how to be a master preserver - lesson one with the mint jelly

i love preserving. i love buying the books especially. i love the pictures of colourful delicious jars lined up. i love opening the cupboard and grabbing a jar of tomato pasta sauce from last summer. so far, it's been a bit slapdash. in a very scientific way though of course. no e-coli for us. but now the number of books i have seems to exceeded the number of preserves i have made, and this my friends is no good. (wonderfully no good).

So watch out beasties because the mint jelly is now lurking about!

but it unfortunately wasn't the most awesome mint jelly. but maybe because i don't love mint jelly? shut up. it was in the easy-get-started-type recipes, and anyway, we had a date for roast lamb the next day.

so here are some pretty picks of my strange coloured jelly, where i refused to use food colouring, and despite issues with pectin (powdered vs liquid) it set to a very reasonable state. instead of using the liquid pectin 'pouch' they had in the recipe (?!) i used about 6gm of powered jamsetta stuff. -side note: keen to also try the homemade pectin from lemon skins. wooooooo

look! this is my pretty new 'water bath canner' with a wacky name and not easy to say quickly. some people even like to call it a 'hot water bath canner'. c'mon you can't even make an acronym out of it.

i am sterilizing the jars. yes indeed.

now i am chopping the mint.
(the mint comes curtesy of the south melbourne markets. not just dim sims i tell you.)

straining the mint! funky pants jelly bag. i am so specialised and awesome.

this how the hwbc looks on my stove. (i.e. excellent)

and this! well this is the end result. it looks more like green tea, eh?

but at least it set right.
thus ends the lesson. if you want it to taste more minty than the bugger turns out, then just chop some extra from the garden and mix it though before the lamb gets involved.

ta-ra!