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Published: July 13th 2010
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So it only took 27 hours of flying...lots of inflight entertainment...little sleep on the plane...and an overnight in London to get us safely to Italy. What a treat for us to land in Verona with BA instead of Bergamo with Ryan Air. It cut out that hour and a half drive which was a rather pleasant relief after all the travelling we had done. So I am not used to writing about my time in Italy so I have unfortunately been lax with my blog so this is some serious catch up time. I seriously will not attempt to write it all down in one go as I find reading long entries can get rather tedious...anyway...here goes...
So one of the highlights of this trip is arriving in summer when all the trees seem to be bearing fruit. There is what you can see a rather huge abundance of the summer...peaches...kiwis....cherries....apples....apricots....figs. It's not just the fact though that you go to the supermarket to make your selection...no...the neighbours arrive weekly sometimes daily with huge baskets of the stuff! You can also go straight to the farmer to buy your local fruit and vegetables. I love the idea of cooking with
the seasons, eating what is local, fresh and abundant. As we arrived there was the farmer coming in from the fields with her basket loaded with fresh tomatoes! Of course as most Italian families there is a cantina downstairs where all this lovely produce is stored. As it is over pouring there is the problem of the fruit going off before you can eat it all so the best bit is in making jam and baking some cakes! Now I know this is a travel blog but I thought I might share my little jam making experience with hubby's mum with you. After all there is nothing better for me than taking good recipes home with you.
Home Made Jam
I have always had the opportunity to take home jars of hubby's mum home made jam. So you can only imagine my excitement when the opportunity arose for me to actually help! So this morning we were making peach jam and I was overwhelmed with how easy it really all was. The bottles had been washed with boiling water and prepared and ready.
The next step was the peaches which needed to be peeled
and cut into small pieces. A lot of our peaches were pretty mature and very easy to peel. I have boiled peaches in the past if they are not very soft to make them easier to peel but something tells me they won't make as nice jam! You should have about 1 kilo of peaches.
You then need to add the peaches with 350grams of sugar and put it in a large pot to boil. Hubby's mum then added a packet of 'Fruttapec' which means you have to add less sugar and boil for a lot less time. I found it great the she has a special wooden spoons only for making marmellata! After boiling for about 10-15 minutes she felt that the pieces were still too big after boiling so gave it a quick whizz with a hand blender.
Now all we needed to do was fill the jars with sticky juice using a ladle. Of course be careful when handling the jars as once they have the jam inside they will be hot!!!! Then we turned them upside down and left them for 10 minutes while we started the process again.
And the next day...well just YUM!
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