Don’t Squeeze Your Bag

We moved from Essex to Suffolk fourteen years ago, leaving a metropolitan area on the edge of London to come to a hamlet surrounded by fields. Some of the first people I met were my immediate neighbours.

Pretty soon, I found that these ladies baked, made jam and went blackberrying while still managing to work and bring up a family. I felt a touch inferior, the city girl who used shop-bought crumble mix and didn’t know a crab apple from a bullace. My mum had always made jam and chutney, the cupboards filled with neatly labelled jars of preserves. Shop-bought jam never made it on to the table in our house. I had neither the time nor the energy for such goings-on, but once we moved, I began to change.

It was a slow process. I had my work cut out looking after three little children, getting to grips with school and working from home. I cooked from scratch most nights, but I took short cuts too. At toddler group, we’d sit and laugh about what our children were eating that night. My speciality was, “Doigts de poisson avec sauce tomate.”

Time went on. The children grew. By 2013, we were applying for a high school place for our eldest. That September, I popped round to a dear friend’s house in a neighbouring village. I walked into her kitchen to find her wrestling with a large piece of muslin and a pan of bubbling apples.

“Give me a hand with that muslin,” she said, tying a knot in a long piece of twine. We hung it up over a large bowl and she poured the apple mix into the muslin bag. I had no idea what she was making.

Over coffee, she told me it was apple jelly which she’d finish with strips of chilli. “You should try it. You don’t even have to peel and core the apples.”

That sold me. By now a fully paid-up member of the bish bosh bash school of home cuisine, such an easy process appealed to me. I bought a book (The River Cottage Preserves book – excellent) and got to work. I chopped up piles of apples, stewed them with water and strained them through my newly acquired muslin. Satisfyingly, the pulp would drip gently into the bowl, a tranquil backdrop to the frenzy of visiting various school open evenings and wrestling with complex application forms. I was incredibly proud of my first batch and so began my love affair with preserves.

I branched out, making jelly with bullaces, crab apples, medlars, raspberries, blackberries and herbs. Bent over my pans, inhaling fragrant steam and stirring the bubbling mix, I felt like an alchemist, turning fruit into a beautiful, clear, set jelly.

After a couple of years, I had several preserves books on the shelves. All of them gave the same warning. “Never be tempted to squeeze your bag or your jelly will go cloudy.” I never did, although it was hard, watching the slow progress of the juice through the muslin and longing to hurry it up. Like so many things in life, there was a golden rule and breaking it would have led to a spoiled batch.

This autumn, I’ve experimented with different types of hedgerow jelly, all of which have turned out well. My outhouse is full of jars of gleaming ruby, blush pink and deep orange jelly. I love making it, but it has a bittersweet edge.

My dear friend died suddenly at the end of August a few years ago. The grief which hit me felt like an Atlantic breaker, roaring towards me and knocking me off my feet. I cried for months, woke up from dreams in which I found it had all been a mistake and she was still alive, saw books or earrings or scarves that were perfect for her birthday and then remembered with a jolt of pain that she would never wear them again.

It took about two years before the worst of the anguish subsided. I realised that I had to go through it, not around it. I began making jelly again, always remembering her as I stirred, strained and tasted. One day, three and a half years later, I sat down and wrote a poem about her. It just came out. I didn’t even have to think about it. Here it is.

Apple Jelly

“I remember that day so well. September, apples rosy on the trees.

Leaves just starting to turn. The smell of woodsmoke in the air.

I popped round for coffee, as I so often did then.

And there you were, making apple jelly.

The sharp smell of fruit in the air, the sound of bubbling from the stove.

Quick cutting with your sharp knife, pips and stalks and leaves intact.

You flung open the cupboard door to reveal treasure within.

Jar after jar of clear gleaming apple jelly, chilli-jewelled and glowing.

“It’s easy. You should try it,” you said, smiling as I held the muslin bag for you,

Apple pulp dripping luxuriously into the waiting silver bowl.

“No peeling or coring, just cut them up and chuck them in. Boil vigorously.”

We both laughed, liking the idea of a really good vigorous boil.

You had less than three autumns left. Neither of us knew that day.

If we had, my tears would have dropped into the apples and ruined the set.

My sobs would have drowned out the sound of laughter, the scent of coffee.

You were still well, your years uncounted and no end date in sight.

Like that sharp knife quartering the fruit, your days were numbered.

Like the sugar boiling with the fruit, our memories were sweet.

Like the glorious autumn colours, it was all over too soon.

Too soon.

Since then, every year I harvest the apples and forage for fruit.

I line up the chutneys and jams and fruit jellies.

I gaze into the bubbling, fragrant, vigorous boiling and see you as you were.

Smiling in your kitchen, generous, kind, loving till the last.”

She left a wonderful legacy behind her. I wish I could have her over for coffee again, to chat about how the children are doing, wander over to the veg patch and try some of my jelly. But I can’t. That time is gone. I suppose, like the jelly, my memories are composed of the sharp, bitter bite of apples and the sweet unifying taste of sugar. Sour sweet. But never cloudy.

Images by Pixabay

Ruth is a freelance writer and novelist. She is married with three children, one husband, four budgies, six quail, eight chickens and a kitten. Her first novel, “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge” is coming out in March and she has another work in process. She writes for a number of small businesses and charities. Ruth is a recovering over-achiever who is now able to do the school run in her onesie most days. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life.