I have got three apple trees on the allotment – Egremont russet, James Grieves and a Bramley. I was waiting for the ‘June drop’ and finally today did my rounds to check. All is well, the obvious casualties have dropped down but I was still left with quite a lot of bunches of apples. As I was thinning them I thought – they would make great jelly (or something like that). Saved them all and then found out that when I was thinning out the gooseberry bushes I just did one of them, left the other. Did that today and finished with a nice box full of goosegogs.

This time I had a recipe in mind but only for the ratio of sugar to the liquid. I can’t really call my creation a jelly – because it has got all the bits in!

First I cooked the little apples and pushed the resulting mush through a fine sieve and got 1,5 pint of thick liquid. Then the gooseberries were cooked in just enough water to cover them in the saucepan, with a bunch of sage – for a change!

Again, everything was mashed up, the bunch of sage taken out and to each pint of liquid a pound of sugar was added.

Back to boil, slowly first to dissolve the sugar and rapidly for about 15 minutes. In the meantime I chopped a big handful of sage leaves and added them to the mix, after the plate test showed thet we’ve reached a setting point. For that I kept a small plate in the fridge, put a small amount of the liquid on it and when it wrinkled when pushed with my finger I knew I was home and dry.

Bottled and another batch of tasty conserve is done.