On Tuesday, I dropped by my parents’ house and whilst out admiring my Dad’s garden noticed that the raspberries and some gooseberries were ready for picking. The fruit trees are generally laden down, in part thanks to the 6 beehives in the garden whose occupants cross-pollinate, but this year there are no plums or pears with few apples. The soft fruits are doing really well though, so my Mam gave us a couple of bowls and we helped ourselves to a kilo of each fruit.
Incidentally, I learned not to go near the bee hives wearing black because they’ll think you’re a bear and lose their shiz, even Irish bees. :/
We’ve always missed the fruits because I’d usually be away on business for the whole month of July, so I really enjoyed picking them and was frankly more than a little excited about making jam for the first time. I found a couple of recipes and information about sterilizing jars online and set about it today. Here are the before and after shots, and the fruits (yep!) of my labour.
Damn, gurl, I make some mighty fine Jam!
Aside: Today, I hit a milestone of 2 Stone (or 28lb, or 10.7kilo) lost since the end of February. I lowered/closely monitored my calories and increased my exercise in the last week – a simple equation – and was duly rewarded with a 4lb loss. Plus, I made it over the hump I’d been stuck on for a few weeks and feel very positive about hitting the next milestone on target, which is a total of 3 Stone by 1st September. Go me! 
N-N-Nom Nom! ’tis very tasy stuff!