and peas for spring eating, a million trees and shrubs (or at least one or two) to get them established in the wonderful wetness and before winter’s cold.
    Having said that – I still have to get any brassicas at all in; probably won’t even get around to peas, and every time I get lost in a new native shrub catalogue there’s some emergency and I lose the list of shrubs I want to put in to replace the lavender and rosemary, curry bush and wormwood and other sun lovers that have thrived – or at least survived – the drought and have turned to mildew in this year of wet,..
    It’s been an… interesting… year in the garden. Most of the apple trees lost their fruit in a late frost, and others were ravaged by starving fruit bats – it’s been a hard year for blossom feeders with all the rain. But a few, like Lady Williams and half of the Wandin Glory did well – the fruit bats don’t seem to like either variety. No pomegranates, although the tree has put out a few orange flowers every week; almost no zucchini and cucumbers – too wet for the bees to pollinate; giant rhubarb and silverbeet and fat avocadoes and plump berries that tasted of rain.
    It’s been a year when you realise that if you want to eat from your garden you need to plant LOTS – different species, many varieties, because every season is different. When you have lots you know that some, at least, will be happy and give you a plentiful harvest.

What to Plant in March
Hot climates
Plants to eat: Garlic, macadamias, avocados, bananas, custard apples, lychees, sapodilla, star fruit, paw paws, mangoes, passionfruit, citrus, strawberry plants, capsicum, carrots, chilli, cauliflowers, eggplant, okra, potatoes, silver beet, sweet corn and zucchini.
Plants for beauty: Ferns, hibiscus bushes, calendula, poppy, primula, snapdragon, sunflower and salvias.
Temperate:
Plants to eat: Garlic, macadamias, avocado trees, citrus, strawberries, beetroot, broccoli, broad beans, cabbage, carrots (mini or 'French round' carrots mature fastest), cauliflower, garlic, leeks, parsnips, spinach, celery, fast-maturing Asian veg like tatsoi, pak choi and mitsuba.
Plants for beauty: Bulbs, including liliums, agapanthus, iris, multi-stemmed jonquils, heat-hardy tulip varieties, flowers like alyssum, dianthus, pansies, primulas, salvias, poppies, sweet peas and stock.
Cold climates:
Plants to eat: Garlic, strawberry runners, broad beans, spinach, onions, seedlings of broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, fast-maturing Asian veg like tatsoi, pak choi and mitsuba.
Plants for beauty: Bulbs like daffodils, jonquils, tulips, anemones, hyacinths, freesias, ranunculi, seedlings of Iceland poppy, primulas, pansies, polyanthus and sweet peas.
A Year of Scents
Human's sense of smell is possibly the least noticed of all our senses, and the most evocative.
I think some of the great joys in life, possibly because they are entirely unpredictable, are the cool scents wafting through a window at night, or hot scents rising from the garden, when the bitumen is baking and all the world seems to be made of hot cement – except your garden.
Even if you only have a patio you can have good smells wafting in every evening. The trick is to make sure there is something good for every season of the year. Many plants have gorgeous smells, of course, but the ones below have a strong enough scent to float through your window.

Winter. This is the most important month to get right, as winter is a closed up time – we're locked in our houses with the windows shut, and no one is cutting their lawns so you don't get those good subliminal mown hay scents.
Luckily humans have hunted for good cold weather scents for ages (literally) so we have a lot to choose from: scented camellias (they do exist, but you may have to hunt for them), delicious daphne, Erlicheer jonquils, calamondins and cumquats with their rich ripe citrus scent as well as glowing fruit, Gelsemium or yellow jasmine, many of the Buddleias with their delicious honey scents.
If you can find pineapple marigolds do put them in – they grow thigh-high with a stunning pineapple fragrance and small yellow blooms. Unlike ordinary marigolds they smell stunning and are perennial – plant them once and let them grow.

Spring: Port Wine magnolia, Pittosporum undulatum, hyacinths,  old-fashioned freesias,  sweet-scented pinks, the wonderful boronias, old-fashioned climbing sweet peas and roses, roses, roses!
Hunt out some of the glorious Hybrid Musks – they really have the most well-travelled scent I know. I have a Berlina on my desk as I write this – not one of the most strongly scented, but still extraordinarily sweet. I think Buff Beauty is my favourite of the hybrid musks – her perfume seems to gather in odd places depending on the breeze, then hit you all at once. Now and then it even gathers in our bathroom when the window is left open, smelling like all those artificial scent doovers are supposed to, but never do. And Felicia can make herself smelt even over the smell of the lawn-mower as I push past.
Other good perfumed roses are Papa Meilland, Guinea, Mr Lincoln – just never buy a rose until you've sniffed it!

Summer: Chinese star jasmine blooms and blooms and blooms. Ginger lilies are one of our joys of later summer here – extraordinary perfume that covers our three hectare garden. I have curry bush under my study window, which is a bit counterproductive as on hot days I find myself dreaming of a good vindaloo. And then there are lemon verbena, tuberoses, gardenia, frangipani, lilies (though some of these can smell a bit rank in the house). I also grow masses of tall Sweet William, for their impossible to duplicate clove scent. And I almost forgot English lavender...

Autumn: Back to roses again, with their autumn flush, French lavender, early scented sasanqua camellias. A hedge of rosemary always seems to smell strongest in autumn, some of the chrysanthemums (again, smell before you buy – some are revolting).

How to have a house that smells good
Step 1.  Plant at least one of the above for every season of the year.
Step 2. Throw old joggers out the back door; remove tin of Fish Dinner from the fridge, wrap or wash empty can of Doggie Dinner before throwing in the rubbish.
Step 3. Cook something – the sort of cooking where the smell lingers in the curtains and carpet so the house smells subtly good for days, like bread or biscuits (particularly cinnamon or ginger flavoured) or long-simmered tomato sauce with basil
Step 4. Bung some flowers in a vase – preferably not flowers from a florist. Florist’s blooms rarely smell good (perhaps they are afraid of persistent hay fever). Daphne, jonquils, young blue gum or peppermint gum leaves, gardenias and lavender are good room perfumers.
Step 5. Polish wooden surfaces twice a year with something that smells good. See the recipe below. 
Step 6.  Try to have a pleasant whiff from every cupboard.
    It is my old-fashioned belief that cupboards should whiff of something good when you open them. Vanilla sugar, whisky-soaked fruit cakes, sun dried underpants that have been hung on lavender bushes instead of the clothes line. (Even if you don't have a garden grow couple of potted lavender bushes to dry your underwear on. Scented underwear is a treat.)
    Lavender is the classic herb for a linen cupboard or underwear drawer. You don't even have to dry it – make a bundle and stuff it in, either hung from a string or wrapped in an old pillowslip (I prefer the latter – the cloth seems to catch the scent and keep it).  And clove-studded oranges are fragrant too – if you have three hours and 100 cloves to spare and don't mind blistered finger tips.
    A cheat's method is just to scatter dried cloves at the bottom of drawers and cupboards or a jar of them with the lid off. Add some dried orange peel too (scavenged from the kids’ lunch box and left in the sun for a few days, then crumbled) to add extra fragrance – or lemon or mandarin peel.
    And for kitchen cupboards – a vanilla bean is the most luxurious; or the cloves and oranges as well. Or wipe your cupboards occasionally with a Wettex dipped in vanilla extract.
Extremely Good Smelling Wood Polish
half a cup of beeswax (from craft stores or your friendly beekeeper)
half a cup of methylated spirits
4 cups linseed oil
1 tbsp lavender oil
    Melt the beeswax, take off the heat and add the other ingredients. Beat for about ten minutes till it begins to set.
To use:  Wipe on thinly, then buff to a shine.
Note: If it's too hard to spread easily, melt again briefly and add more oil and meths – about half and half.

A Few Recipes
A Good Jam
A hundred years ago a housewife might make 'jam tart' – a way to boast of her jam cupboard, with up to thirty different pie slice wedges each with its different jam. One of the consequences of commercial jams and chutneys has been the erosion of varieties. Plum jam, strawberry, raspberry jam, citrus marmalade – a few standards to fill up the shelves.
    Jam and chutney making used to be the way to use fruit that couldn't be used fresh, as well as to fill the store cupboard – not just bruised or surplus fruit, mangoes, pineapples, pumpkins, but  fruits like loquats, elderberries, gooseberries, currants – fruits that grow easily in the garden but are better for a little processing. These 'specialty' jams and chutneys – like Australia's specialty regional cheeses of 100 years ago – have all but disappeared.
Jam making.
    Choose slightly green fruit when making jam. Never use mouldy fruit – it may well go off. Beware of fruit in very wet years too – reduce the amount of water or add more sugar if you think the fruit may be unusually squashy.
    Use big saucepans. Jam swells as you make it to four times its original size. Test jams and jellies in cold water or on a cold saucer. If it sets into a blob and the skin of the blob wrinkles when you push it with your finger, it's ready.
    If your jam has large berries or bits of peel in it, leave it for about twenty minutes before bottling. This will help stop the fruit rising to the surface.
    Stand jars on wood or newspaper so they don't break.
    Wipe dribbles of jam off before they set. Otherwise you may scrub for hours – or the ants my clean them before you do.
    Seal jams with cellophane dipped in vinegar, placed wet side downwards over the jar and kept in place with a rubber band. This will contract as it dries and form an airtight seal.
    Store jams in a cool dark cupboard – light destroys the colour and quality of jam and may start it fermenting.
Warning: Boiling jam is HOT. Wear kitchen gloves and long sleeves so you don’t get burned by splatters. Jam-making isn’t suitable for very young kids in case a pot of hot jam falls over and burns them.
    Having said that – jam-making is surprisingly easy and the reward – a row of stunning glowing jam of the sort you can never buy, even at market stalls – is enormous.
N.B. If you are a novice, it’s best to undercook your jam. If it’s too runny in the jars you can pour it back and bring it to the boil again the next day. But once your jam has turned to toffee if it’s overcooked, you can’t ever get it back to a good jam consistency or taste.
    I usually leave my jam in the saucepan, with the lid on, overnight to see if it has jelled well. If it has, I reheat it gently, stirring all the time, then pour it into the pots. If not, I cook it longer – then leave it again.
    Breadmakers are said to be superb for making small amounts of jam. I haven’t tried it- I enjoy thumping and kneading bread too much to mechanise it. But one day I will.

NB: JAM NEEEDS STIRRING. Even if your jam looks watery, the fruit can still ‘catch’ on the bottom, leaving you with a burnt saucepan and jam that tastes scorched even if you remove the black bits.

Blackberry and Plum Jam
2 kilos of blackberries (can be frozen)
1 kilo plums
2 kilos sugar
water
    Boil all ingredients till a little sets in cold water. Semi-ripe sour apples may be substituted for the plums. Either makes a very good jam.

Banana Jam
12 ripe bananas
juice of two limes and their grated zest
1 kilo sugar
1 cup water
Boil the water and sugar for 5 minutes; add the other ingredients. Cook till thick.

Carrot Jam
4 large, red and sweet carrots – taste them first Many commercial carrots are too anaemic to make jam. Late winter carrots after a few frosts are sweetest.
3 sliced lemons, unpeeled
1.5 litres water
2 kilos sugar
    Cover the lemons and carrots with water and leave overnight. Boil till soft, add the sugar and stir till it dissolves. Boil till a little sets in cold water.

Grape Jelly
    Just cover grapes with water, boil, squashing the grapes as they boil. After 20 minutes take off the heat. Strain the juice of the grapes through a clean cloth. For every cup of liquid add a cup of sugar. Boil again for bout twenty minutes. If a little sets in cold water take of the heat, bottle and seal.

Lime and Choko Marmalade
12 chokos
juice of 6 limes (or four lemons if you can't get limes)
1.75 kgs sugar
1 cup water
1 dessertspoon preserved ginger (this can be left out if you absolutely hate ginger)
grated rind of two limes or one lemon
    Peel and chop the chokos; sprinkle with the lime juice and a cup of sugar. Leave overnight. Now place in a pan with the water, ginger and rind, simmer till the sugar dissolves, boil for an hour and a half. Add the rest of the sugar, stir till it dissolves, boil rapidly until a little sets in cold water. This takes about an hour to an hour and a half. Bottle and seal when cold.
    This is a very old recipe – don't let the chokos put you off, or memories of chokos disguised as pears. This really isn't just a way of using up a choko glut – it's good.

Lime marmalade
10 limes
1.5 litres water
1.5 kilos sugar
    Leave the sliced limes in water overnight; drain and cover with fresh water and leave for another 12 hours. Drain; add the water; boil till the rind is tender then add the sugar, stirring well till it dissolves. Boil till a little sets in cold water.

Mango Jam
2 kilos mango pulp
2 kilos sugar
1 teaspoon cloves
juice of 10 lemons
water
    Combine the ingredients, boil, add more water if needed. The jam is ready when a little sets in cold water.

Orange and Lemon Blossom Preserve
flowers
sugar
lemon juice
    Take six cups of flowers, cover with sugar – about 8 cups – and leave overnight. Pour off the sugar in the morning – it should be semi-liquid as it will have absorbed the oil and juice of the flowers. Add the juice of two lemons and a little water, bring to the boil, add the flowers, cook till a little is thick in cold water. Pour into jars, seal.

Passionfruit Jam
5 Granny Smith apples
1.5 litres water
pulp of 12 passionfruit
1.5 sugar
    Boil the apples and water for about two hours. Keep a lid on and stir infrequently. Strain, add the liquid to the pan with the passionfruit pulp and sugar. Stir till the sugar dissolves, then simmer for about half an hour till a little sets in cold water, bottle and seal while hot.

Persimmon and Ginger Jam
persimmons
grated fresh ginger
lemons
sugar
    For every 500 grams of persimmon pulp add 350 grams sugar. Let it stand overnight; add the grated rind of a lemon for every 500 grams of pulp and the juice with a dessertspoon of grated ginger. Boil till a little sets in cold water – about 45 minutes to an hour.

Pineapple Jam
pineapple
sugar
lemon or lime juice
    Grate the peeled, cored fruit, add half as much sugar by weight and the juice of a lemon for every cup of sugar. Place in a pan on a low heat, stirring constantly. Boil and take off the heat when a drop sets in a saucer of cold water bottle. Seal.

Pumpkin Marmalade
3 kilos deep orange pumpkin
2 kilos sugar
5 navel oranges
2 lemons
    Cut the pumpkin into small cubes; cover with the sugar and leave overnight. Cook the pumpkin and sugar very slowly for about four hours – only add water to stop it sticking. Add the thinly grated rind of the oranges and lemons and the juice. Cook another twenty minutes or till the rinds are soft. Pour into jars and seal.
    This recipe is good when you have a glut of pumpkins and even your friends won't take any more unprocessed. It is a good, rich creamy jam; an excellent substitute for marmalade for those who like marmalade (I don't).

Rhubarb and Pineapple Jam
1 kilo chopped rhubarb
1 kilo chopped cored pineapple
juice of six lemons or limes
1 cup water
1 kilo sugar
    Boil all ingredients till thick and a little sets in cold water.
    Though the pineapple and sugar suggest a very sweet jam the lemon juice helps cut the sweetness. This jam is good in tarts or spread on hot puff pastry and served with cream.

Rhubarb and Rose Petal Jam
500 grams rhubarb
 the juice of three lemons
500 grms sugar
3 handfuls deep red rose petals
small knob of butter

Place the chopped rhubarb in a pottery bowl with the sugar, water and lemon juice. Leave overnight. Next add the chopped petals, simmer very gently till the sugar has dissolved, then boil till a little sets in cold water. Take off the heat and stir in the butter, bottle and seal. This is a wonderfully coloured deep ruby if red rhubarb is used.

Rosehip and Apple Jam
500 grams rose hips
three quarters of litre water
500 grms apples
500 grms sugar
    Simmer the hips for two hours. Strain the juice through muslin overnight. Add the juice to the peeled sliced and cored apples and cook till the apples are pulp. Add the sugar, stir well till dissolved, and simmer till a little sets in cold water.

Rose Petal Conserve
petals
sugar
lemon juice
    Layer red rose petals and caster sugar in a jar for three months. At the end of that time the sugar should be a red syrup. Boil the syrup (not the petals) with the juice of two lemons per cup of syrup till a little sets in cold water.
    This is the most strongly perfumed rose jam there is.

Strawberry Jam
    Strawberry jam is hard to make well – it ferments easily, and the fruit soon goes mushy and loses its colour if cooked too much. It is most successful when the strawberries aren't over ripe. (It is a temptation to use squashy ones for jam. Don't.)
Make sure the scum is rigorously removed constantly and that the sugar is cooked before the fruit.
500 grams strawberries
300 grams sugar
    Sprinkle water on the sugar; boil for five minutes; add more water only if needed. Add the whole strawberries, take off the heat and leave for 10 minutes. The strawberries will absorb the syrup. Now cook the lot for ten minutes; skimming off the scum constantly. Spoon out the strawberries, place in jars, boil the syrup till a little sets in cold water; pour over the berries and seal.

Tomato Cheese
This is lovely. Forget about tomatoes as a vegetable – remember they are a fruit too and make wonderful jam.
1 kilo tomatoes
1 kilo sugar
grated rind of three lemons
12 peach leaves or a few drops of almond essence
Boil all except the sugar and almond essence till the fruit soft and mushy; take out the peach leaves  add the sugar. Boil till thick and a little sets in cold water – about half an hour. Add almond essence. Bottle and seal.
    This is lovely – like a very dark honey, quite unlike tomato. It's good on bread or crumpets; also good with cold meat or hot roasts.

Watermelon and Orange Jam
    Peel three cups of watermelon and juice three cups of orange juice. Make sure there is no white, peel or seeds in either. Add just under the same weight of sugar. Leave for three hours or till the sugar disolves. Simmer very gently for an hour or more – don't add any water. When a little of the mixture is thick in a saucer of water, take it off the heat and bottle.

Zucchini Jam
    Take a kilo of chopped zucchini; add a kilo of sugar and the juice and zest of three lemons or limes and a dessertspoon of grated ginger or half that of powdered. Stir till the sugar dissolves, then boil, stirring all the time, till it turns rich brown. Only add water if needed.