In a pickle

I'm still preserving our harvest.  In addition to the list in the last post, I've also made:

• runner bean chutney
• rhubarb and apple and ginger chutney
• pickled cucumber
• pickled beans
• blackberry and apple jam
• rhubarb and apricot jam

And I'm not done yet.  That onion marmalade has not happened yet and the damsons are not ripe enough yet to do anything with them.

I had enough blackberries for a batch of blackberry and apple jam and a batch of blackberry and marrow jam.  The day I picked the blackberries, I was given a carrier bag of small windfall apples and a marrow.  So I thought I would put it all together.  I cooked the apple and marrow together and when I tasted it, I couldn't tell that there was marrow in it - it just tasted of apple.  I have to say that I was tired of preparing apple by the time I had enough for the jam.  2lbs of prepared apple = about 40 of the apples I was given...  I kept the nice looking peel and cores and simmered them in some water with the rest of the reasonable looking apples and I now have about 3 pints of apple juice/pectin stock in the fridge.  I sieved the apple pulp and that went into the rhubarb and apple and ginger chutney.  The rhubarb in that refused to soften and I had to fish out every last bit of the rhubarb and cook it in the microwave and then add it back into the chutney pan...  I do hope it is nice when it has matured enough to eat because it proved to be a lot of work.  But the price was right : )  And I have more things for the Christmas hampers.