Beware the bottler........

The jam making went surprisingly well, I simply followed the instructions on the bag of jam sugar, but added the juice of half a lemon to take a bit of the sweetness away. And the results five lovely jars of strawberry jam for the store cupboard, well four Lovely Hubby dipped into one this morning, I can't blame him, it tastes GORGEOUS.

It's also good value, as all I used was three punnets of bought strawberries and one punnet of homegrown ones with one bag of jam sugar. So, cheaper than five jars of quality jam and I know exactly what went into it (which I am getting obsessed about recently, have you read some of the labels?). This is going to be repeated and repeated.

Then whilst I was busy tending the veggie bed and chicken proofing some of the young veggies I got to thinking if jam making was easy what else could I bottle?

Chicken-proof baby potato plant in the bucket that I rescued last night when the ladies decided the red potatoes needed digging up, and tiny radishes in the tyre just peeking their faces to the world.

On looking in the courgette bucket I knew straight away ... there were loads of ripe courgettes and as Hugh F-W says if they as big as your biggest finger they can be used. So they were added to a couple of onions, a couple of cloves of garlic and a tin of tomatoes with loads of freshly ground black pepper and cooked gently in the oven for 2 hours. After trying some over fresh ravioli for tea it was deemed a success and the rest was bottled.

So, if you fit into a jar watch out...............the new bottlers about!!

Sue xx