Garden to table (via a photo shoot). Su Leslie 2019
preserves
Wordless Wednesday
Not jam tomorrow
Unlike Alice, to whom the Queen offers jam tomorrow (1), the Big T will have jam today. Apricot jam to be precise.
In a rather reckless moment you see, I bought 10 kilos (20lbs) of apricots.
Well, At $1.59 per kilo (admittedly, based on buying the whole 10kg box), it would have been wrong not to.
So I am going to make jam. Jam today. Jam for us, and jam to enter into the preserves competition of some upcoming A&P shows (think County Fairs).
I like making jam. It’s fairly easy and generally rewarding; a good way to preserve excess fruit. The notion of competitive jam-making however, is both new to me, and daunting.
And that’s kind of the point. I’m easily distracted and a hopeless procrastinator. Last year when I discovered a townie friend regularly enters her garden produce and preserves in A&P competitions, I thought “how cool, I should do that.”
So I am. I’ve downloaded the entry forms, diarised the delivery dates and bought the fruit.
The phrase “jam tomorrow” expresses an unfulfilled promise (2); we are definitely going to have jam today.
(1) From Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There
… “The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.”
“It must come sometimes to ‘jam to-day’,” Alice objected.
“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know.”
(2) Since Carroll’s use, the phrase has also been employed by CS Lewis, John Maynard Keynes and singer/song-writer Billy Bragg.