Some toast for Grandma ...

During my early teenage years I was very lucky to spend three consecutive long Christmas summer holidays in New Zealand with my closest friend, her brother and their wonderful grandparents.

Grandma fussed over all of us equally and I was always welcomed as an extra grand-daughter, during those visits and many others since.

I'm not sure my plum jam is as good as Grandma's but as I munched my toast (with real butter and pilfered plum preserve) this morning, I enjoyed lots of happy memories of her - and her shelves of beautifully bottled preserved fruits.

Of course, I also remembered Grandad's story oft-repeated story of the plum jam mouse but fortunately my jam was mouse-free!

I made a batch of jam after breakfast.  There was just enough white sugar for another kilo of fruit. I made a few notes yesterday and used them this morning to ensure no jam boiled over. I'm pretty pleased with the batch, which filled two large jars, one small jar and four individual serve sample pots. 

All up the ingredients for three batches of jam cost $4.39.  Nick and I weighed one of the large jars (empty and full), so were able to calculate the jam contents as being just under 600 grams.  When I looked at Woolworths online, a 600g value pack of IXL plum conserve is currently on special for $3.50, with it's usual price being $4.29. My ingredients cost just a little more than that - and my yield was probably the equivalent of about seven or eight similar-sized jars!