Those smells that take you back in time...

As I sit here, I have the smell of the first batch of chutney wafting through from the kitchen, and its one of a procession of smells this week that take me back to my childhood.

So far, there has been Seville orange marmalade, blackberry jam (15 x 8oz jars this afternoon), and now we are on to the chutney. I am about to go and start the prep for a couple of batches of green tomato marmalade which will get cooked tomorrow, and there will almost certainly be at least another three batches of chutney to follow over the next few days.

The great bit is that these are the smells from my childhood, and now they are the smells of my daughter's childhood. When I was a kid, we had neighbours that had a massive garden (they also ran a wee grocers shop built in a corner of that garden down at the 'street end') - they grew masses of stuff even once they had sold the shop and retired, and would then spend their days making jams/chutneys/preserves and passed them on around the neighbours; and the scents that came from their kitchen have stayed with me ever since.

Isn't it funny how certain smells/scents can have a marked effect on you?

 

Well, that is the first bakers dozen jars of chutney done - cooling as I type; two big bowls of tomatoes/lemon/sugar are macerating in the fridge ready to be turned into marmalade tomorrow, and I am now having a rest before tomorrow's onslaught.

 

Is it a difficult recipe?

Things seem to be going well so far:


Mixture of orange marmalade, blackberry jam, green tomato chutney and green tomato & lemon marmalade above, with another batch of green tomato chutney on the stove as I type:



Apologies for the picture quality - my phone seems in capable of handling the sun shining off things and it is currently streaming in the back windows.

I still have another two or maybe three batches of chutney to make, a batch of summer fruit jam (using frozen fruits that I bought as a standby, that will now not be needed), and two more batches of orange marmalade

Guess who is going to be including jars of stuff in the Santa parcels this year