Jarring moments

I know I am paid enough money to buy any food I like, at any time that I like it, but there is still that Scottish streak in me. The one about preparing for the future because you don't know what's round the corner.

So in the autumn, particularly in Eastern Europe, where people are preparing for a hard winter ahead, I start to feel the need to do the same. Even though years of experience have told me that I never get round to eating all the food I have frozen or preserved. Be honest - what's the bottom of your freezer like? But you never know....

Add to that the fact that I like anything with plums, though like with all fruit I'm not a great fan of the raw stuff - you never know whether they are under-ripe or over-ripe, or whether they contain a wee beastie or two. (Remind me of the wee beastie story later!).

Stewed plums I love, plum cake I brought into work the other day, baked plums - they are so juicy and oozing that you hardly need any sugar. Another bonus, together with that of the plums being not far from prunes....

Last weekend I bought five kilos of plums, in the expectation that I would be able to buy some jars to put them into. Jars? How to describe them at the market? No jars to be seen, only lids which looked like they needed an implement to attach them to jars, rather than being screw-top. And presumably they would be destroyed in the opening process. All not very convenient. But still no jars to put under the lid.

Then I asked a friend to go somewhere to buy some. He said that he'd have a look at home to see if he had any. That was Monday. Yesterday asked again, he'd forgotten, others had forgotten, I had retrieved two coffee jars from work...and baked and frozen lots of plums. Not sure if you can bottle baked plums - but they would be so much better than cooked plums....

Thinking creatively I decided to buy food that comes in jars. But how much can I eat quickly? And usually I don't buy that kind of stuff! I spotted the ideal jars in the corner shop - they were full of plums imported from Germany! So I bought some sausages and some peas. At that moment my Scottish streak must have deserted me because I realised afterwards that I had paid 7 Euros for 10 little Viennese sausages, which are not that exciting to eat. I mean, come on!

Today I asked another friend; he said - I know exactly where to go. We went and got 15 beautiful jars with screw top lids. And I now know where that place is and can get more. Now, what else can I bottle/preserve? I've found a very nice recipe for a special kind of plum jam...