Monthly Archives: March 2012

The original apple! All modern varieties of apples are descendant from crab apples. They are mostly grown as ornamental trees these days,  or for making jelly. For a bit more information see here.

At the moment I have crab apple pulp slow cooking with cinnamon, pimento, clove and honey. In a few hours I’ll check the consistency and bottle in tiny jars to use as a nice apple spread on hot buttered toast. The pulp is actually the by product of making the juice to make a crab apple jelly. I’ll try and get these organised and listed in the shop as soon as possible. I need to work out the best way to post goods, and at the moment it looks like the new Aussie post flat rate boxes will be great, or at least affordable. As long as I can get the packaging right.

The tasting went really well I thought. The numbers were a bit lower than we expected, but the products were well received and we made some sales as well.

I liked the tasting as it allowed me to mix with the people trying the products rather than standing back and trying to convince people walking past to have a try.

I really think that a tasting style party is the way to go…. Having said that…is anyone out there interested in hosting a tasting party? You need to be in South Australia in our around Adelaide:-)

I’m still working on the format. It would most likely all be gluten free if I was to put together platters, that is how I cook at home….so I would have gluten free goodies and you can provide bread, wine,etc…how does that sound?

I’m doing a tasting for my husbands workplace today…yay

Depending on how things go I’ll see if it is a useful marketing tool. It sure works well for Thermomix sellers, so I should think that my tasting party should..and you don’t need $2000Aus to but the product…

Tasing cocktail party anyone?

I might make Thursday’s a day to look at the different thing you can do with homemade pickles and jams… Feel free to jump in if you have any ideas.

Home made jelly. This is really a jam that is made just with the liquid strained of the fruit. I  love how it looks in the jar, even though it is a bit more involved to make:)

I just finished some Apple and Rosemary jelly recently, which has a real rosemary aftertaste kick that works really well fo me:) So far we have had it with lamb chops and homemade lamb meatballs. I suspect that a leg of lamb roasted in a kettle bbq would do really well if glazed with this:-)

Apple and Rosehip jelly….great with roast pork instead of apple sauce also just on toast..

Apple and cherry jelly, so far the kids have approved this for use in a PB&J, just on toast, and in the middle of jam muffins..I tend to trust their judgment about these sorts of things.

What sort of Jam do you like?

I can’t keep up with the number of jars I need. I never realised just how many jars you use if a large batch of chutney is cooked, or a large batch of jam. It’s als much harder to get hold of recycled jars that I realised.

Gumtree: Posted an add…nothing happened. I did find some cheap jam jars to buy…

Free-cycle: only allowed to post a wanted add once a month. I guess one rule for everyone is fair, but couldn’t we make an exception for items that very quickly end up in landfill?? I’m not asking for a Scooter here…yes someone really asked for a scooter..

I may try Adelaide free and Cheap next…..

The people next door: we like them:) they gave us a bag of jars, and promised us some eggs from their chooks….I gave them some piccalilli.

I’m thinking of setting up some kind of loyalty system when I get set up at a regular market…bring me a certain number of usable jars, and you get a huge discount, or a free jam…etc. Works for coffee shops.

Jars I don’t need…Coffee jars! I can’t put a new lid on them….if I can’t pop it in a Vacola kit, then I can’t use it…Mayo jars are bad as well,  if they had a plastic lid, because the thread is weird, and won’t take a new metal lid.I also don’t need plastic jars…nuff said on that one.

I will probably end up buying more jars, but I’d like to reuse as many as possible.

So this is my new blog for Inapickle….providing that business rego doesn’t make me change my name this week…

When I was a little kid, we had an apricot tree at home. I remember spending hours with my Mum cutting up fruit, weighing it, working out sugar, packing the Vacola jars, and the old stove top kit bubbling away on the stove to preserve the jars. The apricot tree died eventually, we grew older and tinned fruit was easy to buy as well.

I just recently bought a Vacola kit and preserved some peaches for my own kids, and I suddenly remembered something…home preserved fruit is much better than a tin!!! I’d forgotten how much better it is until we opened out first jar the other night. I’m going to pack some jars of pears next.

that’s just for us though:-) I also make jellies, Jam, Piccalilli, and chutney. The Vacola Kit is getting a great work out preserving all of these jars for me. Now I need to find a decent market. I’ve had a bit of bad luck with the first two I’ve been to, probably mostly due to insane Adelaide summer heat. I may look at setting up at the Adelaide Farmers Market, as I get most of my produce from them anyway…

There is also a link to my online shop on this page:) I’ll add products as soon as I get a bit more organised this week.