A black reverie

Towards the end of breakfast this morning, I thought to finish up the first jar of blackberry jelly (reference 1), otherwise bramble jelly, on a thin slice of the ancient flour bread (last mentioned at reference 2). That is to say with the jelly spread on one end and the other end then folded over. Without butter, as I don't care to take my jam with butter. And I might say that one of the advantages of the ancient flour bread is that it does slice very thin, without much wastage in loose crumb.

I then wondered whether one could tell the difference between blackberry jelly and blackcurrant jelly.

From where I got to my allotment days, when I used to grow blackcurrants, quite a lot of them. But I am more or less blank about what we did with them, although I do remember netting and picking them. BH remembers making a blackcurrant tart, probably not often as I don't remember them at all. Most of the blackcurrants probably went into jelly, although I don't remember much about that either. While BH remember my taking over her kitchen with large jelly bags hung out to drip underneath the kitchen table. For long periods, quite possibly overnight.

Both blackcurrant jelly and crab apple jelly were manufactured in large quantities when I was a child, and I remember being rather fond of the latter. I also have memories of topping and tailing blackcurrants, a tedious job, perhaps for bottling rather than jam, but I may have got confused with gooseberries. As it happens, we both bottled and jammed gooseberries, which I don't think was the case with blackcurrants.

Breakfast closed with two oranges from Sainsbury's, both from the same batch of what they are pleased to call 'taste the difference'. The first had dried out and was uneatable, while the second was quite good, very good even. A reminder that Sainsbury's oranges vary a good deal in quality; quality which cannot be deduced from either price or appearance. Perhaps in an effort to cut costs, Sainsbury's have let all the people who knew anything about oranges go, people whose lives' work was oranges (and perhaps lemons too), and are doing their buying more or less blind. I might add that, over the years, we have found Sainsbury's not to be as good as Tesco's on fruit, vegetables and fresh meat. Perhaps reflecting Sainsbury's origins in old fashioned grocery: dry goods, bacon, eggs and dairy?

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/fifth-and-last-blackberries.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/08/batch-572.html.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2006/12/skips.html. Blackcurrants barely exist in the blog. Barely exist at all.