My friend Pat gave me a jar of the jam that she made with the giant lemon I gave her, brought back from Italy. We have a similar giant lemon still sitting on our kitchen table: I had better do something with it soon.
Pat said that her marmalade had caramelised slightly in the bottom of the pan, which she thought had actually improved the colour and flavour. That put me in mind of some marmalade I made in the early 70s.
At that time, Stewart was very involved in local government. He stood as a Labour Party candidate for the local council in Glasgow in 1970 and in Manchester in 1971. He didn’t get in – but it was quite a feat to stand for election in two cities in different countries in consecutive years. He paved the way for others to succeed in future years – and they did.
In Manchester, the need to raise funds to support the local party was a priority. I remember going to beetle drives, sales of work and coffee mornings to try to build up the coffers.
I decided that making marmalade to sell at coffee mornings might be a winner, though I had never made marmalade before! I think the idea came from the easy availability of small jars. Jae was a baby at the time and I had several friends with babies of the same age. I asked my friends to give me all the jars and lids from any jars of baby food their offspring ate and they gave me bags full of jars. Jae actually rarely got such baby food: I was fixated on making her food from scratch, usually based on tripe or liver – hence her lifelong embrace of vegetarianism!
Marmalade in small jars with pretty fabric circles tied on top proved to be extremely successful and added much needed funds to the party coffers. What no-one knew was that not one piece of citrus fruit entered into my kitchen. I bought tins of Mamade: just add sugar and water to turn it into marmalade. However, to give it a rich dark colour, I hit on the idea of stirring in some gravy browning too. It looked quite special and sold like hot cakes. The only problem was that people enjoyed it so much, that I was constantly being stopped in the street by people asking for my marmalade recipe. I just couldn’t admit the truth – that it came out of a tin and had artificial colouring added to it! I just had to prevaricate.
I understand that the food on Kili is top notch, so I am sure there will be no such adulteration when we are on the climb. I have been told that bananas, porridge, chicken and eggs are the mainstays. Bring it on!
