Friday, June 16, 2006

Rosella Jam


Rosella Jam
Originally uploaded by davidfntau.
The jam! Since Judith, from work, brought in a jar of delicious Rosella jam I have been obsessing about self-sufficient food production, gleaning, preserving and harvesting from wild stock! This sent me on a quest to find the wild fruit for jam.
Unfortunately I don't have time to go into what Rosellas (Hibiscus sabdariffa) are and can't offer any pictures because I didn't take my camera but they are a wild (introduced) bush that produces a mass of fruits for a short period during the dry season each year. I managed to get a shopping bag full but was a bit late in the season so missed the really good fruit.
So last night I set out to make the jam and with Sam's help we had 3 decent jars of the most delightful red tarty fruit spread within an hour. Samantha calculated the amount of water needed to boil the fruit and I followed her instructions (more or less....well less actualy). Of course this jam is by no means a self sufficient product we did have to use quite a bit of (evil) sugar but it was cheep and creative and I got to re-use some jars that would otherwise have gone straight to the recycle bin (the recycle bit is doubtful).
Mission accomplished!

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