Jam and stories

Cut up feijoas

There’s a house between here and Greytown that has feijoas for sale at $2.50 a kilogram, which you buy from a basket at their gate.

Today I spent the morning making feijoa jam while listening to PRI shorts podcasts Women in the News and Fiction into Film.

Making feijoa jam is easy and could even be free if you know people with their own trees. Here’s how I did it:

1. Weigh the large pot you’re going to use and write down the weight somewhere.

2. Cut up the feijoas – I do quite a few batches alternating between cutting and scooping out the insides. Put all the insides into a pot and then weigh that. Subtract the original weight of the pot (as in point one) and that’s the weight of your fruit. Mash up the feijoas  with a masher.

3. Put three saucers in the fridge.

4. Add sugar – the same amount as your fruit. I like to use the new jam sugar because it’s easy. Normal sugar works just as well you just need to boil it longer.

5. Heat the sugar and fruit slowly until the sugar is dissolved.

Feijoas in the pot

6. Heat up your oven to about 120 degrees celcias and put your empty, clean jam jars in to sterilise.

7. Turn up the heat and boil the fruit and sugar at full boil for four minutes. Scoop of the foam/scum that forms on the top as you go.

8. To test if the jam is ready, take a saucer from the fridge and spoon a wee bit of jam onto it. Leave it a minute then press a finger into it – if it springs back it’s set. If not, boil it some more and repeat the process until the jam is set.

9. Take your jars out of the oven and carefully fill with jam. Leave to cool before putting lids onto the jars.

10. I like to put all the lids in a bowl and cover them with boiling water for a bit to sterilise them too.